Our passage this morning starts with Isaiah 24 13 and ends at Isaiah 25 3. When it shall be thus in the midst of the land among the people, it shall be like the shaking of an olive tree, like the gleaning of grapes when the vintage is done. They shall lift up their voice, they shall sing. For the majesty of the Lord they shall cry aloud from the sea. Therefore glorify the Lord in the dawning light.

The name of the Lord God of Israel is the coastlands of the sea. From the ends of the earth we have heard songs, glory to the righteous, but I said, I am ruined, ruined, woe to me. The treacherous dealers have dealt treacherously. Indeed the treacherous dealers have dealt very treacherously. Fear and the pit and the snare are upon you, O inhabitant of the earth.

And it shall be that he who flees from the noise of the fear shall fall into the pit, and he who comes up from the midst of the pit shall be caught in the snare. For the windows from on high are open, and the foundations of the earth are shaken. The earth is violently broken, the earth is split open, The earth is shaken exceedingly. The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, and shall totter like a hut. Its transgression shall be heavy upon it, and it will fall and not rise again.

It shall come to pass in that day that the Lord will punish on high the host of exalted ones, and on the earth the kings of the earth. They will be gathered together, as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and will be shut up in the prison. After many days they will be punished. Then the moon will be disgraced and the sun ashamed, for the Lord of Hosts will reign on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem and before his elders gloriously. O Lord, you are my God, I will exalt you.

I will praise your name, for you have done wonderful things. Your counsels of old are faithfulness and truth. For you have made a city of ruin, a fortified city of ruin, a palace of foreigners to be a city no more. It will never be rebuilt. Therefore the strong people will glorify you.

The city of the terrible nations will fear you." Let's pray. Lord Father, we thank you for setting this scripture before us. We pray that you help us to contemplate Your majesty and Your justice, Your judgments that will come to be, that the kings of the earth have no say in your justice and how you will Disperse it and Lord for the promise that the strong Will glorify you in the days to come when you were when you deem it to be so. Lord, thank you for this truth that you've given to us. And thank you for the messenger that will come and help us to understand rightly what is before us.

Amen. When you map out the journey of a church, you see that it is taken through various phases and stages and experiences. Our church is like that as well. We've gone through passages of scripture that have shaken us up. We've been in sections of scripture that have changed us.

And now it seems fit to the Lord to have us in a section of scripture where we're getting an advanced degree on the whole doctrine of the judgment of God. And we're in the midst right now, really, in the very first one fourth of a long sermon that spans four chapters on the judgment of God. And we've been isolating these sections one at a time. We went through the first section last week and now in this second section. But what we are getting now and what the Lord has seen fit to do to us as a church is to raise up our understanding of the whole doctrine of the judgment of God and to see it in sort of its wide screen perspective.

And it's important that this happens to us in the world that we live in. One of the great challenges, one of the most difficult challenges that Americans face or perhaps human beings face is to have a right understanding of judgment. And the real problem with that is if you don't understand judgment for the glory of God, then you really cannot understand happiness, you can't understand cleansing, You can't understand the goodness of the Lord. You can't understand this gigantic swath of reality that God uses to glorify Himself, Because he glorifies himself in the judgment of the wicked, just as much as he glorifies himself in the salvation of sinners. And so here we are, we're getting, as a church here at Hope Baptist, an advanced degree on the judgment of God.

And so we're here in this passage of Scripture, Isaiah 24, 13 through 23, where Isaiah is continuing his explanation of the judgment of God upon the whole world. And what we learn in this sermon is that God is about one thing, to glorify Himself through His judgment, and that is to break the bondage of the world, to break the forces of darkness, and to turn the land that was the land of mourning into a land of joy, to deal with the land that has been defiled, to a land that has been cleansed. Now, you know, you read this word land in the text and you get the idea he's talking about people in the land. It's the people who are defiled. It's the people who are mourning.

And You find disclosed in this passage the heavy weight of sin and what it does to mankind, how harmful sin is, how wickedness presses down. There's like a pressure upon the human soul that harms it, that finally destroys it. God is in the business of delivering mankind from the harmful pressures of the soul. And what we find is that He's going to deal with the broken people of the world. He's going to deal with the broken people who were broken for a very simple reason.

They changed the ordinances of God. They walked in their own way. They turned away from the commandments of God. And as a result, they ended up beating their head against the wall of their own ways. And so God is delivering people from this unworkable and destructive way of the world.

And you don't have to look very far to see the destructiveness of sin. And how unprofitable it is to love any part of sin at all. To entertain it, to praise anything of it. To be involved in any of it at all. All you have to do is look at the news on a single day of the week.

And you can see one story after another of how the devil is beating his people to death. And their only hope is Prozac, or their only hope is some form of entertainment, some kind of extreme whatever in order to try to dampen the pain that they feel because they turned away from God. This is all part of Isaiah's disclosure of the destructiveness of sin and God's desire to destroy the works of the devil. So in order to understand this, we've got to take a step back another and I'm sorry in order to understand this text We have to take a step back and and look at this whole section as a unified whole that includes chapters 24 through 27 And what you find when you see it as a whole is that you find this song of praise for the relief that God brings to the world through the judgment of the wicked and its final destruction and the salvation of sinners. That's really this section in a nutshell.

Immediately after chapter 24, the very first thing we read is Isaiah's response to all this about judgment. And we have to think about this section properly. So look at verse 1 in chapter 25. We had Barry Damien read this this morning because it really connects the sections. Oh, Lord, after this whole Disclosure of how God is going to completely destroy the world for its evil and save sinners, a remnant out of the midst of it.

He says, Isaiah breaks out into a song of praise. Oh Lord, you are my God. I will exalt you. I will praise your name, for you have done wonderful things. Isaiah is saying it was wonderful that the wicked were destroyed and he says, your councils of old are faithfulness and truth For you have made a city a ruin, a palace of foreigners to be a city no more.

It will never be rebuilt." So Isaiah is praising God for judgment. This is one of the hardest things for modern man to do. They think that judgment is bad, it's wrong, it's abusive, it's a horrible thing to do, but God doesn't feel that way at all. Somehow in our church, it must be that we need our minds cleansed, we need to think rightly about judgment. If we've grown up in this world, we most likely don't think rightly about judgment.

We think it's better to hide sin rather than to judge it. We think that about our own selves. We're so self-flattering that we really would like to sort of gloss over our own sins and look at the speck in our brother's eye. That's the way we operate normally in the world. And so God is saying a different thing.

And Isaiah is praising God because God has come and he's wiped the tears from the eyes. He's put a song in the hearts. He keeps his people in perfect peace, whose mind has stayed on him. He destroys the one who is behind all of their sorrows. That's in chapter 27.

And so it's really a picture of being at the end of history, Isaiah standing in this moment of tumult and difficulty in judgment. And at the end of history, here's what will happen. All will look back and they'll praise God. They'll see that God did what was right. He righted every wrong.

He punished every single sin. While we tried to cover up our sin, God was trying to do good to us to reveal our sin. And that's why He sent His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to take the punishment of all sin, that our sins would be admitted, confessed, repented of, turned away from. And as a result of our belief in the Lord Jesus Christ, and our understanding that He was our substitute for our sin, that all of our sins will be dealt with. We don't run from our sin, but God takes our sin and He lays it upon His Son.

And so all of history really is a narrative to praise the work of God, to exalt himself in the salvation of sinners and in the judgment of the wicked. And we've seen also how this works. God begins with the judgment of Judah in chapters 1 through 12. Judgment begins in the house of the Lord. And then in chapters 13 through 23, we see the judgments against the nations.

It gets Babylon and Egypt and Assyria and Arabia and Philistia, all these different places. God judges all the individual nations. And now Isaiah broadens it way out. He says, no, God will judge the whole world. And that's the section that we're in here.

And this is this song that he's singing. You know, that song, He's got the whole world in his hands. That's either a really comforting song, or it's a really terrifying song. Because God is going to do business with all sin. Either through the judgment of his son, or the judgment and the everlasting perdition of those who refused to bow their knees before him.

And so here, there are songs in this. So we've seen already what this judgment is like, and I want to just bring us up to the context here. So far in chapter 24 and verses 1 through 12, we've encountered 10 marks of the judgment of God. And we're going to continue that on here in this sermon. But the first mark is that it will be a complete judgment.

Secondly, it will be an impartial judgment. Thirdly, the earth will mourn. It's a picture of the earth mourning, languishing during this time. And fifth, the earth will be defiled. Or fourth, the earth will be defiled.

Fifth, the curse devours the earth in verse 6 6 the joy will be gone in verses 7 through 9 number 7 the people are empty in verse 10 number 8 the people are isolated at the end of verse 10. Number nine, the wine does not help them anymore, verse 11. And in number 10, there is nothing but desolation left. The city of desolation is left. And so now in our text for this morning, he's picturing really a religious world that sings praises to God, but it's only lip service.

But the lip service is going to be also accompanied by another sound, the sound of the fear is what he calls it. The people running from God, unrepentant, hard, still flattering themselves for their goodness, and yet the sound of the fear is upon them and it will not stop it will continue so so there it is and you have in the midst of this these two cities there's the wrecked city and there's the city of abundance where there's wine on the leaves and all this feasting going on, there are two cities and there are two songs. And there's the sound of the theater in one song, but there's the sound of praise and thanksgiving for the everlasting light that has been given. So now, just to also just further belabor this, in chapter 25 you find a song of thanksgiving for God's judgment. In chapter 26 it really continues on And verse 1 says in chapter 26, in that day, this song will be sung in the land of Judah.

We have a strong city. God will appoint salvation for walls and bulwarks. Verse 9, with my soul I have desired you in the night, yes my spirit within me will seek you early. This is a picture of a person longing for God in the midst of this picture of continuing to praise God and give thanks to Him. And then in chapter 27, Isaiah reflects back really to the source of all the problems, devil, Leviathan, he calls him in chapter 27.

And what we find here is that the Leviathan or the serpent will be crushed and he will be punished. And all of the problems that he has created in the world will go away because of God's love. And also in this same chapter, chapter 27, we find that God keeps his vineyard himself. He waters it himself, And he waters it quite well. So there it is.

That's the whole picture here. So let's continue this disclosure of the judgment of God and continue on our advanced degree in judgment here. Number 11, this is the 11th mark of the judgment in chapter 24, that a remnant will be preserved. And you find this in verses 13 through 15. And so we're confronted first with the word when.

And it looks back to what has been written previously. It's in this same time, in this time of worldwide judgment, where God judges all the nations really by one standard and he is dealing with the nations according to the standard of his own word. And we learned that in the previous section, but now it's broadened out. And there are these images of a remnant. In other words, there will be people who are saved in the judgment as well.

And there are two images of the remnant. One is the shaking of an olive tree, and then grapes when the vintage is done. And so there's this image of shaking the olive tree and the ripe olives falling to the ground, the ones that are good, the ones that are sweet, the ones that are actually edible and succulent and they're a blessing when you eat them. This is a picture of the remnant. It's a picture of the people of God who have, they are right and they are good.

And the same thing with the grapes, grapes when the vintage is done. And this is the doctrine again that we've encountered a number of times in Isaiah where God always has a remnant. But it's a small remnant. In Isaiah, the remnant is always small. Isaiah finds himself in agreement with Jesus Christ, who said that broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it.

But narrow is the way, that is the path that leads to life. And there are few who find it. That is a picture of the reality of the world. There are the few and there are the many. If you want to follow along with the popular philosophies and directions of this world, you'll find yourself on the Broadway.

But yet there's a narrow way and there are few who find it as the Lord Jesus Christ says. Earlier in Isaiah, he said that the remnant was like a hut in the midst of a destroyed cucumber field, this little bombed out hut, or this little hut in the midst of this bombed out field that had been destroyed. There's this remnant in the midst of this scorched earth landscape, in the midst of the broken hearted of this world, in the midst of those who have been destroyed, who have been burned up, who have been plowed under, who are really dead. In the midst of all that, there's a hut. And there's life in that hut.

And so it's a picture of the remnant here. Isaiah is prophesying the preservation of the remnant in a world that is being destroyed. And what's going on? Well, they're singing, verse 14. And they shall lift up their voice, they shall sing for the majesty of the Lord, They shall cry aloud from the sea." Now, there are three things that are mentioned in verse 14 that reveal something that we need to know about the remnant.

And what we find is that when the joy of the worldlings are dying, when they know their defilement, when their land is mourning, when they're languishing under the weight of sin, that there will be people who will sing. There will be a song rising out of the midst of this broken landscape of the world. And it's the song of the believer praising God for His majesty. It's such an important thing that exists in the world. Even as we've been gathering here this morning and singing of the majesty of God.

This is part of this picture, that in the midst of a world that's mourning and languishing, there are people who come together and they give thanks to God. Their hearts have been made joyful because of the mercy and the love of God. They have received mercy. And so they sing because of the mercies of the Lord. And this is what they do.

They will do something. They will sing. It says, they shall lift up their voice, and they shall sing. And it gives us just another insight into why God has made us the way we've been made. I mean, why do you have a voice?

Did you ever think about that? Well, someone might say, well, you have a voice because you evolved your voice. You used to be like an ape, and you just made sounds. But now you can sing because you've become an advanced creature, and you can sing now. No?

You have been given a voice. You were created with a voice. And the purpose of your voice is to sing it's one of the purposes and it's a beautiful thing when people know the people of God use their voices properly and one of the one of the purposes for the voice is to lift it up and to sing. And then the second thing we learn is we learn why they sing. They sing for the majesty of the Lord.

Look at that word majesty. That's the key. That's why they're singing. And it's a good reason to sing. And you know, what is the majesty of the Lord?

Well, the majesty of the Lord is really everything that He is and everything that He has done. If you want to consider His majesty, just think of those two things. Who is he? And what has he done? Well, we know that what he is like, he is omnipotent.

In other words, he has all power. Nothing can stay his hand. He is omniscient. He knows everything. He knows every heart.

He is discerning the heart of every and thought and meditation of every heart in this room right now simultaneously. He is omniscient. And he's also omnipresent. He is everywhere. And we also know of his qualities, of his love, of his mercy, of his long suffering.

And this is why the people of God sing of his majesty. It's a wonderful thing. You know, there's a song, there's a psalm that I would repeat to my children in their beds, year after year, where the psalm says, I sing in the shadow of your wings. It's really just a recognition of the majesty and the beauty and the love of God and the ability of the believer to sing. You know, David said, I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever.

With my mouth I will make known Thy faithfulness, thy faithfulness to all generations. What a marvelous way to use your voice is to sing of His majesty. You know, of all things that the people of God need is really, it's a sense of His Majesty. You know, all of your problems set in the context of His Majesty is such a blessing. If you can see your problems that you have now in light of His Majesty, then You will say what David said, I sought the Lord and He heard me and delivered me from all of my fears.

How important it is to sing of His majesty. Well here there's a remnant in the world while the rest of the people are just feeding their bellies. There are people in the earth in the midst of this scorched world who are singing of the majesty of God. And then how do they sing? How do they sing?

Well it says that they cry aloud. And the word that Isaiah uses here is translated in another place, bellow, to bellow it out. I don't know if you've ever had cows, but there's nothing like the sound of a bellowing cow. It's loud. You can hear it from all over the place.

And uh-huh, yes, amen. And it's translated in other place, to shriek. And it's wonderful when the Lord is so evidently among his people that they sing with their whole hearts. And there's an earnestness of the spirit. And there's a force to the voices.

There's a volume that's rising out of the hearts who had some sense of the majesty of God. They've seen the Lord, And so they beller it out. They shriek it out. They say it loud. They're not mealy-mouthed in their disclosure of the majesty of God.

They sing it with all their hearts. You've been in times like that when it almost seems like the roof is going to lift off because of the earnest, passionate songs of the people of God. You know, this is not something... You don't get this by standing in front of a congregation saying, now everybody sing loud. Let's really give it a go.

That's not how it happens. It happens because in the heart there's a sense of the majesty of God. If you have bad singing in a church, it's not because the leader is not telling everybody to sing loud. It's because a sense of the majesty of God is not what it really could be. If you want people to sing loud, then you have to give them A sense of the majesty of God is not what it really could be.

If you want people to sing loud, then you have to give them a sense of the majesty of God. And they have to acquire it in their own soul by a work of the Holy Spirit. When the roof is lifting off, it's because of the work of the Spirit, not because you had some hot song leader trying to whoop everybody up. One of my friends, who is a pastor of a church, who has just really demonstrative worship and all kinds, He said to his church, he said, you know, we need to get to the place where we don't only think we worshiped when we've hooped and hollered. And What he meant by that is that their hearts are moved, first of all, not by the majesty of God, so that they would hoop and holler, not that they would hoop and holler so that they would somehow get a buzz.

That was what he meant. So they're singing loudly of the majesty of God. And then he says, he says here that, that it, that they all shall cry aloud from the sea. They'll cry aloud from the sea. What does that mean?

Does that mean that everyone is in the most wonderful place in the world, the ocean? I mean, I think the ocean is... Being in the water... I love being in the water. Is he talking about, you know, singing aloud when you're in the ocean or something?

No, that's not what he means at all. What does it mean to be in the sea? Of course, I'm confident it does include praising God from the sea. I'm confident of that. But In the Bible, what does the sea mean?

Most of the time, when this terminology is used of the sea, it has to do with great numbers of people in the midst of the great throng of people. It's used that way in Revelation 13, in Daniel chapter 6, verse 17, in Jeremiah 32, verses 11 and 12, in Ephesians 4 30, and 2nd Timothy 2 19. The sea is most often used as a symbol of great throngs of people. You're in the midst of the sea of the people. So it's a picture of, in this ocean, in this vast sea of people, there is a remnant.

And what are they doing? They're declaring the majesty of God. This is perhaps maybe one of the most important principles of evangelism. That here we are in the midst of what the Bible calls a wicked and perverse generation. And what do we do?

We praise God. We say how good God is in the midst of a world that doesn't believe that God is good. We extol his qualities. We tell of his omniscience and his omnipotence. And we tell of his love.

We speak of his mercy. We speak of his wisdom. We tell the people of the world how good God is. And we do this sort of in the midst of the sea. The sea is also a symbol of evil in other places of scripture as well.

So perhaps you can combine these two meanings of the seed in the Bible with this great throng of the evil of the world. In the midst of it, there's a people who they raise their voices loud and they sing of the majesty of God. There's nothing better than you can do with your life in the world than to use your voice to say how good Jesus Christ is. To say what a good shepherd he is. To say what a good, what a kind father your God is.

To say what a comforting spirit the Holy Spirit is. To declare His loving kindness in the morning and His faithfulness by night. There's nothing better than you can do with your life. If you do nothing with your life except that one thing, you've done something wonderful in the world. And so there's this picture of the remnant.

And the second thing you see here, not only are these people rising up and singing, but there's also, it's like, their singing is like light dawning. And this is in verse 15, Isaiah actually issues a command to glorify the Lord. He says, Therefore glorify the Lord in the dawning light. So it's the people there in the future who are glorifying God in this dawning light. Last week we talked about the ever darkening darkness that the people of the world experience.

That it just gets darker for them. They want more light and they grasp and grasp and they fill their ears with it and their eyes with the stimuli of whatever film or whatever they can do, but it just keeps getting darker and darker, but not with the people of God, not with the remnant. It just gets lighter and lighter. And so, it's the dawning light now. It's a completely different world that's being experienced here.

And so there the people of God will in ever increasing light be praising him. And then third, this praise is ever expanding in the coastlands. The name of the Lord God of Israel in the coastlands of the sea. And I believe that this is a picture of the celebration that reaches to the ends of the earth. With the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the Gospel spreads throughout the earth and there's really almost nowhere in the world you can go that the Gospel is not reached.

And this is the spreading abroad, the evangelization of the nations that Malachi chapter 1 speaks of that his name will become great in the nations that that there will be people who will do it but the Lord Jesus Christ said to do to go out into the whole world and and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all the things that I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even at the end of the age. So it's a picture of the evangelization of the world, God with his people, they're going out into the coastlands, they're going out into the great sea, the great mass of humanity, they're there in the great, you know, heavily populated cities of the world, you know, and they're evangelizing. They're in the city, they're in the country, they're in the mountains, they're everywhere proclaiming the goodness of God. And so now, after having spoken of this glorious future of the remnant of the people of God lifting of their voice.

Now Isaiah in verse 16 he enters into a time warp okay he's been transported into the future in that day of judgment he's been he's been speaking of that time and now he goes back back to his own time back into the smoke and the fire of his own time, where the threat of judgment is being proclaimed here. And he reverts back to his own day, shifting back. And after having given thanks for the remnant and for those in the future, now he communicates more about the judgment of God. And he speaks really of the reality of false worshippers abounding. This is the next mark of judgment, the 12th mark of judgment, that false worshipers will abound in the world.

In the midst of this great sea of humanity, there will be religious fakes in the midst of it. And so it says, verse 16, from the ends of the earth we have heard songs. Now he goes, he goes from the future tense in verse 15, back, back to his own time. And now he's speaking of what's happening in his own moment. And he says, from the ends of the earth we have heard songs, glory to the righteous.

So he's speaking, people are going around singing this song, Glory to the Righteous. And Isaiah responds, he says, but I said, I am ruined. You'd think he'd rejoice. Hey, people, you'd think he would rejoice that these people are singing glory to the righteous, Glory to the righteous, glory to the righteous, glory to the righteous. Oh, you know, isn't, aren't the righteous so good?

You would think he would rejoice in that, but no, that's not his reaction. He says, but he says, I am ruined, I am ruined, woe is me. And then he tells why. Treacherous dealers have dealt treacherously. Indeed, the treacherous dealers have dealt very treacherously.

This is Isaiah's reaction to these songs that he's hearing in his own time. And it's kind of this triple play of repetitions, treacherous and dealers, you know, three times, bam bam bam. And it's a reaction of grief. For Isaiah, the truth hurts about what's going on with his own people. They're apostate, they're fakes, and they'll be destroyed.

Now earlier in chapter 22, verse 4, he said, I will weep bitterly, labor not to comfort me because of the destruction of the daughter of my people. He sees his people like a daughter, like a precious, like a precious, undefiled daughter. And he says, the daughter of my people is being defiled. And he's weeping as a result of it. He's not a hard-nosed prophet at all.

His heart is broken as a result of the sin that's around him. But these people, they're singing songs. And they say they're righteous, but they really are not. And I think it's very much like you can experience today. There are many who enter into churches and the music works.

It's very compelling and it's emotional. And they sing. But their lives are not really transformed. They still live like the world is. But they come into the church and they raise their hands and they sing songs.

But their lives never change. One of my dear friends was a well-known rock and roll musician back in the 1970s, and he was converted. And of course, he loved his music. He was a marvelous singer. And he was converted, and he had a group of people that would come.

It was an ever-growing group of people. He said the worship was absolutely phenomenal. He said it was like the roof would lift off. The harmonies were unbelievable and people would cry. But as he kept doing it, he realized that no one's life was changing.

They were going back out into the world and fornicating and lying and stealing and acting like the world. Their lives had not changed at all. And so he shifted from singing to preaching. Because he had a situation like this where people were singing, but there was no reality. This can happen.

You can have large groups of people singing really passionately and have no true Christianity. And that's the situation that Isaiah was experiencing here. You know, on the one hand, you can have dead Christianity where the people don't sing with all of their hearts, but you can also have dead Christianity where people are so emotional and jacked up that it sounds like they are, but they're not. And every person has to ask themselves, is that me? Because there are these false worshippers that are abounding.

And he uses this word treacherous dealers, treacherous dealers. And it has to do with being deceitful, dishonest, unfaithful, not true to the faith, fake toward God, fake toward their brothers and sisters. That's really the roll-up of that word. Treachery not in the sense of trying to hurt other people, but treachery in the sense of fake, dishonest. Words using words, But the heart is far from.

That's the whole idea. And then the 13th mark of the judgment of God, after his disclosure of these false worshippers abounding, is that you'll hear the noise of the fear. This is a stunning way to communicate the judgment of God, the hound of heaven, the inescapable fury of God. And he uses these terms to describe it. We've spoken about this before, but I'll just repeat it again.

There are so many images, there's so many phrases that God uses to describe judgment. In many ways to give you hundreds of data points to understand what it's like. He's telling you what it's like in hundreds of different ways so that you'll flee to Christ, so that you'll see how damaging the work of the devil is, so that you can see that he is warning you. And he's warning you with hundreds and hundreds of words in his kindness. It's good to preach the judgment of God because it's designed to cause sinners to repent, to see how terrible the wrath of God is and to flee from the wrath of God.

And here he uses in verse 17, he says, fear and the pit and the snare are upon you. Those three words, fear, pit, and snare. You know, There's all kinds of language. Lake of fire, brimstone, torture, perdition. I mean, there's all these words that are in the Bible.

Now you get these three. Fear, pit, snare, those three. Again, designed to terrify you of becoming judgment. It will come. Is it loving to preach judgment?

Yes. It's always loving to give early warning. And God is love. And in His love, He gives early warning. And these words in Hebrew, they sound the same.

It's very rhythmic. It's fear and the pit and the snare. Pachad, pachath, and pach. Those are the three words strung out there. And Isaiah is in a very dramatic and beautiful form is is pounding away at this at this thing that's happening.

It's a fearful flight to fall into the pit and and to be snared. You know you you fall into the pit and you have the strength to jump out and then you're in a snare. There's no escape at all. That's the idea. You cannot get away.

That's the basic principle of judgment that he is proclaiming here. In Isaiah 33 verse 14 we read, the sinners of Zion are afraid, fearfulness has seized the hypocrites. Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burning? This is just a picture of fear.

And there's just nowhere to hide. Verse 18. And it shall be that he who flees from the noise of the fear shall fall into the pit, and he who comes up from the midst of the pit shall be caught in the snare from the windows for the windows from on high are open and the foundations of the earth are shaken now what's the sound of the fear Interesting question. I have some thoughts about it, but I'm not sure. Is it just the sound of the people in fear?

You know, in the way that you've Perhaps you've heard a squealing pig going to slaughter in this terrible sound. Perhaps it's like that. But there's a sound of the fear that will be known. So in this great sea of humanity, The sound of the fear will be heard and yet the remnant will be singing of the majesty of God. And there's just nowhere to hide.

In Luke chapter 21 he speaks of the final judgment in this way in verse 26. Men's hearts failing them from fear and the expectation of those things which are coming on the earth for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. It's a picture of people just, they're shaking with fear because they're seeing that it's actually happening now. They didn't believe it before. They rejected it.

They made fun of the people who spoke a final judgment. They belittled them and they slandered them. But now, but now here the Lord Jesus Christ speaks of men's hearts failing them from fear. Their slanders against God, their belittling God, their making fun of Christians will end. And their hearts will fail from fear because of the expectation of those things that are coming on the earth.

Because now they're seeing it. It's all falling into place. They're seeing everything just finally ratcheting back into its place, and they're seeing it happening. And it's not going to stop, and they know that. He says, the windows from on high.

It's the same word that we read in Genesis chapter 7 of the floodgates in the flood, the judgment of God in the time of Noah, where God judged the whole world and he wiped out everyone in the world except eight people. And the Lord Jesus Christ said, so it was as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in that final day. These sort of little judgments are precursors to the great judgment. Each judgment that God lays upon the world is designed to tell the world, it is coming. Do not think wrongly about this.

I'm warning you, you know, century after century, God warns his people, the mass sea of humanity in the world, and they don't listen. And they keep making fun, but there will be a day when you'll hear the sound of the fear, and they will not be making fun any longer. They'll be running for their lives. Ecclesiastes 9 says, Man does not know his time, Like fish taken in the cruel net, Like birds caught in the snare. So the sons of men are snared in an evil time, when it falls suddenly upon them." That's the picture here.

You'll hear the noise of the fear, and there'll be nowhere to hide at all. This is a picture of judgment. Again, What's happening to us? We're being instructed. We're getting an advanced degree in the judgment of God.

One detail after another. Well, let's go to the next. The next mark of divine judgment is the 14th mark in this chapter. The earth is traumatized, verses 19 and 20. The earth is violently broken, says verse 19.

The earth is split open. The earth is shaken exceedingly. This kind of language can be found in the judgment of God through Nebuchadnezzar as he invaded Israel. It's found in the prophesied judgment of the destruction of the temple in 70 AD. And it's also used in the language of the final judgment.

And so I don't know if you can locate this to one moment of judgment or not, but at least I believe it at least could apply to all of them. It's the same imagery that you see in Revelation chapter 6 verse 12. I looked and when he opened the sixth field behold there was a great earthquake and the Sun became black and as sackcloth of hair and the moon became like blood and the stars fell to the earth as a fig tree drops its late figs when it is shaken by a mighty wind. And depending on your eschatology, that either happened in the past or it's going to happen in the future, but it doesn't really matter. It's going, God is going to come in vanquishing judgment.

When he comes, he comes with judgment and it is inescapable wrath. If you want to listen to messages on this, go listen to our messages in Matthew chapter 24 and you'll kind of get a sense of the issues that have to be dealt with to understand when this is happening. My point is not to prove it either way, because the language of prophecy and these cataclysms in the earth are used for both temporal and final judgment in the Bible. And that makes it difficult. In verse 20, the earth is reeling like a drunkard.

The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, and shall totter like a hut. Its transgression shall be heavy upon it and it will it will fall and not rise again here it's the transgression it's the rejecting the Word of God it's changing it's changing the ordinances that causes the pressure and the difficulty in the judgment of God. It's interesting the latter part of this verse is taken from Amos chapter 5 verse 2, almost verbatim. We know that this happens in Joel 2. In Zechariah 14, you see the very same thing.

The world is being brought down under the weight of its transgression, and the earth will change. If you're trusting in this world, what you're trusting in will be taken away violently and rapidly, and you will not be able to get away from it at all. The world will not be what it has been, it will end. You think about what it means to be a human being and think about your life and why you're here. And what you see in your own heart and what you see in the hearts of the people around you is that there's always a grasping of something solid.

There's always a hope for something that will really deliver and deliver for a long time. Something that will put everything together for your life right now. And if you're thoughtful for all eternity after you die. And everybody grasps for this. They're taking hold of something.

But here in this passage, it's declared that there's really only one thing that will last. And it's spoken of by two terms, Mount Zion and Jerusalem. The eternal city, the city not made with hands, the city that is ruled by the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the only city that will last. And if you're trying to hold on to this world, you will be sorely disappointed.

But your heart does want to hold on to this world, just like every heart. But the wise ones understand eternity and what can be relied upon. But God is going to destroy the city of man. And then the 15th mark of judgment is in verses 21 and 22. The exalted ones are punished on high.

It shall come to pass in that day that the Lord will punish on high, I think that's a key phrase, on high the host of the exalted ones and on the earth the kings of the earth. Now just a quick moment here, it starts out with this term in that day. In that day is used seven times in chapters 24 to 27. It really does, it marks one of the great themes in this long sermon that is one unit. And in that day, you know, that history is being brought down to it's reduced to a time of judgment where God glorifies himself in the damnation of the wicked and and also in the salvation of sinners this This is where all of history is going.

And the judgment will be from on high. And it's as if God is above all things. And He is high and lifted up. The word is even used puffed up in some places. But it's like fire and brimstone coming down out of heaven.

He's coming in the clouds. He's coming from above. And He's coming with all of His holy angels with Him. He's coming from on high. The judgment of God comes from on high.

And then we see how it will happen. He'll gather, He will gather people together, verse 22. They will be gathered together as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and will be shut up in the prison. After many days, they will be punished. Again, we have more language.

We heard the fear and the pit and the snare. Now we have prisoners and shut up in prison and punished. We have this more language of divine judgment. God is giving us richer and richer language as we go through this prophecy of the doom of the wicked. But it will be this gathering, very much like the gathering on that last day, when God will bring the sheep and the goats before Him.

Every person who has ever been born in the history of the world will be before God in final judgment. And they will all be gathered and no one will be exempt. And it says, after many days they shall be punished. Here's one thought of what that means. A person dies and they enter into everlasting punishment, but the final judgment has not taken place yet.

And there are many days, there are many days where they dwell in darkness, but their final judgment on that last day has not been given. In the same way, when the thief was on the cross and he repented of his sins, and Jesus says, Today you will be with me in paradise." He was entered into paradise when he died, but the final judgment had not taken place yet. On the final judgment, he will come from paradise and he'll be gathered before the throne of God and be finally judged. So that's sort of the timeline of judgment in history. That you die, you either enter in the presence of God and all of His loving kindnesses, and you experience it, or you enter into darkness.

And you're like the man in the parable of Abraham, the man who dies and he sees Abraham in heaven across the way, and yet he's thirsty and he's in agony. There's this time of agony or joy before the final judgment. So here you have this picture, perhaps after many days they will be punished. Perhaps that's what that means. There may be other ways to see that.

And then we see that it will be so glorious, verse 23, the moon will be disgraced and the sun ashamed. And these words are not the exact words for moon and sun, but it's the light that they deliver. It's what the moon and the sun do. I was standing out last night outside looking up and this half moon and how bright it was and it was almost like you could see everything around us. And so it's the effect, the light from it, not the moon itself, not the sun itself, is what he's speaking of here.

And what he's saying is that in comparison, In comparison to this glory of God in judgment, in comparison to that, the sun and the moon will be disgraced. It'll be like nothing. It's like the sun and the moon are hanging their heads. They will look so dim. They will look so underperforming.

They will look so unappealing. They just won't shine in the face of the glory of God. The brightest earthly lights will be dim compared to His glorious light when he comes in judgment, as he comes on high. Now, do you remember, do you remember why all this is happening? Do you remember the heart of the reason for the judgment of God?

Do you remember it? It's right here in this text. Go to verse 4. Verses 4 through 6 tells you why all this is happening. And I would argue that you always have to keep your eye on verses 4 through 6 to understand why.

The earth mourns and fades away. The world languishes and fades away. The haughty people of the earth languish. The earth is also defiled under its inhabitants." Now, he's speaking of the brokenness of the broken hearted of the world, the broken lives, the pain, the depression, the suicide, the murder, the theft, the adultery, all the things that so harm people. You can't engage in sin without doing great harm.

And so he first gives this picture of the world. It's really the way the world really is. Just open up your newspaper and you can see how the world tries to cover up the destructiveness of sin. By the way, the very last verse of this entire sermon says that all of the ugliness of evil will be uncovered and you'll see it. Everybody tries to cover it up now.

There will be a time when it won't be covered up anymore. The earth will show its blood. And these things that are evil that people try to put a smiley face on, it will be exposed and revealed. But why did this happen? Because, you see that word because in the middle of verse 5, because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant, therefore the curse has devoured the earth and those who dwell in it are desolate." God desires to relieve the pains and the sufferings of mankind under the weight of sin.

And the weight of sin comes when you set aside the commandment of God. That's the heart of the text right there. That's why the judgment of God is coming. Because every good thing is minimized when you turn away from the Word of God. When you change the ordinances, when you transgress the laws, when you break the everlasting covenant.

You break the everlasting covenant and the everlasting light is not there for you. The everlasting arms are not there for you. The everlasting hills will not be your place of refuge. And so that's the greatest tragedy in the world right here. It's pinpointed right here.

If you want to understand the world and its troubles, verses 4 through 6 tell the whole story. And God is telling His people here in this church why it all happens as we're getting this advanced degree in the judgment of God and the reasons for it and what happens as a result of it. In Leviticus 18, in verse 1, we read A very distinctive explanation of this. The Lord spoke to Moses and said, Speak to the children of Israel and say to them, I am the Lord your God. According to the doings of the land of Egypt where you dwelt, you shall not do.

And according to the doings of the land of Canaan where I am bringing you, you shall not do, nor shall you walk in their ordinances. You shall observe my judgments and keep my ordinances to walk in them. I am the Lord your God. You shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgments, which if a man does he shall live by them. I am the Lord." The whole issue of the judgment of God hinges upon whose ordinances you love and whether you're changing God's ordinances for your own, whether you're exchanging the truth of God for a lie.

It's the most tragic thing that can ever happen. We live in a time where the world is changing the ordinances everywhere. On every category of sexuality that the Bible speaks to, the world is changing the ordinances. In dealing with the poor, our whole government dealing with the poor has become so corrupt that the poor just keep getting poorer and poorer and and they become more and more enslaved and enslaved because they've changed the ordinances. Homosexuality, the transgender movement, everything regarding manhood and womanhood is broken.

What are the ordinances of modern America today? Well, it's no more one woman, one man. It's no more children obey your parents. Schools are actively leading their children to dishonor their parents and displace their parents. It's changing the ordinances.

And the Bible says, no, do not learn the ways of the Gentiles. Where do we learn the ways of the Gentiles? Where do we learn them? Most people in our society learn them from two primary sources. From the films they watch and the music they listen to.

This is where the ordinances are changed in your heart. And people take so lightly, praising and observing and paying for entertainments, where the ordinances have been changed. And I'm here to stand up again and say, brothers and sisters, don't involve your ears and your eyes with those who change the ordinances. Are you doing that? You need to understand what is happening to you when you do that.

Because you can't see things and hear things without the ordinances being shifted. That's just the way we're wired. It's just the way it is. You become what you see And you think what you hear. That's what happens to you.

And I just so desire that we understand that we do not make Hollywood part of our altar and we do not gaze adoringly there and spend our time with her. You'll find the ordinance is changing slowly and imperceptibly. And you may find yourself in this situation. And then finally, there's the reason for all of this in the last verse, verse 23. For the Lord of hosts will reign on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem and before His elders gloriously.

So why? Why? Because for the Lord of hosts. Why is all this happening? It's because the Lord of hosts is reigning.

God is glorifying himself in the judgment of the wicked and the salvation of sinners. He's doing it because he is reigning. He is in control. That's why. And then who?

It's the Lord of hosts. This is the Lord of the armies of heaven. That word that we've encountered many times, the Lord of hosts, the Lord of all the armies of heaven. And what will he do? He will reign and where will he reign on Mount Zion on Mount Zion what is Mount Zion now Mount Zion is is a prominent theme in the Psalms and the prophets it appears 154 times 46 times in Isaiah 38 times in the Psalms.

Here's the bottom line. Zion is a metaphor for heaven. Zion and Jerusalem are a metaphor for the church that will exist forever in heaven. It's a picture of the kingdom of heaven. Zion and Jerusalem are about heaven.

And that's what we find here. It's interesting. You know, redemption began in the garden where God came and made clothes for His people, and it ends in a city. It ends in a city made without hands. It ends with the city of God, Zion, Jerusalem.

It ends with a beautiful city where there's joy there. So Zion is the precursor and it's the symbol of the new heavens and the new earth. Zion and Jerusalem are names for the church in the New Testament. In Psalm 132, Zion is a resting place. For the Lord has chosen Zion.

He has desired it for His dwelling place. This is My resting place forever. In Isaiah 35, it's a place of everlasting joy. In verse 10, and the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing with everlasting joy on their heads and they shall obtain joy and gladness and sorrow and sighing shall flee away." In Isaiah 51 verse 3 it's a place of comfort. For the Lord will comfort Zion, He will comfort all her waste places.

He will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord. Joy and gladness will be found in it, thanksgiving and the voice of melody. Here, it's the place where all the wasted parts of your life are healed. That's Zion. The Lord reigns and He's bringing His people to Zion.

In Isaiah chapter 60 verse 1, it's a place of transformation. To console those who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil for mourning, the garments of praise for the garment of heaviness, that they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord that he may be glorified. You know, it's such a beautiful image. You have this garment of heaviness, the pressure and the difficulty, the defilement, the harshness, the disappointing presence of this robe, and it's replaced with the robe of righteousness and God transforms. In Isaiah chapter 60 verse 14 it's the place of everlasting light but the Lord will be to you an everlasting light in your God your glory your son shall no longer go down." In Isaiah 25 verse 6 through 8, it's a place of banqueting, we'll deal with that next week.

On this mountain there'll be a feast of choice pieces, a feast of wines on the leaves, of fat things full of marrow, and on and on and on. In Isaiah 30 it's a place where weeping has been abolished. Verse 19, the people shall dwell in Zion, at Jerusalem. You shall weep no more. He will be very gracious to you at the sound of your cry.

When he hears it, he will answer you." In Isaiah 40, it's the place where you hear words of comfort. And in Hebrews 12, Mount Zion is the Church. Verse 22, But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and of the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than of Abel." It's a beautiful place. This is why Isaiah, in the very next verse in chapter 25, he praises God. He praises God for the judgment.

He praises God that the city has been broken. He praises God that the weight of sin has been lifted off and that the world has been destroyed for its evil. And then finally we come to the last five words in chapter 24. They're very fascinating. All this, and before his elders, gloriously." In this last sentence, you know, the Lord of hosts will reign on Mount Zion and be before his elders, gloriously.

In Revelation chapter 4, the elders are around the throne of God and there are lightnings and thunderings and there they are before the throne of God. In Revelation chapter 5, the elders are worshipping along with the angels. The angels are saying, worthy is the Lamb who is slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing, and the elders are there." This is a picture of heaven. In Revelation chapter 7 verse 11 you see the same thing in Revelation 11 and 6, in Revelation 19. And again, wherever you think this happens, I'm not here to argue, but I am here to argue for this.

That there will be that day where it will be so evident to everyone in the whole world that God reigns. The Lord reigns. And He reigns both in His judgment of the wicked and in the salvation of sinners. And so this is really for all who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and all who do not. All who believe in His shed blood and those who do not.

Those who believe that He has atoned for their sins and those who do not, those who have repented of their sins and those who do not. This passage is very egalitarian. It deals with everyone in the room. But the beauty of it is that you have a picture of how God destroys the damaging works of the devil. And you have a picture of people who have cast away their idols and they found everlasting light.

And they're resting in the everlasting arms. And they found themselves in another city. Not the city that's been burned and bombed out, but Zion, but in Jerusalem. A place of comfort, a place of feasting. The place where the people sing of the majesty of God and they just can't get enough of it.

So much so that they'll do it for all eternity. Would you pray with me? Lord we thank you for this disclosure of judgment. Many things hard to understand, other things easy. But Lord, I pray that you would use these words to come and transform our souls to help us to love you more.

Lord, that we as a church would use this knowledge of your judgment to sing of Your Majesty like never before in this community. Among the great sea of people You placed us in, let there be the voice of the majesty of God upon our lips. Amen.