In his sermon, Peter Allison reflects on Isaiah 1:2-4, drawing parallels with Deuteronomy 32 to illustrate God's covenant lawsuit against Israel for their rebellion. He emphasizes how God, despite His kindness and provision, is met with ungratefulness and disobedience from His people, Israel. The heavens and earth serve as witnesses to this covenant and record the charges of unfaithfulness. Allison uses the metaphor of rebellious children to depict Israel's refusal to acknowledge and obey God, pointing out their lack of understanding and failure to recognize their own Father. He also highlights the irrationality and self-destructive nature of sin, drawing parallels with modern examples of debt and foolishness. However, amidst the bleak charges, Allison offers hope by reminding the congregation of the preserved remnant that God maintains, suggesting a call to self-examination and repentance. He concludes with a reflection on Jonathan Edwards' resolutions, encouraging believers to constantly examine their spiritual state to ensure they remain in covenant with God.

Our scripture reading is Isaiah chapter 1. We'll be looking at verses 2 through 4 this morning, but I'd like to begin reading at verse 1. And I will read down through verse 9 to give a little bit of the context. The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Isaiah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. Hear O heavens and give ear O earth, for the Lord has spoken.

I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me. The ox knows its owner and the donkey its master's crib, but Israel does not know, my people do not consider. Alas, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a brood of evildoers, children who are corruptors. They have forsaken the Lord. They have provoked to anger the Holy One of Israel.

They have turned away backward. Why should you be stricken again? You will revolt more and more. The whole head is sick and the whole heart faints. From the sole of the foot even to the head there is no soundness in it.

But wounds and bruises and putrefying sores, they have not been closed or bound up or soothed with ointment. Your country is desolate. Your cities are burned with fire. Strangers devour your land and your presence. And it is desolate as overthrown by strangers.

So the daughter of Zion is left as a booth in a vineyard, as a hut in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city. Unless the Lord of hosts had left to us a very small remnant, we would have become like Sodom. We would have been made like Gomorrah. May God revive us according to his word. Heavenly Father, you promise that your word does not return to you void.

We ask that this word that we have heard might accomplish the purpose for which it has been sent. And I ask that you would sanctify my sinful lips to proclaim your grace and the riches of your in the riches of your grace in Jesus Christ. In His name we pray, Amen. The eighteen fifties which is in the history of the world a relatively recent time Scott de Martinville was a French editor and typographer of manuscripts. We would call him a typist or a data entry clerk in today's language.

And he wanted to make his work like most workers less arduous. As he was typing up a manuscript by a scientist on the anatomy of the human ear he had a brilliant thought. What if he could make a mechanical ear just like the human ear that could directly convert sound into writing, just like the human ear can convert sound into thoughts in our mind. So he called it photographing the word. He actually called it a phonautograph.

Or today we simply call it a phonograph, which means a sound writer, phonograph. So he took a trumpet that was designed to broadcast sound out the flared end bell, and he operated it in reverse. The flared end bell would collect the sound and concentrate it at the throat of this trumpet. And then he put a little membrane at the throat of the trumpet let's do it this way just like the eardrum and then he stuck a bristle of a bore right on the right onto the membrane. So as the membrane vibrated, I guess one more thing, he had a glass plate that he coated with lamp black.

And he moved the glass plate past this bor bristle attached to the membrane. So as this plate moves by, the bor bristle bounces up and down. And the plate moves by, and it leaves a trace on that that you could see. A few years ago those traces were discovered and they were able to convert them into audio files and listen to them. Lawrence Livermore at Berkeley did that.

But before that we didn't really know how to record and preserve the spoken word without somebody hearing it and writing it down as it was being spoken. Something that's a very arduous task if you've ever tried to do that and rarely done. And if you didn't catch the words, they're gone. Now today with the internet, you know, people like to remind us that the things that we say are permanent. But God had an audio recorder long before the internet and long before Scott de Martinville.

Jesus reminds us in matthew 12 that god has a recording of all of our words said for every idle word that we will speak we will give an account of it in the day of judgment and God's recorder never breaks every idle word that we speak. So for with our words we will be justified and with our words we will be condemned. You see, and the creation itself is God's audio recorder that hears the words God speaks and testifies to them. Creation. In Joshua's parting exhortation to Israel to choose that day, you remember, choose this day whom you will serve.

The people respond to Joshua by saying, the Lord our God, we will serve. And his voice we will obey. And so Joshua made a covenant with the people that day, and he made for them a statue and an ordinance at the city of Shechem. And he wrote their word, the words, in the book of the law of God, and he took a large stone there in Shechem and set it up under an oak tree by the house of the Lord, by the sanctuary. And this is what Joshua said to the people.

He said, behold, this stone shall be a witness for us, for it has heard all the words of the Lord which he spoke to us and it this stone that's heard the words and holds this record it will be a witness to you lest you deny the Lord And so when they saw this stone they were to be reminded of the words that God had spoken in them for yes, but even more this stone itself had heard those words and had the record and it could testify to what had been said. You see, God uses his creation to record the covenants that he cuts with his people. That's the word the Bible uses with covenants. Covenants are cut. Covenants involved blood and the cutting of animals.

And so, but Joshua, when he did that, was just following what Moses did when he reviewed The terms of the covenant as they were about to enter as Israelites were about to enter the promised land in the 40th year on the 11th month on the first day of that month Moses gathered all the people and he and he gave them the book of Deuteronomy that's the second giving of the law he addressed the people And that record of that address is the first 30 chapters of the book of Deuteronomy. And in that address, Moses calls heaven and earth to witness the covenant that was being cut. In Deuteronomy 4 he said, when you beget children and grandchildren and you've grown old in the land and act corruptly and you make carved images in the form of anything and you do evil in the sight of the Lord your God to provoke him to anger. He said, I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day that you will utterly perish from the land which you cross over the Jordan to possess. You will not prolong your days in it, but will be utterly destroyed.

And later on, after Moses had listed in detail all the blessings that would follow obedience to the covenant and all the curses or judgments that would fall on the covenant breakers, Moses finished this covenant renewal ceremony in Deuteronomy 30 saying, I call heaven and earth as a witness today against you that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Choose life therefore that you and your descendants may live. That you may love the Lord your God, that you may obey his voice, that you may cling to him, for he is your life." Moses opened and closed that ceremony by calling heaven and earth to witness. And then on the day that Moses died, God told him to write the song of Moses and to teach it to the children of Israel so that this song would be a witness for God against the children of Israel. Because God explained to Moses that day that he said, When I have brought them into the land flowing with milk and honey, of which I swore to their fathers, and they have eaten and filled themselves and grown fat, then they will turn to other gods and serve them, and they will provoke me and break my covenant." And he says, then it will be when the many evils and troubles have come upon them that this song that you're to write will testify against them as a witness and so the same day Moses wrote that song and he instructed the Levites in Deuteronomy 31 to gather to him all the elders of the tribes and their officers so that he could speak this song to them in the hearing of heaven and earth to witness against them.

And so Moses begins his song in Deuteronomy 32, Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak, and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth. You see, those are the exact same words that Isaiah uses to open this vision. In fact, there are many other similarities between the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32 and Isaiah 1. Both Isaiah 1 and Deuteronomy 32 have the same parties in this in the covenant, God the judge, the initiator of the covenant, The people of Israel that are put under the laws and the promises of the covenant. And the heaven and earth that are called as witnesses.

Heaven and earth witnessed you see the song of Moses, laying out God's faithful kindness and mercy to Israel, and the promises of obedience, and the judgments that would come on disobedience. And now 800 years later, in opening his vision, Isaiah calls upon the same witnesses to hear God's charges against Israel of their unfaithfulness and to testify against her. God calls upon this record, this permanent record, heard by the heavens and the earth. People talk about the surveillance state today and how all of our devices and our TVs that we have in our homes and the things that we carry on our bodies can record and transmit everything we say even when they're off. But that's nothing.

That is nothing compared to God's recorder. All of creation testifies to this record. Deuteronomy 32 and Isaiah 1 also have very similar themes, in addition to the same parties. They both speak of God's kindness and goodness as a Father bringing up children, nourishing them only to be repaid with ungrateful rebellion. In essence, this chapter is saying, let the record reflect that God has been kind and good as He promised.

He has nourished and brought up children who then rebelled against him. In fact, Isaiah says they don't even know how to recognize their own father. So for that reason, this chapter is called a covenant lawsuit against covenant breakers, God's people who have broken the covenant. And I've put an outline of this chapter on the on the back of the bulletin there. We'll be just looking at the first part of that outline this morning, God's fatherly kindness repaid with ungrateful rebellion.

In these first couple of verses. So this covenant lawsuit begins with charges. Charges against the covenant breakers. And in verse two is God's faithfulness to his gracious and kind promises. God has nourished Israel.

He birthed them, delivering them from slavery in Egypt, training them in the wilderness for war, driving out the inhabitants of Canaan before them, giving them a rich and a fruitful land for their inheritance. A land that according to Deuteronomy 8 produced an abundance of grain. It was a land filled with grapevines and fig trees and pomegranates. It was a land of olive oil and honey. It was a land in which they could feast every day.

In which they would lack nothing. A land whose stones were of iron and out of whose hills they could dig copper, giving them wealth and power. By the way, God has put us in a land that is every bit as rich and fruitful. God also gave them his law. He nourished them, giving them his word.

It's a wonderful law that showed them how to love God and how to love one another. Because after all, what good is great wealth and rich food if you can't eat it in peace, right? It's better to have a crust than to have a feast without peace. What good is wealth and rich food if the streets are filled with violence and homes are filled with hostility and bickering and indolence? So he provided his law to instruct them how they ought to live.

He provided good civil magistrates who restrained sin, enabling people to live in safety, enabling them to live free from violence. He gave them good kings. He gave them also teachers of the law that were scattered throughout the land to train them and instruct them how to enjoy health, how to live in peace with each other with every mind, every man says under his own vine and fig tree. That's a blessed condition. And it was the Levites that were sent throughout the land to teach the people God's word.

And so how did they respond to this kindness and favor? Well, Isaiah says they rebelled. They rebelled. Now, what are children in rebellion like? That's what Isaiah says.

They're like rebellious. God brought up children, he nourished them, he's kind to them, and they rebelled. Well, rebellious children don't pursue a relationship with those against whom they are rebelling, do they? They say as few words as possible, resorting mainly to grunts, unless someone has wronged them, in which case they can speak eloquently. They don't want to spend time with the family.

They have other priorities that pull them away, that cause them to miss significant events in the family. They don't have any respect for their parents, do they? They don't think their parents know very much, and at least don't know the right sorts of things. They have no respect for their parents, and so they don't pay any attention or much attention to their advice or counsel. And if they do listen to it, they don't think it really applies to them, or that it's too impractical, or that it's inefficient, or that it's outdated or any number of other things.

Rebellious children despise authority, and they don't respond well or accept correction, do they? Rebellious children, above all, are right in their own eyes, and they don't give any consideration to other views or perspectives. Rebellious children are ungrateful. They don't appreciate the favor that and kindness that is shown to them. They don't appreciate the gifts that are given to them or the labor that is expended on their behalf.

Now, we probably don't think of ourselves as rebellious people or as rebellious children. But what does this picture of a rebellious child look like if we transpose it to our relationship with the Lord, our Father? This is what Isaiah is describing in accusing them of rebellion. It's a people who don't pursue a relationship with the Lord. They may say they want it, but they don't do the things that build a relationship.

Their prayers are short and perfunctory. They have little to say and more important business to attend to. Their priorities pull them away from public worship. They have more important matters to attend to, higher priorities. And when they do read God's Word, They don't remember what they've read or they have little interest in understanding and implementing its wisdom and its counsel in their life, especially if it requires them to change or be inconvenienced.

They pick and choose which commands in Scripture they think are good and which can be safely ignored They have scant respect for God's authority in their life They may submit as long as it doesn't interfere with their own will and their own pleasure, as long as it doesn't pinch or step on their toes. Or when the Lord sends correction trials of various kinds, they don't receive that correction. They get discouraged, They get impatient, maybe even angry. They might be filled with self-pity at how hard their life is and possibly begin to think that God doesn't love them and is just giving them a hard time. Their mind is far away from the Lord And they have very few thoughts regarding the Lord.

They don't know the Lord in any meaningful way. And They become ungrateful for everything the Lord provides forgetting that everything they have the Lord is provided They don't have anything that he hasn't provided They're ungrateful they until they lose something and then they become upset with the Lord for supposedly denying them what they think they're entitled to. They forget everything that he has done for them and continues to do for them. Now that probably hits a little closer to us, doesn't it? In verse three, God describes these people as those who lack understanding, slow to comprehend.

They're people that don't know, as we say, which side their bread is buttered. They don't know who cares for them. Or in Isaiah's words, they don't know who their father is. Now this idea of not knowing one's father, our own father, comes from Moses song in Deuteronomy 32 which says in verse 18, of the rock who beget you, you are unmindful you don't pay him attention right that's the mark of a rebellious child and he says and have forgotten the God who fathered you So Isaiah is drawing directly from the Song of Moses, this covenant. Animals, you know, aren't made in God's image, but they know where their food comes from.

As an eight or nine year old boy. I fed about 80 head of steer every day. And there was this long concrete trough that 80 steers could get around on either side of it and it had a conveyor belt that went across the top of it and that conveyor belt carried the food out and dropped it along this trough and as soon as they saw me going into that silage room and turned and heard the conveyor belt starting up, you know, they would come to the food. They would come to the trough and start lining up in expectation of the food. You see, they knew where their food came from.

But God says His people lack that basic understanding that the animals have. They don't gather where the word is being taught. They don't regularly open the word to be nourished. It's sort of a hit or miss. It's like, it's just like God says they don't know where their food comes from or they don't know who it is that takes care of them.

You know God speaks of oxen and donkeys because those are the animals of their day. That was their transportation and their work vehicles. But it's the same with cats and dogs, right? They know who feeds them and which house provides the bed for them. You see, sin is just irrational.

It makes people stupid. Nations that refuse the Lord, reject the Lord, and refuse to acknowledge the Lord. Nations that refuse to acknowledge that they are the people of God's pasture they act foolishly in ways that are detrimental to their own well-being for example just wanting just to pick one of hundreds. That is destructive of financial well-being. Now sometimes as a result of misfortune people fall into debt for one reason or another.

Sometimes short-term debts can help us through a need. But no one in their right mind accepts debt as a normal way of living long-term. And the fact that long-term corporate debt and the leverage it provides is today seen as a way of increasing wealth and it's a smart asset management to use just shows the stupidity of our nation. This is a recent thing. It's new in the 20th century really, it was only enabled by the existence of the Federal Reserve which enables us to use debt as money.

But it's really the height of stupidity. The Bible says the debtor is the servant of the lender. And here we are collecting debt and thinking that we're rich. Do we connect our increasing financial woes to this rejection of God? You see, it is utterly irrational and foolish to turn from the source of light and light and blessing and glory and ignore the hand that provides for us and instead choose to walk in darkness.

In verse four then, Isaiah goes on charging the people with being a sinful people. This means they are people who miss. They missed the goal or the purpose on which they live. They missed the path of life. They missed duties, leaving their obligations undone.

Now much of Isaiah is poetry and your Bible probably formats it, Isaiah, as poetry. Mine does, not all do. Writing it in verse form instead of prose form. But this chapter here, chapter one, after the beginning at verse two, is his Hebrew poetry. And like poetry, this verse opens with some alliteration in the Hebrew.

Hoy goy, hoy goy is how that verse opens woeful, sinful nation. Hoy goy. And Isaiah, in calling them goy or goyim, we might have heard, is using the same word to describe God's people, the Israelites, as that as what is used to describe the Gentile nations. So both of these charges, their stupidity and their being called the goy or the Gentiles also come directly from Moses song in Deuteronomy 22. Moses said there in verse 28, for they are a nation, a goy, void of counsel, nor is there any understanding in them.

Isaiah says they are weighed down, burdened by their iniquity. Now that word can also mean iniquity can also mean punishment or guilt. They're weighed down by their guilt, by their punishments for their sins. These are burdens. And a number of other translations, or several translations use that, where they are weighed down by punishment.

He also says they are a brood of evildoers. Now brood is the word for offspring. And so they are he says they are not only bad or spoiled. No spoiled offspring, but they actively corrupt and spoil those around them. They are corruptors.

And there's a tense in the form in Hebrew where the verb means to cause something to happen, and that's what's used here. They cause people to become spoiled. And this charge also comes from Deuteronomy 32, the song of Moses. They have corrupted themselves. They are not his children because because of their blemish, a perverse and a crooked generation.

You see, sin ruins everything it touches. And that's why the way of the transgressor is hard, the Bible says. Now fourthly, or I should say in verse four, they are said to forsake. They are said to forsake the Lord. To forsake is a word that's used to describe the severing or breaking of a covenant relationship.

And as you know, the Bible uses the word covenant to describe our relationship to the Lord. It's also used of the marriage relationship, the covenant of marriage. And That relationship can be destroyed by actions where one spouse either withdraws from the other or violates the exclusivity of their relationship in some way. And they are said to have forsaken that covenant. God promises in many places throughout Scripture never to leave us nor forsake us.

And twice in His closing words in Deuteronomy 31, Moses told the people that God would never leave them nor forsake them. In Joshua's parting message, in Joshua 24, he warned the people not to forsake the Lord and the people answered, far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods. And yet this is the repeated charge throughout judges that Israel forsook the Lord, they forsaken the Lord. This was Elijah's charge against Israel when he fled from Jezebel to Mount Horeb and God asked him, you remember he was so bold on Mount Carmel standing up to all those prophets of Baal and executing them when they engaged in idol worship. But then the next day, he gets this word from Jezebel that he would be made like those priests that he have bailed that he had executed.

And he fled. And he fled all the way to Mount Horeb. And God asked him when he got there, Elijah, what are you doing down here? Why are you here? And Elijah's response is, I've been very zealous for the Lord God of hosts because the children of Israel have forsaken your covenant, torn down your altars, killed your prophets, and I alone am left and they seek my life.

So Isaiah brings this charge as well that they have forsaken the Lord, they've broken this covenant. Verse four also says that they are they have provoked the Lord. And that's one Hebrew word provoked up to anger. It's It's really the word that means to spurn or reject. They have rejected the Holy One of Israel.

They have rejected. They've spurned him. They've despised him. And that's actually the more the more common translation despise reject spurn. And I think it fits here better and some number of translations use that they have spurned.

They've turned their nose up. They've turned away from the Holy One of Israel. The Holy One of Israel is a name that is almost unique to Isaiah, I think like twenty six out of the thirty one times or so that it's used. It's used in Isaiah to refer to the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, the one who is set apart from his creation. And he says they have also turned away backward.

It turned away backward. Where God has called them to go forward, like he called them to go into the promised land, they've turned around and are going the other way. And of course, repentance involves a turning around. It's a change of heart where we go from headed being headed this way to being headed the other way. And so God is here charging them with having turned away from the path forward that he had called them to walk on.

They've gone backward. Now, these charges in Isaiah one are rather bleak picture aren't they? Not complimentary. But I don't want to close today without pointing out the hope that is here as well. That's one of the reasons I wanted to read down to verse 9 because there is hope that is presented in this chapter.

We haven't gotten to it yet. We haven't gotten to it yet, but it's here. It's coming. And I just give you a hint. It says in verse nine, unless the Lord of hosts had left to us a very small remnant, there is a remnant that God does preserve a remnant.

And that was his answer to Elijah, you remember? When Elijah said, they've all forsaken you, God says, I have reserved for myself 7, 000 men who have not bowed the knee to Baal. God had preserved a remnant. God does preserve a remnant. But the message this morning, and that hope is there.

And I want to point it out to us, but the but the point of the message this morning is a call to self examination. It's a call to self examination. Jonathan Edwards has famously written Jonathan Edwards has famously written his 70 resolutions. They deal with his overall mission. They deal with good works, they deal with time management, they deal with relationships, they deal with suffering, they deal with character, and they deal with his spiritual life But one of them deals with this call to self-examination And he one of his resolutions was that he would read all of 70 of his resolutions every week, because it's good to write them, but if you never read them, they're not as good.

We need to read them. So this was his resolution. Now he had one regarding self-examination. And I'd like to leave that with you this morning. He said, resolved.

All of his resolutions started with that. Constantly. With the utmost niceness and diligence and the strictest scrutiny to be looking into the state of my soul that I may know whether I truly have an interest in Christ or not. That when I come to die, I may not have any negligence respecting this to repent of. When you come to die, your life is a life that is been a life of careful self-examination as the as God calls us to do so that we keep short accounts with others and with the Lord.

And then where we see in our examination, self-examination, where we see ourselves beginning to rebel, beginning to draw away from the Lord, beginning to break the covenant, then we immediately turn back to the Lord, we repent. And he says that when he comes to die, he may not have any negligence that we can have that full infallible assurance that the confession spoke of that we confess this morning based on the infallible promises of the word of God. May the Lord give us that infallible assurance of His love for us and of His grace to us in Christ. Almighty Heavenly Father, we want to receive all of your words, for all of them are life. We want to receive your corrections and your admonitions and your instructions, your rebukes, and your call to do the hard things, as well as the great and precious and wonderful promises of your work and what you do for us.

Oh Lord, grant us this diligence and grant us, Lord, faith to believe your promises, that your word is truth, that in it is life and light, and that outside of your word and outside of you there is only darkness. We ask Lord this in Jesus name. Amen.