The sermon 'A Family Destroyed' by Scott Brown explores Isaiah 15, focusing on the destruction of Moab as a representation of God's judgment against pride and rebellion. Moab, a nation descended from Lot's family, exemplifies the consequences of sin, showing how a family can deviate from righteousness over generations. The speaker emphasizes the importance of understanding Old Testament geography and history to grasp the New Testament's teachings. The sermon illustrates the themes of judgment and mercy, underscoring that while Moab faces destruction, God's compassion remains evident. Through historical context, the sermon connects Moab's story to the broader narrative of redemption, highlighting the enduring relevance of these lessons for contemporary believers. It encourages individuals and families to reflect on their own sins, repent, and turn towards God's salvation, as exemplified by the story of Ruth, a Moabite in the lineage of Christ.

In Isaiah chapter 15 verse 1 through 9. The burden against Moab. Because in the night, R of Moab is laid waste and destroyed. Because in the night, Kher of Moab is laid waste and destroyed. He has gone up to the temple and Dibon to the high places to weep.

Moab will wail over Nebo and over Mediba. On all their heads will be baldness and every beard cut off. In their streets they will clothe themselves with sackcloths. On the tops of their houses and in their streets everyone will wail, weeping bitterly. Heshbon and Eliella will cry out, their voices shall be heard as far as Jai has.

Therefore the armed soldiers of Moab will cry out, his life will be burdensome to him. My heart will cry out for Moab, his fugitives shall flee to Zohar, like a three-year-old heifer. For by the ascent of Luhith they will go up with weeping. For in the way of Horanaim they will raise up a cry of destruction. For the waters of Nimrim will be desolate.

For the green grass has withered away. The grass fails. There is nothing green. Therefore the abundance they have gained, and what they have laid up, they will carry away to the brook of the willows. For the cry has gone all around the borders of Moab.

It's wailing to Eglehem and it's wailing to Beir Elem, for the waters of Diamond will be full of blood, because I will bring more upon Diamond, lions upon him who escapes from Moab and on the remnant of the land." Holy Lord God Almighty, we praise your name for you are a God of judgment and justice. You are a God of holiness. You are a God of wrath. You are a God to be feared. And Lord, you have a holy law.

You have a holy judgment day which is coming. And Lord, here in this passage, Lord, open our eyes to see more of who You are, that more of Your awe and Your reverence would be in our hearts, and Lord, that we would flee to the cross. Lord, bless our pastor as he comes today to open your word to us. Lord help him to hide behind the cross. Lord give him grace to depend upon Christ.

And Lord bless him, we pray in Jesus' name, Amen. We've seen Isaiah take us from one place to another in his prophecy. He takes us to these moments in people's lives and situations that are critical in the history of redemption to teach us particular things. Remember when he took us to the end of the aqueduct on the highway to the Fuller's Field and there was this freeze-frame moment in the life of Ahaz where a prophet spoke to him. It was perhaps one of the most defining moments of his life.

He takes us to a mountain and people are streaming to the mountain. He gives us this picture of what's happening there. He gives us a picture of a moment in time where people are saying something. He says, in that day you will say. He takes us to places where people are singing a song.

He takes us from one place to another, and now He has taken us to another place, really the end point of a family. Taking us to the end point of a family that became a nation, and that's the Moabite nation. He now comes to the end of what was a very long history of a family, the family of the Moabites, the sons and daughters of Lot's daughter, who was born in iniquity, on a terrible night in a cave. And the situation here, as we're transported to the end of this family life, after hundreds of years of these people living and moving and having their being in the world. Isaiah, he jets us right to the end of it and he shows us the end of what has happened to this family and it has enormous significance in the history of redemption.

But at this moment that Isaiah brings us to, they're nothing but refugees. Imagine yourself being a refugee, to lose everything, to run for your life, to wail, to be displaced, to be a people with all of your earthly belongings in your arms. That's all you have left is what you can carry. Isaiah transforms us to this scene of crying in a refugee camp, almost like the kinds of things that you see in modern times where a tornado will blow through a neighborhood and the people have just left there crying. They have nothing left.

All of what they had built their hopes on, their land, their possessions, everything, is now absolutely destroyed and all they have are just a few things that they can carry in their hands. That's the scene that's before us here in Isaiah chapter 15. You know, I remember well as a young man in the fall of Saigon, and refugees were everywhere. Refugees were all over the place in our town. We actually brought a refugee family from Saigon into our household.

They had lost absolutely everything. Remember the boat people? We could go on and on and just speak about great deportations and calamities. This scene here before us is just exactly like that. It's full of terror and full of loss.

And it stands as a marker for many, many things. We could talk about what it means to have a family that's on a wrong trajectory and continues to go that way. We could talk about a warning against all those who are in rebellion against God. Because what happens here in Isaiah 15 is a disclosure of the outcome of what happens to those who turn their eyes away from the Lord. And it shows us that you might rebel for many years.

You might have an ever-expanding culture where wealth is accumulated, and good things are happening to you. And you think all is well, and one decade passes, And God hasn't cut you off, and you know you're walking in sin. Another decade passes, and you know that God hasn't put His hand against you all that heavily. There are sorrows, there are troubles. But you're still surviving, and you're still making lemons out of that lemon that making that lemonade out of the lemons that God has given you or maybe maybe it's a hundred years of past in your family life and another 200 years 300 years and and you And you seem still to be able to be moving, but recognize there's a day that's coming.

There's a day that's coming that everything will be swept away. That's the picture that we have here. And so God here in this passage gives us many things to help us understand ourselves, our nation, and the condition of the church, and the outcomes particularly of rebellion. Why did all this happen? Well there are three things that they did, and we'll develop these throughout this message.

But first of all, they took what God did not give them. It was the portion of the Lord for other tribes, and they worked to steal it. Second, they cursed the people of God. Thirdly, they attempted to destroy the people of God through immorality. It's no wonder that David would say about Moab, Moab is my wash pot.

Now these are judgments against pride. We're In the midst of a section where God is judging, God begins with Babylon. In the oracle against Babylon and Assyria and Philistia, which have already been explained in the previous two chapters, we learn that in the midst of the two malts of God's judgments against the pride of man. There's also something else going on, and that God is protecting His people in the midst of it. He's preserving a remnant.

There is judgment and there's also mercy. And we learn that, you know, God may not preserve his people from trouble, but he will always preserve his people in the midst of trouble. And so Now there's this announcement of judgment toward Moab, and we learn many, many things throughout this section. One is that the promises of David are not exclusive to Israel, but they also extend to the nations that turn to Him. We've already seen that in the past judgments against these other nations, but we see it here again with Moab, because God does save Moabites.

And also that God will destroy, His hand is raised up still. And in this sense, it is so, and it is true, as David said, that Moab is my washpot. You see sorrow and judgment. You see in the midst of this terrible scene of God's wrath that God's mercy is also there. In this passage you see a remarkable thing, and we see it also in the next chapter, in chapter 16, and that is that God weeps for Moab in her time of destruction, that God has mercy, that he has a visceral cry of anguish.

He is anguished in her anguish. This is the heart of God. So in the midst of the wrath of God, you also see the heart of the mercy of God. Now this chapter is divided into three sections. The first section I'll identify is in verse 1 where Moab is laid waste in one night.

Again, Isaiah transports us to this moment, this moment of time, this night, this one night where everything changes. And then Moab weeps for herself in verses 2 through 4, you can see the outline in front of you, and then the Lord cries out for Moab in verses 5 through 9. And so we're going to be two weeks dealing with Moab. I really want to encourage you to study Moab. There are dozens of places to go in Scripture.

Please go home and read about them. Because what we see here with Moab is really a trail to redemptive history. There are so many other places that we are taken to as a result of this. Now I just want to pause for a moment and just speak about sort of the difficulty of this passage of Scripture and also the one following in chapter 16 for next week. There are lots of geographical locations mentioned here.

There are all kinds of confusing things in this passage. And you know, the value of exposition here is that it forces us to look at the details. I just want to encourage us as a church to look at the details and learn to look at the details. You fathers, you know, help your families look at the details of Scripture. It's very important that you do.

You know, most of the preachers that go over these chapters, they do one of two things. They take chapter 15 and 16 together and breeze over it. This was really my inclination as I looked at this at the beginning of this. Or they give one sermon on chapters 13 to 23, because it's God's judgment against the nations. That's really how this is primarily treated.

It's harder to wade through the details, the geographical pinpoints that are here. Because if you just read this in a cursory manner, You'll think that the message is just kind of all the same, and you're just going to roll it up under one thing, and it's God's judgment and God's mercy. That's it. Well, that is true. That really is a summary statement of all that we'll be reading here.

But if you look carefully, you'll see some really remarkable details and distinctions that are here. And while it's so easy to skip over the details and really read words about places that we don't even know where they are. There's some unknown places here to us. But here's what I want to say. These chapters are interpreters of redemptive history.

And they're threads that you can draw from this passage of scripture, all over scripture, to give you a better picture of what God is saying. What God does is He paints the pictures of redemption sometimes over thousands of years. Well, definitely over thousands of years. But he paints many different kinds of pictures of redemption. This picture of redemption that's revealed in the history of Moab is several hundred years old.

It begins in a cave outside Zohar, right after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. And it ends hundreds of years later. It's a picture. It's a picture that exists in redemptive history. And If you take the time to look at the details, you'll see the glory and the majesty of God's plan of salvation.

And it will also help you to understand how God is presenting the history of redemption to you. So, these chapters are interpreters of redemptive history and so I don't want us to just skip through and skim through and lightly deal with them. You know, Just one more comment as it comes to mind here about the disciplines and also the values of exposition. It's good for us to look at the details because it helps us to understand the heart of God better. But also, you know, exposition is really a hedge against sin in pastors who might tend to want to just preach about the things that they'd like to preach about.

Exposition is kind of like a barrier to the personal inclinations of a pastor. It hems him in. It sort of forces him to deal with things that take a lot of time and that might not be in the heart of his interest level. And it's a hedge against a worldly church, too, that just wants its ears tickled, that doesn't really want to take the time. Most people want a nice, winsome, easy way to understand a message.

And while it's good to be winsome and simple, oftentimes scripture doesn't give us simplicity. And it often doesn't give us winsomeness the way we like to define it. It gives us something a little bit more difficult. So I want us to struggle through these locations and the situations that are played here. God didn't give you a simple book.

In the one hand, it's so extremely simple. God's mercy is new every morning. You know, that's simple. On the other hand, it's remarkably deep. It is infathomably deep.

And you can never get to the bottom of it. And so here we are, we're still, we're going to be scratching the surface of some things that maybe we haven't dealt with in the past. But it's good for a church to do that. And I really want to charge you fathers especially. Take your children deep.

Take the time. Help them to understand these things. So, the message of this chapter, by the way, as you're looking at the outline, you can see I'm still on the runway here. I'm still on the on-ramp to this text. We're still in the introduction.

Because there are a number of things that I just want to lay in terms of groundwork for this passage, and also the next as well. I think some of the things that I'll say today can serve for what we'll be dealing with next week. But The message here, the message in chapters 13 through 23 is God's judgment against the nations. Now, if you want to have a summary of everything that's going to be said, go to chapter 14 verses 1 through 13. And in verse 1 it says, for the Lord will have mercy on Jacob.

That's the first thing that you'll see happening in this entire section, and it also applies to what we see in this section on Moab. The second aspect of this is spoken of in verse three in chapter 14, and it shall come to pass in the day, the Lord gives you rest from your sorrow and from your fear and hard bondage, which you were made to serve, that you will take up this proverb against the king of Babylon and say, how the oppressor has ceased, the golden city has ceased. These two things have been set before us at the very beginning of this prophecy against Babylon, but you'll see this very same pattern that will continue, and we'll see the same pattern here in the judgment against Babylon. You will say how the oppressor has ceased, how the golden city has ceased. And that is that God will destroy all of his enemies.

God will destroy the ravages of sin. Right now you're being ravaged by sin. Take heart, brother and sister. God will take care of you. He will wipe every tear from your eyes.

He will destroy every enemy. He will set every wrong right. This is what God is doing. What a beautiful thing to know that you live in a kingdom like that. Yes, you have been made complete in Jesus Christ, and yet you still struggle with sin.

But know this, there'll be a day when your struggle with sin will be over. Take heart in that. Then there's the identity of the Moabites. I think there's much about the identity of the Moabites. This is one thing I really would like to encourage you to do on your own.

There's no way in a sermon like this that it can be fully developed. But who are the Moabites? Well, they are the descendants of Lot. Lot fled to Zohar, you know, when Sodom and Gomorrah was being destroyed, and he ended up in a cave with his two daughters and in a terrible situation, a horrible and immoral moment of incest, Lot bore sons from his two daughters as they got him drunk. You can go to Genesis 19 to see this.

We won't belabor it, but I would encourage you to go there to see the beginning. Because now in Isaiah chapter 15, you see the end. In Genesis 19 you see the beginning. The beginning and the end of a family. The beginning and the trajectory of a family and what happened when incest took root in that family and how devastating it was and what it really meant.

Here is a, now a nation is going to be judged for a family sin. The root produced the fruit. And There's so much to say here, but go to Genesis 19 to understand the Moabites. Go to Deuteronomy chapter 2, verses 7 through 11, to understand further about the Moabites, where Israel is instructed not to harass Moab. Moses and the children of Israel are coming out of Egypt and they're going by the land of Moab, by the wilderness of Moab.

God had given Lot this territory for their inheritance. God would not allow the children of Israel to take any of their inheritance or to threaten their people. And then if you go to Numbers chapter 22 through 25, you'll see this story of Balaam and Balak. And you know, Balak hires a prophet to curse Israel. Balak is trying to destroy Israel through military activity and also through immorality.

Balak is cursing Israel and terrifying things happen to people who curse God's people and try to destroy God's people. But read that section, chapters 22 to 25. It's that remarkable story of a man getting on a donkey and he has a donkey ride like nobody ever had. Or the donkey talks to him. He gets so angry at the donkey because the donkey is seeing an angel of the Lord and the donkey presses his foot against a wall and hurts his foot and then lays down and he's beating his donkey and the donkey talks to him.

What a fantastic story. But what's happening here is that Balak wants Balaam to curse the people of God and God is standing in the way of it. And this prophet, he cannot do it. He just cannot curse the people of God. God controls his mouth and he cannot do it, at least at that time.

And Then you see in chapter 25 that the immorality that was destroying the people of Israel and the harlotry that was committed as a result of Balak's schemes to spread an immoral kind of culture among the people. And a plague broke out among the people of God as a result of it. And there's so much to detail here, but I just encourage you to read those chapters in numbers 22 to 25 to get an understanding of what this means because what's happening here in Isaiah is connected with what happened in in in numbers 22 to 25 it's connected to to the incest that took place in Genesis chapter 19. You could go to Deuteronomy chapter 23, where we read that no Moabite will inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. And then in Judges chapter 3, verses 14 through 31, where Moabites were a thorn in the flesh of Israel and they oppressed Israel for 18 years.

You'll see the story of Egon, the obese Moabite king, and Ehud, the left-handed judge of Israel, who relieved Israel of their suffering from this wicked Moabite king. Because the Moabites are always trying to wipe out the glory of God. It's dangerous to wipe out the glory of God. Here you see the end of it. What happens to those who do it, you know, from one generation, who reject the commands of God in one way or another.

In their family life, it grows into the culture of a nation, and finally a nation is destroyed. And you'll see the heroes of Israel as they rise up to destroy Moab in the book of Judges. Then you find Ruth, Ruth the Moabite, one of the most beautiful books of the Bible. And really the meaning of the story of Ruth is caught up in this chapter here, in Isaiah chapter 15. And it's a story of how God takes a woman, an ordinary woman, and lifts her out of her lowliness, and He puts her in the line of the Messiah.

He saves her. He gives her a place in the kingdom of heaven. God can save Moabites. God can save the children of incest. And she comes out of Moab.

And so there's this running theme in these chapters that we're in now, and also the testimony against Moab that God does save. Now, we've spoken about Babylon, we've spoken about Assyria, Philistia, and now Moab. In many ways, we were saved out of Babylon. In many ways, we were saved out of Babylon. In many ways, we were saved out of the ethic of Assyria.

We were saved out of Philistia. We were rescued from Moab, in the same way that Ruth was rescued from Moab. Well, you can go to many, many places. You can go to 1 Samuel 22, 1 Kings 11. Jeremiah 48 is a chapter you've got to read about Moab.

It's very much like this chapter that we're in, but with a lot more detail. You can go to Nehemiah chapter 13, where the people of God have turned to God, and They're realizing that they've disobeyed God in so many ways, and they're discovering the ways that they've forgotten God. And they open the book of the law in Nehemiah chapter 13, and they're reading Deuteronomy 23. And they read, No Ammonite or Moabite shall enter the assembly of the Lord. And they'd forgotten all about that.

And so they reversed their intermarryings with the Moabites and the foreigners of the world. And they try to obey that again. And so you see, when you study Moab in Isaiah 15 and 16, You're really looking at a center point from which the history of redemption can be understood as you take the various threads into the various places. From Genesis 19 all the way to Deuteronomy 23. You can also read about Balaam in Revelation chapter 2, where the harlotries of Balaam are dealt with.

And 2 Peter deals with this very same issue. The history of redemption is found in the history of Moab. So we have to know who these people are, okay? And then let's also talk about the geography here. What does all this geography mean?

Because Isaiah goes to great lengths to identify particular points of geography. I counted 18 locations in nine verses. Now this is a land That's about, at least in the scope of which God gave the land to Moab for the descendants of Lot, because they tried to expand it, as we'll learn later. But this is a 60-mile by 40-mile place. It's not very large.

But Isaiah takes pains to deal with city after city, river after river, region after region. This is a historical record. It's important. This is not a myth. This is not a fabrication of just spiritual lessons.

These things arise out of the lives of real people who live in real cities in an identifiable period of history where real kings ruled and real armies moved and they had real possessions. This is real. This is history. This is not myth. And we run into all these places.

R of Moab is destroyed. Keir of Moab is laid waste. There's the temple. There's Dibon. There's Nebo.

There's Medeba. There's Heshbon. There's Eliella. There are all these different places you could go on and on. But why is this important?

What difference does it make? Well, it makes a difference. You know, God has put many details before us for our own benefit. He wants you to know prophecy. He wants you to know the history.

And so this is why I just again want to urge you, Fathers, make sure your children understand the history and the geography that's here. It's critical. And there's so many reasons why it's critical. Here's one really big reason it's critical, that you understand the history and the geography. Well the New Testament is dependent on the Old Testament, and you cannot adequately understand the New Testament without understanding the Old Testament.

And that should be obvious to you. If you've ever read the New Testament, You see that all the New Testament writers are always quoting the Old Testament. They're always saying, this is that. Always. I challenge you to find one page in the New Testament where that doesn't happen.

The New Testament writers are always saying, remember what happened here, remember what happened there in the Old Testament. They're making connections. So if you don't understand what happened there in the Old Testament, You can't understand what happened that's being explained by the New Testament writer. When Jesus says, this is that, you better go back and read that so you understand what this is. If you don't go back and read that, you won't understand this very well.

So it's important, the geographical and historical matters are important so that you can understand Jesus, so that you can understand Paul, you can understand Peter and James and John, because if you don't understand that, you won't understand this that Jesus and Peter and James and John and Paul speak of. So it really is important for us to understand all of this. I mean, in the Old Testament, you see the beginnings of everything in the New Testament. The Old Testament presents the types that all point to Jesus Christ. So you don't want to miss what points to Jesus Christ.

And when Jesus Christ says, as the prophet Isaiah said, you don't want to ignore what he said. Because if you ignore what he said, you won't understand very well what he is saying at that time. So it's really very important and you've got all these different geographical pinpoints here. You have this northern river Arnan. This river forms the northern border, but what you'll see is that Moab has gone far beyond that northern border to take cities from Israel.

You have this southern river, Zared. There's Edom to the south. There is Ammon to the north. We'll deal with that here in just a few weeks. But there are geographical issues that need to be paid attention to.

Okay, there's the introduction to chapter 15. Let's dive into the text. Verse 1. Moab is laid waste in one night. Again, think of this snapshot, this moment in time, this dramatic scene that's before you.

The burden against Moab, because in the night, R of Moab is laid waste and destroyed, because in the night, Keir of Moab is laid waste and destroyed. So these are cities, these are major cities that are being dealt with. And there's a burden. There's a burden against Moab. A burden is a weighty word of substance that's tied to judgment.

There's a burden that God has for Moab. In other words, there's something wrong with Moab. God is carrying a burden for Moab. Now, this is a really important matter here. The Lord has a burden.

A burden is a sense of, in the sense that Isaiah uses it, is it's an analysis. It's a declaration, it's an evaluation. He has this declaration, this analysis for Moab. And the question that comes to my mind is, what is the declaration and the analysis and the evaluation that God has for you. What's a God's burden for you?

You know, all of us come from different places. All of us have different problems. There's a burden that the Lord has for each one of us. What is God's burden for you? Is there anything that He is burdened about toward you?

Well, there's a burden. There's a burden that God has, really toward his kinfolk. Remember, these are the sons of Lot. So consider the burden. Is it theft?

Is it deception? Is it pornography? Is it lack of love? Is it slander? Is it rash speech?

Is it covetousness? What is it? What's the burden that the Lord might have for any one of us here that we're running from? Here's one thing you should not find yourself doing, running from the burden of the Lord, because that burden will come down. It will come down.

So you might as well flee now. You might as well flee to Christ. You might as well repent now. It only hurts worse when it's delayed. There's a burden.

And then there's this destruction. It is laid waste and destroyed. This is repeated twice. And it's a rapid devastation. There are illustrations like this all throughout the Bible.

These are all given to us as a warning. Remember, this is a night. This happened in a night. How everything can change over one night is what we see here. But it's like the death angel during the Passover in that one night.

It's like the 85, 000 soldiers of Assyria that just fell dead on the battlefield one night. It's like Belshazzar where he was weighed in the balances and found wanting and it was written on the wall and everything was taken away in a night. Beware of what can happen in a night. It's like that man who stored up all of what he had and built new barns, and God comes to him and says, you fool, this night your soul is required of you. Your whole life can change overnight.

The swiftness of God's judgment is coming like a tsunami. You Remember the pictures of the tsunami? I just saw some the other day. Again, it was remarkable. The last image that exists in my mind about the tsunami is that there is a little child about this tall, four feet tall, standing like this, and there was a 20-foot wall of water just getting ready to hit him.

Just like that. In a night, in a moment of time. The judgment of God can fall down upon people like that when they die. But the judgment of God comes in many different ways. His winnowing fork is in His hand.

And this is why it's so critical that you repent and believe in the Gospel. So this is a type of divine judgment. Now the sin of Moab, we learn, primarily was a sin of pride. We'll see that in chapter 16 next week. But You know, this is a picture of a situation that we all have had, and maybe you're living with right now.

When you think your sin is not all that serious. I mean, after all, it's just the sin of pride. Everybody struggles with pride. Everybody is self-congratulatory. Everyone is self-praising.

And we tend to minimize our sins. But we don't see how our own sin is serious enough for judgment. We don't think our own sin is serious enough for judgment. Well, of course there's bad... Moab's sin was serious enough for judgment, but my sin of pride isn't really.

And that's the deception that often happens. But here, this is judgment that comes regardless of your own sense of the seriousness of it. Obviously, Moab didn't think their sins were all that serious. God did. And He had a burden for it.

Do we care about the burden that God may have toward us? Do we care about the impending judgment that might be upon us? Or how about this, if we're Christians, do we care about the burden of the Lord toward those who don't know the Lord? Do we really care about that wave that's coming? Do we really care about that night?

Do we care about that night where everything changes and nothing can be reversed again? And yet there's time now. There is time to repent. Today is the day of salvation. But there will be a day when there will be no tomorrow.

At least not a tomorrow for repentance. Do we care? Do we care about the burden of the Lord against the people in our own town? Do we really care at all about God's burden and His judgment that's coming? Do we care about the lost in our town at all?

Or do we just go about our business and never take the time? So this first thing, we see this judgment coming. And then Moab weeps bitterly for herself, verses 2 through 4. He has gone up to the temple and Dibon, to the high places to weep. So now there's this weeping and wailing going on.

And there are these places, Diba, Nebo, Medeba, Heshbon, Eliele. These were all formerly Israelite cities. They had gone and they'd stolen those cities from the people of Israel. They'd stolen the inheritance of the Lord. I'm pretty sure all of these were above the river Arnon and therefore were in the land of Israel and they were stolen.

Moab was the aggressor, was moving on Israel. These cities of Reuben were across the river, definitely Nebo and Medivah. These were Reubenite cities. They were supposed to belong to Israel. You know, in the time of David, Moab was subject to Israel.

You can read about that in 2 Samuel 8. But then After the death of Ahab, there was expansionism going on, and Moab was an aggressor. But these geographical matters are so important. Read Numbers 21, verse 21 through 30, and you'll see all these locations mentioned in numbers. Hundreds of years later, these places still matter, because they are types.

They're pictures in the history of redemptive history. But where do they go for their sorrows? They go to the high places. They go to wail and weep before their gods. They go to the temple.

And they go and they worship Chimosh and Molech, these horrible gods, these gods that people of Moab would come and they would sacrifice their children before these gods. They went to go wheat there. And we could unpack all these different places. They went to Dibon. The Gadites built Dibon, and now it has been captured here.

There's a remarkable discovery that took place in 1868. An Anglican missionary was traveling through Moab and he found a stone. Upon it was written really the history of the king of Moab. And the scenes in 2 Kings, chapter 3 were really remarkably confirmed. And in 2 Kings, chapter 3, the king of Moab, Misha, It's called the Misha stone that was discovered.

2 Kings chapter 3 says, Now Misha, king of Moab, was a sheep breeder, and he regularly paid the king of Israel 100, 000 lambs and the wool of 100, 000 rams. But it happened when Ahab died, that the king of Moab rebelled against the king of Israel. Well you see all these things taking place here, and now they're wailing over Nebo, they're wailing over Medeba. But they went to the temple and they wailed there. They took their sorrows to the wrong place.

They took their sorrows to the place where they would only find more and more harm to their souls. And, you know, they went to the temple in time of trouble. And it just made me wonder, you know, what do people do today in time of trouble? Where do they go? Where do people go today in time of trouble?

And the other question is, do we go to places like that? Do we go to places like the high places when we have times of trouble? We go to vacations and medications and comfort foods and psychologists and things like that when we have trouble. Well, we don't turn to the Lord. We want to find some other fix to our problems.

And then what did they do? Verse 2. On all their heads will be baldness and every beard cut off. In their streets they will clothe themselves with sackcloth. On the tops of their houses and in their streets.

Everyone will wail, weeping bitterly. So they're tearing out their hair, they're cutting out their beard. You know, the Moabites were thorough. They went further than the other people. The other people in the area would have sackcloth and ashes.

The Moabites wanted to go further. They were going to shave their heads and tear out their beards. They wanted to go a little bit farther before their gods, and that's what they did. They were doing what was forbidden by the Levitical law. But this weeping is mentioned over and over again.

There's no repentance in their weeping. You can weep and weep and weep and have no repentance. You probably have had children like that. They cry but they haven't really repented. Maybe you've seen people like that in your life where they cry when they are caught doing something wrong, but they haven't really turned around at all.

Weeping doesn't matter at all when it comes to repentance. These people are weeping and weeping and weeping and there's no repentance in it at all. And their lives are impressively burdensome. Look in verse 4, Heshbon and Eliela will cry out, their voice shall be heard as far as Jehaz." Now Jehaz is a long way away from Hashbon and Eli. In other words, they're crying so loud that it can be heard from a long, long distance.

Therefore, the armed soldiers of Moab will cry out. Even the soldiers are crying. Why are the soldiers crying? Why are the tough guys crying? Well, they're completely undone.

And it says this, his life will be burdensome to him. Idolatry makes life so burdensome. You go to the places for help where there's no help at all. And that's what's happening here with Moab. You know, when people in our culture are sorrowful or afraid, you know, they listen to songs, they cut themselves, They wear black, they do all kinds of things.

They might just go from one doctor after another to try to fix their sorrows. But they don't turn to God at all. And they cannot get the comfort they need. They cannot get satisfaction. It cannot be gotten from those kinds of high places.

And then the Lord cries out, after there's this disclosure that they're going to places where there is no comfort. Well, there is one comfort. There's comfort in Zion, there's comfort in God, and God cries out for Moab in verses five through nine. My heart will cry out for Moab. Now some have said this is Isaiah crying out, others say it's the Lord.

Either way I don't think the meaning changes at all. But the heart of God, whether it's Isaiah or it's God himself, cries out in the souls of those who love sinners. My heart will cry out for Moab. And notice here also, there's this word for that you see all throughout this section. It runs through all of these verses here, and they explain the results of the pride and the reason the Lord is mourning.

�My heart will cry out for Moab. His fugitive shall flee to Zohar like a three-year-old heifer, for by the ascent of Luhith they will go up weeping, for in the way of Hora-Nain they will raise up a cry of destruction for the waters of Nimran and so forth. You see this word for in the narrative here, and he's explaining the reason for his grieving. The Lord is grieving for these very specific troubles that he's identifying here in this passage of Scripture. And the Lord is crying out in anguish for the people who are in anguish.

I think we should stop and recognize the heart of God toward sinners here. You know, how do we feel when our enemies are under judgment or they're going through judgment? How do we feel? Do we feel like this? Does our heart break, or does it gloat in that sense?

But this is the suffering that occurs when pride is driving everything. One of the commentators says, he weeps as he smites. He weeps as he smites. Isn't that strange? It's such a difficult thing to grasp, but a true prophet cares for the people that he speaks to.

He has mercy. False prophets only care about themselves, and they only care about destruction. That's why, you know, you go to Jeremiah, Jeremiah was the weeping prophet. Do you think Jeremiah was weeping for himself? No.

Jeremiah wasn't weeping because of his problems. Jeremiah was weeping because of his people's problems. And in Jeremiah chapter 4 we see him crying out in pain. He says, your ways and your doings have procured these things for you. This is your wickedness because it is bitter.

Because it reaches to your heart. And then he says, Oh my soul, my soul, I am pained in my very heart. My heart makes a noise in me. I cannot hold my peace. He's crying out in anguish for his people.

In Ezekiel you see the same thing in Ezekiel 18 where God says, Do I have any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? David understood the compassion of the Lord in Psalm 103 where he said, The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in mercy. He will not always strive with us, nor will he keep his anger forever. He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor punished us according to our iniquities." This is a compassionate, merciful Savior. He cries out in anguish for those who are in anguish.

And then in verse 5 we see that there's language that we've seen before in the Bible. He speaks of Zohar in verse 5. Why is he crying out? He's crying out for what happened in Zohar. The fugitives self-flee to Zohar.

He is crying out in anguish for what happened in Zohar, but now they're fleeing to Zohar. But Zohar was saved from destruction back in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah, but now Zohar is going to be destroyed. Now Zohar is a place of terror. Go back to that story. He speaks in verse 5, He speaks of Zohar and he says, the three-year-old heifer.

Why does he mention that? I'm actually not sure. You know, in Genesis 5.9, there's a three-year-old heifer in the story of God making a covenant with his people on his own name. It could be reflective that three years is the time of prime for a burnt sacrifice in Israel. Somebody suggested that it could indicate confidence.

Somebody suggested it could symbolize lots of daughters as the heifers. I don't really know. I think it's more likely tied to sacrifice. But again, it's a dark saying. I don't really understand it.

And then he speaks of Luhith, and then Horanaim. Horanaim means twin caves. Nimrim, for the waters of Nimrim, verse 6, will be desolate, for the green grass has withered away. The word means pure and wholesome water, but it also can mean leopards. This also brings us to a difficulty with the Hebrew language.

Hebrew is not as specific as Greek, and you have words that can mean two totally different things. You have to look at the context to understand it. And so interpreting some of these kinds of things is a little bit more difficult when you're dealing with the Hebrew language. We see in verses 7 and 8, the abundance is gone. Therefore the abundance they have gained and what they have laid up, they will carry away to the brook of the willows.

For the cry has gone out all around the borders of Moab. It's wailing to Egl-Aim and it's wailing to Vir-Ell-im." In other words, the abundance has gone everywhere, from the borders inward, everywhere. It's all gone. And they're carrying their belongings in their arms. And their disobedience has caused them to lose everything that they've laid up.

They've laid up resources over the years, hundreds of years, from the time of that, in that cave in Zohar, until this time, hundreds of years later, and now it's all over. All of that disobedience now finally paid back. God giving reason for them to turn over and over again in times in history, but they would not turn. And the wailing is heard all over. The word that he uses here, it has to have loud wailing.

Wailing that can be heard from border to border. That's the kind of anguish that he's trying to depict. And then you see the blood in verse 9, For the waters of Daimon will be full of blood, Because I will bring more upon Daimon, Lions upon him who escapes from Moab, and on the remnant of the land." Daimon was a river in Moab, and it was named for the slayings that took place there. It also speaks of the death of agrarian productivity in the land. The whole region was productive before Isaiah delivered this prophecy, but afterward it would never be the same.

You know, beforehand it supported sheep. You know, Misha, the king, you know, the sheep king, the mutton king, who, you know, had hundreds of thousands of sheep and he was living in a land that supported the sheep. Sheep eat grass. But now there is no grass. It's all gone.

And you know, today, this is modern day Jordan. It's a sandy, unproductive wasteland. These rivers are dried up, by the way. If you look at satellite pictures, they're just, they're washouts. You can see a river was there.

But these rivers, many of them are gone now. That's why it says in verse 6, for the waters of Nimrim will be desolate, for the green grass has withered away." You know, Zephaniah said something like this in Zephaniah 1.9. He said, Therefore as I live, this is one of the vows of the Lord. God is taking a vow. He says, as I live, says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, surely Moab shall be like Sodom and the people of Ammon like Gomorrah, overrun with weeds and salt pits and a perpetual desolation.

Zephaniah says that they're going to be just like Sodom and Gomorrah, just weeds, nothing there. That's exactly what Isaiah is saying. So Moab disappeared by the time of Christ. The descendants of Lot were destroyed. We followed Moab from Genesis 19 through Numbers and Joshua and through the Kings to Revelation, and there's no more Moab.

They're gone. The trajectory of your family matters. The trajectory of your nation matters. Nations come out of families. Families are important because they make nations.

What you do when you're building your family needs to be recognized for its importance. This destruction began in a cave with a little family who sinned grievously and they never turned from their sin. The sins of Moab, they took the portion of the Lord, they tried to steal the cities of the inheritance of the children of Israel. Secondly, they cursed the people of God. One of their kings hired somebody to curse the people of God.

When you curse the people of God, God will curse you. That's what Genesis 12.3 says. The Lord says, I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. And thirdly, they attempted to destroy the people of God through immorality. And they were totally wiped out as a result of it.

Look out, look out Hollywood. Look out Hollywood who seduces people. Look out, look out you educational institutions which slander the name of God and curse the name of God. You look out, you will be destroyed. Your nice big buildings, your multi-million dollar facilities, they will be destroyed.

You might be able to go on for a little while longer, but they will be destroyed. Your high places of higher education will be wiped out in the face of the earth. Okay, applications. I've got four lessons from Moab. Four lessons from Moab.

First, make sure that Moab is your wash pot. Make sure that Moab is your wash pot. David speaks of this in Psalm 60. He says, 60 verse 7, Gilead is mine, Manasseh is mine, Ephraim is mine, Ephraim is the helmet of my head, Judah is my lawgiver, Moab is my wash pot. Moab is my wash pot.

Now, in those days, people went about their business wearing sandals. In the day, They walked on dusty roads and they would go into a home and they would wash their feet in a wash pot. They would hold their feet above a wash pot and water was poured over the feet and the bowl, the wash pot, would catch the dirty water. The wash pot is a symbol of filthiness. And Moab would be subdued and become like a wash pot.

This wash pot would have meaning. The sins of Moab is the wash pot. Moab shows us our sins. Moab is a warning light. Moab shows us our pollution.

Is there sexual immorality in your family? Destroy it now. Is there any cursing of the people of God in your family? Destroy it now. Is there pride?

Moab explains the dynamics of pride. And, you know, look at the sins of Moab, and let Moab be your wash pot. Let Moab explain your own sins. What is the burden of the Lord for you? Is it theft or deception or pornography or is it lack of love or is it slander or rash feature?

What is it? What possibly could it be? Flee. Flee. Let Moab be your wash pot.

Let Moab show you who you really are. Do you see anything in Moab that exists in you? And again, I just want to encourage you to go back to your homes and read about Moab, because you can draw a thread to the history of redemption by looking at Moab from Genesis 19 to Revelation chapter 2. So first of all, make sure that Moab is your wash pot. Secondly, beware of children born to the righteous who make corrupt homes.

Beware of children born to the righteous who make corrupt homes. They create a corrupt culture. All of this started, all of this started hundreds of years before Isaiah spoke. You know how it started? It didn't start in the cave.

It started when Lot pitched his tent toward Sodom. There's this interesting progression in Genesis. He looked toward Sodom, he pitched his tent toward Sodom, And then he was in Sodom. And then Sodom got into him. And even though his body left Sodom, Sodom never left his heart.

And he taught the ways of Sodom to his daughters. But beware, trajectories matter. When a family sets itself to reject anything of the Kingdom of God, they are on the path of destruction. Their seed will be devoured. They might look okay for a while on the outside, but inside are the seeds of their destruction.

They will not prosper, and God will destroy them if they do not repent. Beware of children to the righteous who make corrupt homes. Number three, beware of national judgment. You know, why does God mention all these cities? Why doesn't God mention this nation?

It's the sin, because God brings nations down for their sin. There's this concept of national sin here in this chapter. There's a national judgment. There are local judgments of cities, and then there are individuals who are wailing, But you have the whole spectrum. It's not just the individual.

It's also the city, and it's the whole nation. And we should be asking ourselves, what are the sins of our nation, and how do we contribute to the sins of our nation? Hey, are you contributing to the sins of this nation? Like, do you support, like what kind of things do you watch? Do you give money to people who bring immorality to the people?

Is there any way that we're participating and promoting the sins of this nation? How supportive do you want to be of those who would tempt your sons and daughters to immorality in any way. Through the music, through the entertainments. Don't take this lightly. You're no different than Balak in tempting the sons and daughters of Israel to immorality than if you bring the despicable things of Hollywood into your family.

You're not doing it, you're just bailack. Just rename yourself today. Be very careful. Immorality has many faces, it has many ways that it expresses itself in this culture. But you don't want to play games with that.

Beware of national judgment. What happens in the homes ends up happening in the halls of government. And there are national judgments for personal sins that are promoted in a nation. Number four. Remember Ruth.

Remember Ruth. Rejoice. Rejoice in God's mercy. Christ is a Savior that is born from wickedness, for wickedness. Christ is a Savior that was born out of the spirit of Moab.

This is the essence of the story of Ruth. God reaches down into a wicked culture and he takes a lowly woman and he blesses her and he gives her bread from heaven. Ruth was David's great grandmother. Christ was born from the line of David. And so in the line of the Lord Jesus Christ is a daughter of Moab.

And we should rejoice in that. Christ was born from wickedness, the Moabites. Christ was born for the washing of wickedness. It was wickedness that killed Christ. It was the wickedness of Babylon, of Assyria, of Philistia, and Moab that killed the Lord Jesus Christ.

It was our sins that killed the Lord Jesus Christ. He was crushed for our iniquities. And we know that where sin abounds, grace abounds even more. And out of the greatness of wickedness comes a greater Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ came in order to save anyone who sinned like a Moabite.

Jesus Christ died and was buried and was raised again on the third day. Jesus Christ bore the brunt of the judgment that we deserved for the way that Moab had gotten into our hearts. The Lord Jesus Christ is the only hope for a Moabite. I know there's so many Moabites here in spirit, Moabites in spirit, because we share the sins of Moab. But thank God for the Lord Jesus Christ, who shed His blood so that Moabites could be saved.

Would you pray with me? Lord, we were amazed at the depth, the width, and the length, and the height of your wisdom and salvation. We thank you for showing us these glimpses of salvation. I pray, Lord, that you would help us to turn away from all Moabite things and to turn toward you. Lord, I pray that you would give us such energy in our families to assist in understanding your ways of redemption.

Oh Lord, that you would fill this church with the knowledge of your wonderful gospel that was proclaimed here through the judgment of the Moabites and the salvation of a Moabite. Amen.