The sermon, based on Isaiah 51:17-23, explores the concept of the 'cup of trembling,' symbolizing the judgment and consequences of sin. It addresses the desolation and spiritual despondency experienced during the Babylonian captivity, using vivid imagery like a 'drunken woman' to describe the spiritual state of the people. The speaker emphasizes the mercy of God in affliction and the call to awaken from spiritual slumber, recognizing that trials are part of God's purpose to bring His people back to righteousness. The sermon highlights the role of Jesus Christ as an advocate who pleads for sinners, offering redemption and salvation. It urges the church to rise from its despondency, repent, and embrace God's mercy, remembering that He ultimately takes the cup of wrath and gives it to the enemies of His people.

Good morning. Today's text is Isaiah 51 verses 17 to 23. Awake, awake, stand up, O Jerusalem, you who have drunk at the hand of the Lord the cup of his fury. You have drunk the dregs of the cup of trembling and drained it out. There is no one to guide her among all the sons she has brought forth, nor is there any who takes her by the hand among all the sons she has brought up.

These two things have come to you. Who will be sorry for you? Desolation and destruction, famine and sword. By whom will I comfort you? Your sons have fainted.

They lie at the head of all the streets, like an antelope in a net. They are full of the fury of the Lord, the rebuke of your God. Therefore please hear this, you afflicted and drunk but not with wine. Thus says your Lord, the Lord and your God, who pleads the cause of his people. See, I have taken out of your hand the cup of trembling, the dregs of the cup of my fury, you shall no longer drink it, but I will put it into the hand of those who afflict you, who have said to you, lie down that we may walk over you, and you have laid your body like the ground, and as the street for those who walk over.

Let's pray. Heavenly father, we thank you for your word this morning. Oh, instruct our hearts through your servant this morning. Help us to hear all the things you would have us to hear and understand. We pray you renew our minds by the work of your Holy Spirit.

In your name we pray. This morning we have the privilege of continuing in our continuing education on the doctrine of the judgment of God and his chastisements. We had quite an education about that in chapters 1-39 in Isaiah and this passage of scripture, this entire section, takes us further to help us understand even more clearly about the judgment of God, its power, its goodness, and what it does to mankind. And the truth is sin always has its consequences. What do you do after you have drunk the cup of trembling?

What do you do after you have drunk the cup of trembling? What do you do after you have sinned? You've reaped what you've sown. You've ignored what God commanded you. And then he brought you into a time of judgment.

And you did your own thing, and you reaped the consequences of it. And so what do you do? What do you do after you've drunk the cup of trembling? After judgment, then what? The verses from chapters 49, verse 15, through chapter 52, verse 12, are some of the most encouraging verses in all of Isaiah and they speak to this very issue.

What do you do when you have drunk the cup of trembling? And I think we should think about the various ways that God has chastised us for our sin. What do you do? What do you do once you've seen his work to correct you, to slow you down? These verses here are astonishing And they really began, the whole argument began in 4915.

And then right up to Isaiah 53, this towering declaration of the atonement of Jesus Christ. Perhaps one of the most towering prophecies of Jesus Christ exists in this whole context. And so this long section is a call to be encouraged. It's a call to wake up and stand and look at the realities of this world that you don't see on the surface in the time of your chastisement. There's more going on.

There's a bigger plan. There's a larger time horizon than just the moment of your chastisement and your judgment from God. And so that's why in chapter 51 there's all this remarkable language in chapter 1, in verse 1 of chapter 51 that we viewed last week, the prophet says, look to the rock, you know, he'll comfort you, he'll bring joy, righteousness will not be abolished, that you'll come with singing, you'll have everlasting joy on your heads. He's pouring out these words to bring the people back to their senses after they have been stunned by 70 years of captivity in Babylon. And when does this happen?

It's very clear. It's during this time of captivity. And you know What happens to you when you recognize the chastisement of God in your life? What do you do? I think that's one of the critical questions in this whole passage of Scripture.

Do you know the mercy of God as a result of your sufferings? Do you know His mercy in the afflictions that you've experienced as a result of your sin? Because there are consequences to sin. And God in his kindness brings a resistance to our sin to teach us how harmful it is and so once he's taught us how harmful it is what do we do And this passage is given to us to shape the way that we think about what to do when you recognize that God has kind of taken you down. And so Isaiah is continuing to speak to a group of people who feel abandoned by God as a result of their judgment in Babylon.

And if you go back to chapter 49 verse 14, Zion feels forsaken. She says, the Lord has forsaken me, and my Lord has forgotten me. And so through the captivity, there's a despondency that is taking place. This often happens when God shows you your sin and there's actually a punishment for it. There's a physical, real, experiential resistance that God brought to your sin.

And it's so easy to fall into despondency as a result of it. And so Isaiah is speaking to his people. Verse 1 of chapter 51 makes it very clear he's addressing the people of God who are discouraged in Babylon and I think he is also addressing simultaneously all those who have been discouraged as a result of the chastisements of God that have come upon them. The very first verse in chapter 51 and the very last verse in the section from last week make this very clear. Listen to me you who follow righteousness.

That's who this is directed to. You who seek the Lord. That's who he's talking to. Look to the rock from which you're a hewn. In other words, see the greatness of God's plan over the centuries.

This life is more than just you. God is glorifying himself through all of the things that happen in history. And then verse 16, and I have put my words in your mouth, I have covered you at the shadow of my hand. He's speaking to those to whom he speaks. He's speaking to those who rise in the morning and they hear his voice.

They desire him and then they speak his words. This is who he is speaking to. At the same time, this is a wake-up call to a drunken woman. It's remarkable to observe the language here, but you have this picture of a church that's tossed and torn up, discouraged, very downcast, and needing really to regain her vigor, and God says, awake! He's trying to wake up a drunken woman.

And this imagery is so remarkable, a little boy came up to me before the service and said what do you want me to listen for today and I said a drunken woman, a cup of wrath, a son fainted in the streets, wine, men lying down, somebody pleading for your cause, somebody taking the cup of wrath and giving it to another. That's what you should think about. Well, that's the whole passage. Maybe I should just quit preaching right now. That's really the whole text.

There's an antelope in a net. There are people walking over bodies in the street as a picture of just how discouraged you can get, how downcast you can become as a result of the trouble that actually God in his love has brought upon you in your life. So these vivid imageries help us to understand the situation in the Babylonian captivity and so he uses the image of a drunken woman to show their spiritual state and I do just want to suggest that he uses this imagery for us for those times when we might actually be like a drunken woman as a result of the chastisement of the Lord. It's a reminder of what happened during the captivity and what can happen to all of God's people in their times of despondency. So Isaiah is laying before his people Judah's pattern in times of despondency and affliction.

He's saying his hand is not shortened and that his cup will change hands. So here's the proposition of this section. After you've drunk of the cup of trembling, after judgment, then what? And Isaiah lays before his people what he wants them to think what he wants them to do in their time of despondency from their affliction and the and we find in verses 17 through 20 you can follow this in the outline the first command there are two commands here Awake in verse 17 and listen in verse 21 and I'm going to try to follow that structure to help us understand this passage of scripture. First there's this command to awake out of drunkenness.

This is a call out of sleep, to rise up, to get out of your bed, to stop the pity party, to quit thinking about yourself all the time and start thinking about what God's doing in the greater scheme of things in this world. You know, God is so kind to call us out of ourselves, to call us to quit thinking about ourselves. You know, who was it, Martin Lloyd Jones, he said, there's a time when you need to quit talking to yourself and start preaching to yourself. And I think that's the thrust of this. Awake!

Awake! Get out of your bed. Stand up, O Jerusalem, stand up. You who have drunk at the hand of the Lord the cup of his fury, You have drunk the dregs of the cup of trembling and drained it out." So first of all, there's this matter of this command to awake, and they're drowsy to the realities of what God is doing. They're thinking that he has abandoned them.

He wants them to wake up and to recognize he has plans for them, to not continue to be so overwhelmed by their troubles. You know, this is perhaps a little bit like the disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane in Luke chapter 22 verse 45. They were sleeping from sorrow. Sleeping from sorrow. Have you ever felt like that?

You just wanted to stay in bed. Just lay in bed, sleep from sorrow, sleep it off. He's speaking to people who feel like that and he's saying awake, no, no, get out of your bed. Now again, I just want to remind us about some of the hermeneutical questions here. One is, what do you do with figurative language?

What do you do with historical situations? The proposition that we've been making, and we'll continue to make, is that the Babylonian captivity is an earthly, physical, historical, real example that's given to us to teach us about ourselves spiritually. It is real and and and this did happen for 70 literal years in Babylon to the people of God and yet it's given to us as a picture to teach us about life today, to teach us about who you are and how you should think about all the things that are happening. And the truth is that God judges sin. But here he says there's a double command, Awake, awake.

Now, I want us to try to get our coordinates about these commands to awake, because there are three of them. And in the previous passage, there was the same pattern of awake, awake, and then next week we'll encounter another one. So I just like to show you these three commands to awake so you can see what Isaiah is doing. Because we're going slow in Isaiah, we don't often see the broader patterns, but I'd like for us to just back up and look at that so we can see this second occurrence of awake awake in its in its broader context. So there are three calls to awake.

The first is in verse 9 in chapter 51. So if you could look there In verse 9, awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord, awake as in the ancient days, in the generations of old. Now this first call is different compared to the other calls. This is Isaiah's prayer to God for his church. He says, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord.

He's praying to God to show his strength to his people. And this is different. The rest of the Awakes are different, as we will see. And the whole idea is God, be strong for your people. It's a man standing in the midst of a broken society, standing in the midst of a despondent people.

He's crying out to God that he would show his strength to his people. Have you ever prayed that for someone? Someone who's downcast, they're going through something that is so hard and you pray for them. You know this is what the church should do it should find out who the downcast are and pray for them just like Isaiah is doing now and and and and to pray awake awake put on strength awake as in the ancient days to cry out to God to come and swoop in to bless that person. It's one of the important things that we do as a church.

The second call is in verse 17 where we are today and the second call is a call to the church. The first call is a call to God and the second call is a call to the church. Awake, awake, stand up, oh Jerusalem. You can see how he's directly now addressing the people of God. Jerusalem is code for the people of God, these people who have loved his name, these people who he spoke of in verse one and verse 16.

So he speaks to them and he's saying awake because you've been delivered from the cup of the wrath of God. That's the whole thing. By the way that's perhaps The primary theme here. Awake because God has delivered you from his wrath. He's taking your cup of wrath and he's going to give it to someone else.

And by the way, we'll talk more about the cup later when we get to it in the text. But Recognize this about Scripture. There are at least two cups mentioned in Scripture. There's the cup of wrath, and there's the cup of blessing. Those two cups.

You should always remember the two cups and what they mean. So the second awake is a call from Isaiah, is a call of Isaiah to the church. The third awake is very much like it. You find this in chapter 52 verse 1, we'll get to this next week. The third call is again like the second, it's a call to the church to awake and he says awake, awake, put on strength, oh Zion put on your beautiful garments, oh Jerusalem the holy city, for the uncircumcised and the unclean shall no longer come to you this is such a beautiful I can't wait to it till we get to this verse put on your beautiful garments oh yeah we might spend some time on that phrase alone but it's yeah he's saying awake because you've been redeemed without money.

Now this whole idea about without money is going to appear again. You'll see it again in Isaiah 55 and it'll be alluded to. But you're redeemed without money. What does that mean? It has a lot of meaning.

And it'll be a real joy to be able to inspect that whole idea. So this second call to awake is the one that we're dealing with here. And it has a particular focus. Now, he says, awake, awake, and he makes something very clear that we should always understand in time of trials. And I think maybe there are three ways that we should think of our trials.

A, about the trials to come. B, about the trials we're in. And C, the trials that God is going to relieve us of. Those are the three ways that we experience trials. We're either looking forward, we're in the middle, or we're looking back on a trial.

And it really matters how you think about that trial. If you don't think rightly about those three things, you'll never be happy. There will be other consequences as well. But here, he tells us something that we should think about all three of those various states of trials. And that is there from the hand of the Lord.

He says, you who have drunk at the hand of the Lord the cup of his fury. Here you must grow up and recognize that God is in control of every trial and he does give a cup of fury to his people. You know modern Christianity just wants to think nothing but about sweetness and light and they don't have any conception of the love of God and the depth of it to turn someone back from evil. How he would actually put a cup of fury in your hand to bring you to your senses because he tried so many times in so many ways he sent prophets and all kinds of things and you wouldn't listen and so he finally sends a cup of fury to finally turn you around you didn't turn around by the still small voice You didn't turn around when you saw your pastor and you knew you should turn from sin. You didn't turn around from the preaching.

You didn't turn around from your friend who came to you and gave you a subtle warning. All these sent from God, messengers from heaven, and yet you wouldn't listen. And so he sends the cup of fury. But here we should grow up and recognize that God sends the cup of fury to his beloved people. He does it because he loves you and he wants to bring you back and bring you to your senses.

You have drunk at the hand of the Lord the cup of his fury and he's speaking of again of these immediate hardships in the Babylonian captivity. Now it was hard in the Babylonian captivity. They were exhausted, they were struck down, you know 10, 000 of the very best of Israel were taken into into captivity. There are many places you can go in the Bible to see what it was like in Babylon. It was very bad in Babylon.

I've got many verses here that I won't read that just document what it was like. Isaiah 13, 16, their children will be dashed to pieces before their eyes, their houses will be plundered and their wives ravished. Behold, I will stir up the meads against them who will not regard silver, and as for gold they will not delight in it. Their bows will dash the young men to pieces. And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldeans pride, will be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.

It will never be inhabited. It was hard from the beginning to the end in Babylon. Lamentations 1 6 speaks of it. Jeremiah 15 3. But it was a bitter cup.

It was a mixture. It was God mixed it. There was a limit by the way. By you know, let's recognize it was a cup. It wasn't a bucket.

It wasn't a 55 gallon drum. It was a cup. It wasn't, it wasn't the full extent of God's wrath. In other words, God moderates his wrath. He gives us what he knows is right for us.

And he never strikes us to the degree that we deserve it. But he moderates his punishment. You can go to Psalms 75, 8 and 9, you can go to Jeremiah 25, 15, 17 through 28 and read of this cup. And of course we do know that there are two kinds of cups. David spoke figuratively, prophetically, of the cup of blessing.

Psalms 16, 5 and 6, oh Lord, you are the portion of my inheritance and my cup. You maintain my lot." This is the cup of the Lord. It's the cup of blessing with which we bless. So the question is, you know, after you've drunk the cup of trembling, after judgment, then what? Well we see what?

What they were experiencing in verse 18, no guidance. There is no one to guide her among all the sons she has brought forth, nor is there any who takes her by the hand. All the sons she has brought up." There was no guidance there, there was no one speaking wisdom there, there was no helpful leadership there. They really rejected the leadership of God and and they really had lost all their exemplary leaders who called them to hire things and now they were all gone completely there in Babylon. I think this should just teach us something.

On the very front end, way before there is the judgment of God, way before we turn away from God and we sin, don't be surprised that when you abandon the Lord that you will not have guidance, that the heavens will be as brass to you, and there'll be no help. And here, you know, the sons that are there in the captivity are incapable of helping. You know, It could mean that she wanted no counselor and now there were no counselors. They didn't want guidance. They wanted their own way.

And as a result, their counselors disappear. By the way, this is a rule of life. When you begin to reject counsel, guess what starts to happen? Your counselors disappear. Because they know that if they counsel you, you could care less.

It's unprofitable. It's a waste of their time. And so your counselors, your sources of love and encouragement and wisdom disappear. And that's what was happening in Babylon. It's an important question to ask, you know, have you driven away your counselors in your disobedience?

You know, your life is such a way that people, they're kind of reluctant to talk to you now. You've sort of put a force field up by your life and your thoughts and now you're impenetrable. You know have you shut off your ears from that voice of the Lord behind you? You know have you ignored the morning by morning guidance of the Lord and the help that was there from heaven. Well when that happens there's just there's no one there anymore anymore and it's a tragic thing when the counselors disappear when there's when there's no one to stand up and and and tell the truth about what's going on in the world and in your life.

I mean, of course, this afternoon we're going to talk at length about this whole Supreme Court ruling that just recently went down. There are many reasons that this happened, but there is one thing that did happen for sure and that is the church stopped speaking to the state. The church stopped speaking to matters of morality in a particular way. We'll detail some of those things. But there weren't people along the way in the last 40 or 50 years to say this is evil.

The church just sort of rode right along the railroad track. And we didn't call evil evil and good good. And when that happens, you lose your counselors in the culture that's exactly what happened in Babylon so you know the big question is you know after you've drunk the cup of trembling after the judgment you know then what what what do you do Well here we see there is no guidance. And then desolation, that's the second thing that we see that happened. Desolation and destruction without comfort, that's in verse 19.

These two things have come to you, who will be sorry for you? Desolation and destruction, famine and sword, by whom will I comfort you? And so there's this destruction, it's just completely devastation. There are two, I'll just make a brief observation about this verse. There are two aspects of this.

One is internal and the other is external. There's desolation and destruction. These are the physical things that you see most likely. And then there's the internal. There's no comfort.

No comfort at all. And then the third image that he gives of what it's like is you're caught like a wild animal. Verse 20. Your sons have fainted, they lie at the head of the streets, like an antelope in a net. They are full of the fury of the Lord, the rebuke of your God.

Now, there are many things to draw out of this, and I'll just try to pull a few of the strands that are here. First of all, God caught them. He caught them like an antelope in the net. That's the picture. In his judgment, he caught them and he held them there and they were kicking, kicking and writhing and making noise, and he caught them in a net, and they fainted.

They finally gave up. This is often what God does. He throws a net around you. He slows you down. He restrains you.

He sends you a restraining force in your life. It's a parent. It's a pastor. It's a friend. It's a government that says, you can't do that.

God catches people in a net and then he stops them. If he loves you, he'll throw his net on you and stop you. God will catch, you may thrash, he will subdue. You know, better to be caught in the net of the Lord than by any other net. And then there's this imagery, they lie at the head of the streets, in other words, it's just visible, it's just like the head of the streets is kind of code for everybody can see it, you know.

And then why? It's very clear, They are full of the fury of the Lord, the rebuke of your God. You know in the last 50 years of the church in America, we've been marked by how popular the church can be, how acceptable we can be, how fun we can be, how cool we can be. And now the church is like a drunken woman. And she can't think straight.

A drunken woman can't find her way home. She doesn't believe the promises of God for her. She doesn't believe that God can help her. She has ceased believing in the sovereignty of God. She feels no comfort from God.

And the consequences are rolling over her now. And her tendency could be, at least of the true church, is to allow her disappointments to overwhelm her rather than to stand and see the salvation of God. But now I just want to suggest that the church is a little bit like in Babylon. She's like a drunken woman who can't find her way home. She's like a, the true church is like an antelope caught in a net, kicking, trying to get away from the good laws of God.

But the true church will never be able to get away. She's in a net, and she's captured, and God will restore her. And then after this first command of awake, then there's the second command to listen, verses 21 through 23. And the first issue that's raised here is to consider the one who pleads the cause of his people. Remember the whole context here, God is speaking to his despondent people in Babylon and he's wanting to revive them.

He wants to bring them back to the glory that they could have And there's this promise that the time of trial will end. Verse 21, please hear this therefore, you afflicted and drunk but not with wine. In other words they were they were drunken with misery, they were stupefied, they were befuddled, they were like rag dolls in the street. They weren't doing anything of any value or help for the situation. And the promise is here in verse 22.

And I think that when you get to verse 22 you've completed the the cycle of logic that Isaiah is bringing to us. The beginning of it was in in verse 17 and now he completes the thought. Thus says your Lord, the Lord and your God. Now notice the emphasis on God. Thus says your Lord, the Lord and your God." He's doing this just to emphasize the absolute supreme majesty and power of God to redeem His people.

Who pleads the cause of his people. That's a very important statement there. What he does is explained here. He pleads the cause of his people. Now I take this to mean two things.

I take it to mean literally and historically and I take it to mean spiritually fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Now who is the one who pleads? Historically and literally most likely Cyrus, perhaps even Artaxerxes who are advocates for the people of God and setting them free from the bondage of Babylon. Earlier in Isaiah, Isaiah says, God says, Cyrus is my servant. And when we read that we said, oh, Cyrus is a servant figuratively as well.

He's not just who he is in history and in space and time. He serves a purpose to declare a truth about God and Cyrus was pleading for the people of God and and set in motion their deliverance and Cyrus God's servant is a foretaste of God's servant the Lord Jesus Christ our advocate the one the one who pleads What is an advocate? An advocate is an attorney. We have an attorney in heaven. He pleads.

We have God who is judged. He sits on his throne And everything that happens in the world is before his watchful eye. Everything is seen by him. Nothing escapes his notice. And he's always judging.

He sits on his throne. He's judging crimes against his law. But there is an attorney, an advocate, one who's pleading, who is next to God the Father on the throne. You know, the cry of the heart of man for advocacy is old. The oldest book we think in the Bible is Job.

And Job said, oh, that one might plead for a man with God as a man pleadeth for his neighbor or the realization of this that Jeremiah had as he communicated in Lamentations 3 verse 58 oh Lord You have pleaded the case for my soul. You have redeemed my life. So you have an advocate in heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ. You have God the Father who is the judge, but you also have the accuser of the brethren, the devil, Satan himself, who is spoken of in Revelation chapter 12, verses 10 through 12. And we read there, there's a loud voice in heaven saying, now salvation and strength and 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.

So not only do you have God the Father, the Judge, not only do you have God the Son, who's the advocate, your attorney in heaven, you have the accuser of the brethren. And what does he do? He accuses the saints before God day and night. Day and night. And then finally he's cast down.

And how is he cast down? Verse 11 in Revelation chapter 12 speaks of it. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony and they did not love their lives to the death. Therefore rejoice oh heavens and you who dwell in them. This brings up the whole matter of man's guilt that as it says in Psalm 148 verse 2, in your sight no man will be justified.

As David said in Psalm 69 verse 5, my sins, my guiltiness is not hidden from you. And there's really only there's only one hope and that is that you have an advocate and by the way everyone in the world doesn't have an advocate before God the Bible makes it very clear only the Saints only those who've trusted Jesus Christ have an advocate if you if you do not love Jesus Christ from your heart if you've not repented of your sins if if you if you have not seen the change of your life and the change of your affections you have no advocate you're dead in your sins and the accuser of the brethren will keep on blabbering on about everything and you will be condemned and you will be prosecuted for every infraction. John Bunyan wrote about a 50 or 60 page sermon, I guess, about Christ, our advocate. It comes out of the works of John Bunyan. When Bunyan speaks about the advocate, he says that he's not speaking about Christ's love.

He's not detailing the sweetness of Jesus Christ. He's talking about his office. And he says that love is not enough. You must have power. You must be able to do something about your love.

And he says that Christ has love, but he also has an office as advocate. He is a loving Savior, but he also has an office of power and authority before God in order to be an advocate. And so in Christ you find both power and love, they meet, And the result is the salvation of the repentant. Bunyan says Christ has provided well for us blood to wash us in, a priest to pray for us that we may be made to persevere, and in case we foully fall, an advocate to plead our cause and to recover us. You know, you can log, document all the sins of your life, which you can't, because you don't know the depth of your sin.

But even if you could if you could document, you know, 10, 000 of the most despicable sins of murder, adultery, or incest, or homosexuality, or bestiality, you know, David himself being guilty of murder and adultery and hypocrisy. And then to find yourself being declared righteous, this is the whole matter of what it means to have an advocate. That our debts are paid for, paid for, not continually paid for, paid for, past, present, and future infractions against the lawgiver and the judge who sits on his throne. The Bible uses the word propitiation that our sins are propitiated that Jesus Christ in his sacrifice he quelled the anger of God towards sinners by his death. You know it often happens that you really you need to really recognize that you have an advocate.

It does happen to Christians as it happened in Babylon. Where one can become so despondent that they're like a drunken woman, like someone who's just being walked over in the streets. They can't, they just have no strength. They just want to sleep. And one of the things they need to recognize is that they have an advocate.

It can happen that in the time of chastisement you see your sin and somehow when you see your sin it blots out your sense of the mercy and the grace of God and you lose a sense of the grace and the mercy of God towards sinners. And you might look at other people and say well they're not as bad as I am. That's actually a false statement most likely because you don't really know the depth of your sin or theirs. And you know we might not have confidence to come and plead for ourselves. We see ourselves totally unworthy.

And because of that, it's possible for a true Christian to have doubtful fears, to be just overcome with their unworthiness, that it's blotted out all of the mercies and the graces of God, and to forget that we only have one plea, one who is making the plea for us by the power of his blood. And we often think that if we just got more in touch with our sin that our sins would be a little bit more atoned for. And we could be just a little bit better off before God. Feel a little bit better about ourselves maybe. But you can't rely on your own tears, you can't rely on your own regrets, You can't rely on your own mortification and your hatred of your sin.

You can't rely on any of that before God. You have only one plea. You only have Jesus Christ as your advocate. There's a song that we sing here written by Horatius Bonar, Not What My Hands Have Done. Here's one stanza, Not what my hands have done can save my guilty soul.

Not what my toiling flesh has borne can make my spirit whole. Not what I feel or do can give me peace with God. Not all my prayers and sighs and tears can bear my awful load. Often you find people thinking if they would just cry enough, if they just would be remorseful enough, and then they think, I don't think I'm remorseful enough. And the reality of the matter is you can't be remorseful enough.

It's impossible. Your only hope is an advocate in heaven who shed his blood. Who shed his blood. We often want to be our own advocates by the power of our own repentance, self perceived, when in fact there is only one hope and that is your advocate, the one who pleads. In 1st John chapter 2 verse 1 the Apostle John says my little children these things I write to you so that you may not sin.

And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And he himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for our sins only, but also for the sins of the whole world now by this we know that we know him if we keep his commandments so There are two messages here in these verses. The first is, don't sin. At the same time, we will sin. Turn from sin.

Keep the commandments of God. The second is, don't despair. You have an advocate before God, Jesus Christ, the righteous. And it's His righteousness. Not our recognition, not the power of our repentance.

It's his righteousness alone that can save and deliver. Bunyan says, Thy advocate pleads to a price paid, to a propitiation made. And this is a great advantage. Yea, he pleads to a satisfaction made for all wrongs done, or to be done by His elect for by one offering He hath perfected for them He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified that is by offering of Himself by one offering once offered once offered in the end of the world. You know, we have this idea that we sin and then we need to have the advocate talk to God about our sin.

We sin again, we need to have another advocate. That somehow, this just keeps going on. There's always someone pleading before God. That's not the picture of scripture at all. There's a once and for all sacrifice.

His presence at the right hand of God as the advocate, his very presence there at his Father's right hand after sacrificing for sins is the plea. There is one plea, there is one sacrifice, and Jesus Christ is not always having to go around documenting your sins. He's made it. It is finished. This is the depth of the mercy of God toward his people.

And what Isaiah is saying is that you won't bear the full measure of my wrath. I have, I have a, there's a plea, there's a plea bargain for you that reduces the just penalty, that makes it less than it should have been. That's what a plea bargain does. And this is exactly the kind of plea that Jesus Christ has for sinners. It's amazing.

Absolutely amazing. So you know, so after you've drunk the cup of trembling, then what? Well Isaiah is making it very clear. Recognize you have someone who's pleading for you. And then Secondly, consider the one who takes the cup of fury and gives it to another.

Verse 23, but I will put it, the cup of fury, into the hand of those who afflict you, who have said to you, lie down that we may walk over you, and you have laid your body like the ground and as the street for those who walk over." Again remember there are two kinds of cups. And I think first of all we should recognize that God will punish those who persecute the Church of God. That's one thing this means. God will punish those who persecute the Church of God. This is a pattern of Scripture.

He uses the wicked to afflict his people and then he judges the wicked and their wicked dealing it with his people. And Babylon, this did happen to Babylon. In 539 BC Cyrus would come and bring Babylon down Daniel 531 says that he would do this at the age of 62 this is a real historical thing that happened but it has meaning beyond the real and historical and there's a spiritual matter of it as well. The people who persecuted Daniel will be thrown into their into God's own lion's den and be devoured. God is taking care of your enemies, your accuser, the accuser of the brethren.

This is the enemy that he's destroying. He destroys all of your enemies. He destroys death. He destroys your accuser. He destroys everything contrary to his people.

And he takes the cup from his people and he puts it in the hand of his enemies. Now we can see later on in Scripture how this can easily apply to Christ. But what Isaiah is talking about primarily here is that he's going to destroy Babylon and those who have persecuted his people. And as time goes on in Isaiah, we can develop this whole matter of the cup even further. We celebrate the second kind of cup that God gives His children.

Every Sunday, the cup of blessing. And I do believe this is implied here. But let's recognize that God will destroy the enemies of the church. We should never be afraid, we shouldn't be too incensed about the enemies of God. God's going to take care of them, absolutely.

It was in the passage of scripture that we read last week, a remarkable passage of scripture. There's this amazing verse that's there that says, Those who dwell in the earth will die in like manner. My righteousness will not be abolished. My righteousness will not be abolished by any nation, by any legislation, by anyone. You cannot abolish the righteousness of God in the world.

It will not happen. It cannot happen. OK, so let's turn to some applications here. This is a call for the church to awaken and arise and to put on beautiful garments which we'll get to more detail next week but this is all part of the same context and it's a picture of a church that's been punished for her idolatry for rejecting the true worship of God. She's not desired God and now God has brought her low.

And this is what happens to a church that rejects his worship. And This is a call for an apostate church to arise out of the ashes of her disobedience after God has shown her the sinfulness of her sin to rise up. And this is what, After you've drunk the cup of trembling, after judgment, this is what you do, you rise up and I don't think it should be any surprise to us that the things that have been happening in our nation, the rapid astonishing moves of unrighteousness in our land are part of the judgment of God upon us. They are part and parcel of God's wrath. When God removes holiness and purity and love and marriage and fidelity, when He removes that from a culture, He's judging a culture.

And what should the church do in a time like that? She should arise and not be afraid. And that's for us to do. And we should, secondly, we should repent. We should repent of the things that were the reasons that God laid us low.

There were reasons that God laid us low. Why did all this happen? We're going to talk about this in detail this afternoon. But God here is using suffering to lead his people to repent of their sins. And God uses this so often.

You fall into sin and it doesn't go well. And it hurts so bad that finally you can't take it anymore and you turn to Jesus Christ for help. So in this whole passage you have a testimony of what you should do after you have drunk the cup of trembling. Because sin always causes trembling, it always brings down hardship. This is why David said in Psalm 1611, in your presence is fullness of joy at your right hand our pleasures forevermore That's the contrast There's the cup of blessing and the cup of wrath and when you know you have been drinking the cup of wrath what do you do?

You do what Isaiah says here. You awake and you listen. And I think one of the things that's embedded in this entire section is how important it is for the people of God not to forget the mercy of God towards sinners And I'll close with Psalm 136 verse 1 which speaks of it Oh Give thanks to the Lord for he is good for his mercy endures forever Oh give thanks to the God of gods for his mercy endures forever Who remembered us in our lowly state Do you know what that lowly state is? It is the state of unprofitability and sin and compromise and rejecting His word and it lays you low. But God in His mercy, He lifts you up and He says awake and He says listen so that we don't repeat the things of the past.

Would you pray with me? Lord, Lord we thank you for your great mercies, how in mercy you you afflict your people, how you catch us in the net and we struggle and then you subdue us and then we faint and then we awake and then we listen and then we walk oh god that you would give us that legacy Amen.