Turn with me, if you will, to Isaiah chapter 42. Isaiah chapter 42, starting in verse 14. And let's pray before we begin. Our dear Heavenly Father, we do thank You for Your Word, and we pray that through it, You would teach us only to follow You, to lock our attention upon You, to invest all of our faith in you in order, oh Lord, that we might not be waylaid by other ideas that originate in this earth. And so we pray, Lord, for your blessings upon your word and upon our ears that we may hear and heed. And we lift these things up to you in the name of Jesus. Amen. Isaiah 42 verse 14, I have kept silent for a long time. I have kept still and restrained myself. Now, like a woman in labor, I will groan. I will both gasp and pant. I will lay waste the mountains and hills and wither all their vegetation. I will make the rivers into coastlands and dry up the ponds. I will lead the blind by the way they do not know, in paths they do not know I will guide them. I will make darkness into light before them, and rugged places into plains. These are the things I will do, and I will not leave them undone. They will be turned back and be utterly put to shame, who trust in idols, who say to molten images, you are my gods. hear you deaf and look you blind that you may see who is blind but my servant or so deaf as my messenger whom I send who is so blind as he that is at peace with me or so blind as the servant of the Lord you have seen many things but you do not observe them your ears are open but none hears the Lord has pleased was pleased for his righteousness sake to make the law great and glorious But this is a people plundered and despoiled. All of them are trapped in caves or are hidden away in prisons. They have become a prey with none to deliver them and a spoil with none to say give them back. Who among you will give ear to this? Who will give heed and listen hereafter? Who gave Jacob up for spoil in Israel to plunderers? Was it not the Lord against whom we have sinned, and in whose ways they were not willing to walk, and whose law they did not obey? So he poured out on them the heat of his anger, and the fierceness of battle, and it set him aflame all around. Yet he did not recognize it, and it burned him, but he paid no attention. The Lord begins here to speak to his people. He speaks to his people. Jehovah, the Lord of the covenant, talks to his people. The words and intentions originate with God. Verse 14, I have kept silent for a long time. I have kept still and restrained myself. Now like a woman in labor, I will groan. I will both gasp and pant. How long was God silent? How long was God silent over the idolatries of Israel? Well if we take a conventional dating from Solomon's death to Hezekiah which is about the time that this prophecy is being written it would be from which would be approximately at about 700 BC then it would be about 231 years. If we take it from the beginning of Solomon's reign which is where the paganism was first introduced into the monarchial portion of the theocracy then it would be about 270 years. Almost 300 years and maybe if we even wanted to extend that on further all the way up to the exile over 400 years. Over 400 years. God was silent. He was silent. He kept still and restrained himself. He kept still and he restrained himself. You know, the point of this whole thing is God was patient and he was silent for a long time. You know, when God is patient and God is silent, and he is that way in our lives a lot of times, even when we're in sin, We have a tendency to think that he's patient and he's silent because we're doing right. But it may be that he's patient and he's silent because he is waiting to fill the brim of his holiness and of his righteousness to the day when he will bring chastisement upon us, okay? So don't just assume that just because God is not doing calamitous things in your life that you're doing it necessarily well. That's why as we said this morning we need to examine ourselves. We need to be constantly examining ourselves and asking God what he is doing. What is going on inside of our souls so that we may know whether or not that we are following after him as we should. God was silent and patient for a very long time. Now the whole picture here is of God in silence. God restraining himself. And as he's restraining himself what is Israel doing? Worshipping idols. Now think back to when Moses was on Mount Horeb in Sinai and God came to him and said to him the people are down there worshipping a golden calf. I am going to go there and destroy them immediately and raise up seed from you. God immediately begins to make that move and of course Moses at that time stood between God and the people as a mediator as a type of Christ in his mediation with God as well. You see in the wilderness experience that the immediacy of God is such that when sin breaks out in the camp God breaks forth upon the congregation bringing about retribution for those things. Here God has remained silent. While idolatry is going on, he is patient. While the people depart further and further away from him. Even though he has given them much, he has shown them many things. He's shown them signs and wonders. He's given them his law. He's sent the prophets to them. He's done so many things for them. Yet they turn away from him to idolatry. And he restrains himself. He stays still during this period of time. Why does he do this? Why does God do that? Well we have some clues about this. God came to Abraham at one point in his life and he said to him that he was going to give to him the land of Canaan but not right away. It was going to be over a period of time because the sin of the Amorite has not come to the full said God. And this economy of God's judgment goes on through the Old Testament, where God waits upon the sin. Remember when he is going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah? What does he say to Abraham about that? He says, the cry of the people has come up into my ears. In other words, he's waiting. He waits. What does he wait for? Why does he wait? He's holy, he doesn't have to. When he sees sin, he can wipe it out immediately. But he does so because he is gracious. He graciously gives man time to repent of his sin. We take advantage of that time that he gives to us and sin more. We'll play with God in that. You know, God'll give us time. We'll think that He's blessing us. And we may even know, well, you know, one of these days I may have to pay for this, but, you know, I seem to be okay now. So I'm gonna just keep on pushing a little bit further, a little bit further, a little bit further. God is gracious with us. He restrains Himself. He holds Himself back. But He says, that time is running out. God says to them, the time is running out. It's building up in me, he says. And this is a figure because God is without passion in the sense that God is not one who is up and down a roller coaster of emotions the way we are. He simply reveals the white hot heat of his emotions whether he is in grace or whether he is in justice. He is showing us these things in a measure. But he himself is not out of control of himself. But yet he gives this to us in a way that we will understand. He anthropomorphizes himself so to speak here. And he gives it to us in a figure as if he were like a woman who is expectant with child on the verge of giving birth. It's built up within him to the point of labor, to the point in which he is about to burst forth in a groan and to break out in a gasp and a pant. I've had enough. I've had enough. If you go all the way back to the beginning of Isaiah, he says to them, in essence, I am fed up. with your bulls and your sacrifices. I am fed up with them. You bring them, you do them properly, but you have no, you don't care at all about your sin. You're just going through rote ritual when you do it. I'm fed up with it. I'm fed up. So God is coming to the place here where his justice is beginning to come to the top of the cup. just about to overflow. And he puts it to them in this way. The whole picture is of an uncontrollable burst of activity after a long, long silence. the building up of an anger against idolatry that's going to express itself. And what will be the result of this outburst of divine activity? Well, the first will be judgment. Verse 15 says, I will lay waste the mountains and hills and wither all their vegetation. I will make the rivers into coastlands and dry up the ponds. I'll bring down the high places. You know I think in many ways he has in mind those ritual high places that were such an issue throughout first and second kings. You remember whenever a king of Judah was described it might say of him he was a good king and yet he did not take down the high places. over and over again it says of one king after another and the best kings that there were were those who did tear down the high places what were those high places well originally those high places were places where people had worshiped Jehovah back before the temple was built But when the temple was built the high places were to be abolished because all of the central worship was to be done in the temple and only in the temple. And so those high places over time began to be converted into places of idolatry. Groves were planted there. Asherim were put up. Statues were put on them in shrines. And they became places of abomination. Sometimes a king would come along and would wipe out all of the groves of Baalim. But would leave behind the high places devoted to Jehovah. And that would be an issue that God would have with that king. Only in Jerusalem, only in the temple is my name. Only there will the prayers of the people be directed. All other places are not going to compete with the central place of the sanctuary. And so he says, I will bring down the high places. He's talking about mountains and hills here. He's talking about drying up rivers and raising up the islands, that is, the high places below the water line. When the waters go down, then it's as if the islands rise up out of it. And what we see here is a total reversal of the order of things against the idolaters. A total reversal of things. God says, when I come, when I come to do judgment, The judgment that I come to do is going to turn the earth inside out. No less than that. I come to reverse everything. Now that's the definition basically of curse. What a curse does is a curse begins to work creation backwards towards nothingness. Basically, in a curse, creation begins to decreate. That's why over and over again, the prophets will say that the world is become without form and void. In other words, they'll use the same term, the Tohu and the Bohu of Genesis chapter one. To say that creation is now beginning to back up because the curse is not in faith moving forward in creation but is beginning to move back and that's corruption. Corruption. Now this is our moral definition of the law of thermodynamics. The law of corruption, the law of entropy. What is it really? It's where God, as it were, backs away from creation. and allows it to begin to move back into decreation again. Now he controls this in order that he doesn't completely annihilate all of his creation. But this has an effect upon all of the inhabitants of creation. We live under this corruption, this gradual decreation that is taking place around about us. God loves this world and he wants to save this world from that. From that very thing. And to reverse that graciously in redemption. Verse 16. What will be the result of this outburst of divine activity? First judgment, then grace. I will lead the blind by the way they do not know, in paths they do not know I will guide them. I will make darkness into light before them in rugged places and plains. These are the things I will do and I will not leave them undone. The people have been blinded by idolatry. Their idols cannot see and they have become like their idols. Remember Psalm 115, 4 through 8? Their idols are silver and gold, the work of man's hands. They have mouths, but they cannot speak. They have eyes, but they cannot see. They have ears, but they cannot hear. They have noses, but they cannot smell. They have hands, but they cannot feel. They have feet, but they cannot walk. They cannot make a sound with their throat. Those who make them will become like them, everyone who trusts in them. You know what idolatry is? You know what it really is? I mean, if you get down to the heart of what idolatry is, what is it? Idolatry is man worshipping man. It's man worshipping man. Man isn't finding another God. Man never has anything to work with but the material that he has at hand which was given to him by God. You know when those people made that golden calf in the wilderness they used gold that God had given to the world to do it with. And when man in his imagination begins to imagine gods other than God himself, he has nothing to use but the material of his own mind, his psyche, his emotions, his soul, himself. He has to draw out of his own experience. Now he may expand that somewhat beyond himself to draw from the experiences of the collective human population, but that's as far as he can go with it. Man in idolatry never ever rises above the worship of man. We need to let that settle because if we ever think that we can imagine a God other than ourselves or other than the God who is, then there just might be a God out there who coexists with God and there isn't. So the only thing that we can do is to borrow from our own substance, from our own gray matter, from our own experience, from all of those things that makes man, man. And it doesn't matter whether we leave that as a mythology or as a theology or whether we turn it into a philosophy or whether we make an idol out of it. We have done nothing at the end of the day but worship ourselves. We will become like the idol. This is what the psalmist is saying here is that it loops downwards. Since we have lowered ourselves to the point of worshiping those things that are beneath us, we ourselves will become like our idols. We will lower down to the standard of those idols and below them. And then we'll create more idols and they'll be even more inferior and we'll be like them and we just keep going down until we just disappear into nothingness. Which is, you know, where it all goes anyway. Even idolatry was nihilistic. So, the bottom line is, is that we can't escape this. Of ourselves we can't escape it. Why? Because we're blinded. The Lord will be as the eyes to the blind. He says, I will guide them. I will be the eyes of the blind. The condition is worse in that world of the blind because the world has been cast into darkness. I mean, what's worse than being blind? Being blind in a dark world. Because even if your eyes were working, you still couldn't see anything. God says, I'll be the guide to them. I'll be the eyes to them. My eyes will see for them. And I will enlighten the world. I will bring the world to dawn in order that my people may be able to see. the Lord will enlighten the world for them and he will straighten out the rugged places so that they will not stumble as they walk and so even as God has in judgment begun to reverse the order of the world to turn the world as it were inside out so it is that he uses his mighty power in order to bring salvation to his people and a straight pathway by which they may be able to walk in his ways Remember how we started out with the introduction of the Messiah? What's going to happen when the Messiah comes into the world? The high places will be brought low. The low places will be brought up. A straight plane will be made. David says over and over again, you keep my feet from slipping. You set me on a sure place. Now why is that important to us? Because of ourselves, we can never walk in this world in our own ways without straying away, without struggling, without stumbling over everything, every obstacle that comes in our way. Why? Because of ourselves, we are blind. So the Lord will enlighten the world for those who are blinded by idolatry and straighten out the rugged places so they won't stumble. This is salvation that goes into the heart first. It goes into the heart. His salvation to us is to completely turn us inside out. He goes into the depths of our heart and he deals with the sin, the idolatry that is in there first. It's not enough for God to just destroy all of the idols. He did that before Israel in bringing them out of Egypt. What good did it do them? What was the first thing they did when they went out into the desert? They recreated the Egyptian god Osiris or Horus. After he had destroyed all of the idols or all of the gods in the plagues of the Egyptians, they go out into the desert and try to rebuild the idolatrous religion. Why? Because the heart had not been saved. And so he says to them in the law, but you must be circumcised in the heart. In the heart. That's where it's got to begin. Salvation extends to the world. It doesn't just stop as a personal experience. It extends on out into the world. God sent Jesus into this world and He means to save the world. You remember in creation how the order of creation was? First three days, last three days. In the first three days God creates the house. In the last three days He creates the inhabitants, the residents. So he makes the house first, he makes the environment, he makes the world in which they live, and then he houses each one of those with inhabitants, fills it up with inhabitants. So God created the house and the residence. But sin brought death to the resident. Sin brought death to mankind. And that death spread on into all flesh. and curse came to the house. The house became corrupt. Remember in the early chapters of Genesis, God comes down, as it were, and looks upon the world, and he says, it's all violence and corruption. Violence and corruption. The whole world is full of it. Violence and corruption. Jesus, came into this world to seek out the lost and to save the house. To save the house. That's what John 3.16 is all about. That's what Romans 8 is all about. What does John 3.16 say? For God so loved the cosmos, the world, creation. Okay? That's what that word means. For God so loved His creation. that He sent His only begotten Son into the world, that whosoever believeth it begins in the heart of men. But it extends on to the salvation coming to reverse the curse that is in the world. He came not only to save man, but to save the house as well. These are the things I will do and I will not leave them undone. With all the urgency in God formerly described, it is assured absolutely that He will do this and He will complete it. Nothing of His work of judgment, nothing of His work of grace will be left undone until justice and grace come together on the cross. He will not leave this undone. he will complete his work. You know you just need to park your life on that for a good long while. You know we get all tangled up with what's going on with ISIS. Are they infiltrating America right now? Well maybe they are. We get all tangled up with what terrorists are doing all over the place in schools and clinics and things all over the country and we get agitated about our things out of control. Is God not saving His house? Is He not bringing salvation to this world? Do we believe God and His Word when He said, these are the things I will do and I will not leave them undone? As surely as the rainbow is in the cloud that says to us, never again will I ever bring destruction upon the earth in the form of a flood. And there will be seasons every year until the end of time. So much for nuclear war. Or at least for global nuclear war. So much for global warming. God has promised he will do these things. And he will not leave them undone. Do you believe in him? Do you believe in the promise that he has made to us here? This is a glorious promise. The promise tells us that we are safe in His hands. He will save His people. He will save the house. Now the result of this urgent work is total change. High becomes low. Wet becomes dry. Blind is seeing. Darkness is light. The heart is changed. The whole being converted away from the former lusts. and affections that desired false gods and vanities. The thing that they needed more than anything else was a change of heart, a heart that could not stand to look upon the idols. Verse 17, they will be turned back and be utterly put to shame who trust in idols, who say to molten images, you are our gods. God promises to His people that He will give them such a heart, that He will open up such a light to them, that He will guide their eyes in such a way, that He will turn the world, as it were, inside out, and turn their hearts and lives so inside out. That when they look at the abominable works of their own hands, they will blush and say, why do I do these things? And cast them away from them, never ever to go back to them again and call them gods because they know now who their god is. Why? Because in his salvation, what has he done? He has united them once again with himself. And that was their true heart's desire all along. And so God having spoken, now the prophet speaks to the people. This is done a lot of times in the Scripture. Remember in Job, Elu who speaks first, he is the first preacher who brings the truth to bear upon the matter, and then God comes out of the whirlwind and speaks. God speaks through his preachers, but it is he who is the cause of the speaking. It is He who is the voice behind the living voice of the prophet and preacher, foretelling His words and His intentions. The urgency of the Lord is translated into the proclamation of the prophet to the people. How is this conversation to be manifested? Verse 18. Hear you deaf, and he's very emphatic here. Hear you deaf and look you blind that you may see. Let the deaf hear and the blind see. The command is effectual. He commanded the light to shine out of the darkness. Now he commands the deaf ears to hear. Can he do that? Can God make the deaf to hear? As surely as He can create all of the universe from nothingness, He can make the deaf ears easily to hear and the blind eyes easily to see. So He commands the deaf ears to hear. And then He says, look, look, you blind, give attention to where your eyes are cast in order that you may see What you're actually looking at. You know, we look at things and don't see them. We do that all the time. You know, we can even do that physically. If you're driving down the road and you're texting at the same time, you may be looking right at that car that you're about to smash into and you don't even see it. You know why? Because your mind is so engaged that it's not saying anything to your eyes at all. If we can do that physically, we can do that spiritually. And we do it all the time spiritually. We go about doing all kinds of things without paying any attention to what we're doing. And all of the consequences are laid out in front of us and yet we blindly go on, seeing but not seeing, hearing but not hearing. That's why Jesus says, he that hath ears to hear, he that hath ears to hear, let him hear. And he was talking to a multitude of people who had a pen on each side of their face. They had ears. They heard the words. The sound waves were going through and vibrating on their tympanic membrane. But they weren't hearing. Because the words that he was speaking to them, they were not understanding. They were dull of hearing. So they could not understand. And so he says, look, give attention. Give attention to these things so that you may indeed see the things that you're looking at. Verse 19, who is blind but my servant, or so deaf as my messenger whom I sent? Who is so blind as he that is at peace with me, or so blind as the servant of the Lord? The servant here is not the servant of the Lord that we saw in chapter 41, who is Jesus. This servant is the one who is mentioned earlier in the book of Isaiah, Isaiah 41, 8 through 10, where he says, But thou, Israel, art my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham my friend, thou whom I have taken from the ends of the earth and called thee from the chief men thereof and said unto thee, Thou art my servant, I have chosen thee, and not cast thee away. This is the servant he's speaking to. Who is so blind as my servant, Israel Jacob? Who is so blind as he? No one in all the world and you might say well that doesn't seem right because what's all around Israel but the pagan nation steeped in their paganism. But see here's his whole point. They are out there doing their practices because they're in the darkness. His people have the oracles. His people have the law. His people have the rituals that point to salvation. His people have the prophets. His people have all of these things in covenant with Him. You know, he says here, who is so blind is he that is at peace with me. I think he's referring to the covenant here. Because it is in the covenant that they found peace with God. Only in the covenant could the peace offering be offered. Only in the new covenant do we find peace in Jesus Christ. And so it is to His covenant people that He says to them, who is so blind as you are? You're more blind than the whole world. Yes, they're steeped in abominable rituals of idolatry, but they don't know any better. You know better. You have all of these blessings that have been given to you. All of these manifestations that have been shown to you that I'm here. And yet you're blind. You can't see. You don't know where you're going or what you're doing. You're falling into idolatry. God proved to this world over thousands of years of experience. He proved to this world that He can perform signs and wonders right before our face and we will not believe in Him. We will not believe in Him. Don't deceive yourself for one minute in believing that if God ever gave you some kind of magnificent experience, you'd be locked for life in faith and devotion to Him. No, you would not. It is not enough for God to be with us approximately. It isn't until God is in us that we change. It is not until He is in us that we change. Who is so blind as my servant? Or so deaf as my messenger whom I have sent? Who is so blind as he that is at peace with me? Or so blind as the servant of the covenant Lord? You've seen many things, he says to Israel. We could recount those things, the psalmists do, time and time again. Just go over and over it. What has the Lord done for us? And they'll begin at the beginning of Israel and they'll go all the way through all the things that he's done. All the way from Moses to David. What all has he done? You've seen many things. But you do not observe them. You don't think on them. You don't meditate on them. They have fallen away from your glance. Even your peripheral. Your ears are open. They function. You have senses that are functioning, but they won't see me, and they won't hear me, says the Lord. The servant is more deaf and blind than the rest of the world. For Israel, Jacob was given so much, even to the point of being at peace with God, And yet he's still dull and rebellious following after deaf and blind idols. Verse 21, the Lord was pleased for his righteousness sake to make the law great and glorious. For his righteousness sake, he made the law great and glorious. It was very evident before their eyes, this great law that he had given to them. This law which spoke about his holiness and his righteousness that spoke about his own character. You know, even the pagan could see it. We have one representative in the Old Testament, 1 Kings chapter 10. Had he not revealed his righteousness to men? The Queen of Sheba says, it was a true report, she says when she comes to Solomon's court. which I heard in my own land about your words and your wisdom. Nevertheless, I did not believe the reports until I came and my eyes had seen it. And behold, the half was not told me. You exceed in wisdom and prosperity the word which I heard. How blessed are your men, how blessed are these your servants who stand before you continually and hear your wisdom. Blessed be the Lord your God who delighted in you to set you on the throne of Israel because the Lord loved Israel forever therefore he made you king to do justice and righteousness. This from the lips of a pagan queen who having seen the things the Lord had done for Israel exalts in the greatness and the glory of His law and of His counsel. Verse 22, but this is a people plundered and despoiled, all of them trapped in caves or are hidden away in prisons. They have become a prey with none to deliver them and a spoil with none to say, give them back. They should have been the conquerors. They should have been the conquerors, not the conquered. You know, in the blessings of the covenant, They were promised to be the conquerors and not the conquered. Deuteronomy 28, 7, the Lord shall cause your enemies who rise up against you to be defeated before you. They will come out against you one way and will flee before you seven ways. The Lord will make you the head, not the tail. And you only will be above and you will not be underneath if you listen to the commandments of the Lord your God, which I charge you today to observe them carefully. The condition was that they were to obey God. And that condition is not a condition to be done in the strength that we possess without union with God Himself by His Spirit. He says to them, He says, you cannot do this unless your heart is circumcised. Circumcise the foreskin of your heart, He says. In other words, He says to them, come to me for salvation. Come to me for grace. Let me pour out upon you. Let me baptize you with my graces in order that you may see, in order that you may understand, in order that your obedience may be true and sincere to me." Instead, they're trapped in hopelessness, hiding, imprisoned themselves to pray with no one to release them and no one to demand their return. How did they get to be this way? Because they turned on the curse side of the covenant. They did not obey the conditions. They did not seek out salvation. And so they became like their idols who they made, blind and deaf. And because they were blind and deaf, weakened and unable to move, they became a prey to the enemies of God's people. And God himself delivered them over into the hands of their enemies. God Himself delivered them into the hands of His enemies. You know He does that. If we dally around in the world long enough, God will give us to the world. He's done that with many churches. There are many churches that He has just handed over to the world. They are now empty shells. They may be operating, but they're not a church. Because they've denied the God who made them. They've denied the Christ who died for them. They've denied the resurrection. They've denied the divinity of Christ. They have denied the triune God. They have denied all that the scriptures has taught to them. And have become blinder and deeper than the rest of the world. There is nothing in this world so foolish as someone who was raised in the bosom of God's Word who leaves it and goes into the world and never comes back and makes his own idols. It's amazing to me how fast a person can fall who has spent his whole life being instructed in the church. goes out into the world and falls into the abyss far faster than the worldling does who at least has got enough has got enough craft to be able to keep himself surviving just long enough to keep away from death the attendant death on sin but the naive covenant child who departs from his ways and the protection of his ways, how fast he falls. Why? Because he's blinder and deafer than the world. But the one who comes up in his covenant, the one who comes up listening to his word, listening to his laws, depending upon his grace for his salvation, depending upon his spirit for his strength at all times, is wiser than the wisest in the world. 23, who among you will give ear to this? You know, this question is put forth as an offer. Who among you will listen to this? Is there anyone here who will hear this? Who will give heed and listen hereafter? In other words, is there anyone, says the prophet to the congregation of Israel, is there anyone among you who will listen to what I have just said? Who will listen to what God has just said to you? Is there anyone who will, and not only now listen, but listen from now on, hereafter, from now on. And will walk in the way of hearing from this time forward. Jesus put a lot of capital on this in Matthew chapter 13. When he said, who has ears to hear, let him hear. Who has ears to hear? And when Jesus said it, it was an effectual call. It wasn't an offer. It was an effectual call. Because here he discriminated between his disciples and the rest in that crowd. You ever wonder why it is that Jesus spoke in parables? What do preachers say most of the time? In order to make clear hard things, hard spiritual things, Jesus spoke in parables. It's not what Jesus said. Jesus said, I speak in parables so that they won't understand. And only your ears, which are blessed as to his disciples, will understand these things. Only your ears will understand these things. And so he explains it to them. The sum of the matter, the power of judgment and grace, the power of judgment and grace is found in God alone. Only in God can that be found. Who gave Jacob up for a spoil in Israel to plunderers? Was it not the Lord against whom we have sinned? Was it that the Assyrians were stronger than us? Was it that the Babylonians were stronger than us? Was it that we just, you know, kind of got laxed in keeping up our armaments? We weren't training our boys well enough to be good fighters. So we got overrun. We kind of fell behind on horses and chariots and stuff. And so we got overrun. We didn't have enough walls around our cities. That's not why they fell. They fall under their enemies because they sinned against God. And having sinned against God, he withdraws from them his powers of grace and hands them over to his enemies. He himself stirred the enemies up to come into them. He himself in grace had kept them away for so long. He himself delivered them over into their hands. You go back and read the book of Judges and count how many times the phrase, he sold them into the hands of his enemies, crops up. And so he says, who gave Jacob up for a spoil in Israel to plunderers? Was it not the covenant Lord, Yahweh? against whom we have sinned and in whose ways they were not willing to walk." We're not just talking about rote obedience to the law here. We're talking about a lifestyle or what in the Elizabethan is a conversation. A continual walk. A behavior. That behavior is that we are not walking in our ways, we are walking in His ways. And how are His ways defined to us? And whose law they did not obey. To walk in His ways is to be obedient to His law. We're not antinomians. God's law still must be obeyed. And even more so by Christians who are now enabled to do so by grace. This is how we walk in His ways. This is how we show forth righteousness in this world. By obedience to His law. Now obedience to His law never saved anybody. But the saved walk in it. The saved walk in it. Or they're not saved. Understand that. It is a work holy of the Lord. You know, the question of verse 23 extends. Who knows the Lord? Israel, Jacob is the victim of conquest at the hands of the enemy, not because the enemy is strong. but because God has sold them into the hands of their enemies for their sins against him. Verse 25, so he poured out on them the heat of his anger and the fierceness of battle and it set him aflame all around yet he did not recognize it and it burned him but he paid no attention to it. There's something wrong with the heart. There's something wrong with the heart. His people are whipped. but they are not changed. Look with me to Isaiah chapter 1. Long, long time ago, years ago, we started this book in Isaiah chapter 1. And what was the message that we got in chapter 1? Starting in verse 2. Listen, O heavens, and hear, O earth, for the Lord speaks. Sons, I have reared up and brought up, and they have revolted against me." Who's that? Israel. An ox knows his owner, and a donkey his master's manger. But Israel does not know. My people do not understand. My people are dumber than oxes and donkeys. They do not know their master. as the ox and the donkey know their masters. Alas, sinful nation! People weighed down with iniquity, offspring of evil doers, sons who act corruptly. They have abandoned the Lord. They have despised the Holy One of Israel. They have turned away from Him. Where will you be stricken again as you continue in your rebellion? The whole head is sick, the whole heart is faint from the sole of the foot even to the head. There's nothing sound in it, only bruises, welts, and raw wounds not pressed out or bandaged nor softened with oil. In other words, he says, I've whipped you so many times there's not a place to whip. There's not a place left, there's not sound flesh left upon which to lay the lash to you. How many times have I stricken you for your sin and you would not turn? Where am I going to lay the lash now? There's no other place. Your land is desolate. Your cities are burned with fire. Your fields, strangers are devouring them in your presence. It is desolation as overthrown by strangers. The daughter of Zion is left like a shelter in a vineyard, like a watchman's hut in a cucumber field, like a besieged city. Unless the Lord of Hosts had left us a few survivors, we would be like Sodom. We would be like Gomorrah. What does Israel need? They need to be converted. They need to be converted. They need for their world to be turned inside out. They need for God to probe into their heart with salvation and grace. and to turn the heart of stone into a heart of flesh. They need for God to do a work on their very nature that transforms them into another creature. One who has eyes to see, one who has ears to hear, one that abhors idols and cannot stand the sight or even the thought of them. That is the way to destroy all idolatry. to change the heart of man to God. To God. We're doomed to blindness and darkness of idolatry if we are not converted. Our hearts must be changed. We must have our affections changed. We must have our minds brought in line with His ways. Therefore, we have to know His ways. believe in his ways and embrace his ways and for that to take place there is nothing we can do we need the favor of the Lord to convert our hearts and turn us from idols to him and that's the answer that's the answer okay that's what this world needs this world needs to have its heart converted And that is going to happen. God is going to do this. In our generation? Doubt it, seriously. The next? Probably not. The next? Probably not. Who knows how long? But God is going to change the hearts of men in this world until there's not a single idol left. For no man will even want will be ashamed at the very thought of idols. He says these are the things I will do. And I will not leave it undone. It's assured to us. He's going to annihilate all of the idols of this earth. And his way of doing it is going to be we ourselves are going to cast our idols into the caves and into the rocks. We ourselves will destroy our idols. Why? Because he will give us hearts and minds and eyes and ears to see and know him and only him. Pray for that. Pray for it in your own life. We all have little shrines in us where we keep little idols. Even as Christians we do this. And it is our career in life to search out every idol in our life and destroy it. And replace it with a garden of God's righteousness. Search out your idols. Search out our idols and let our hearts be converted. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we do come to you asking you for the grace, asking you for the strength to do what we cannot do ourselves. But O Lord in Christ Jesus, who has come into this world to be the revelation, the one and only image of God, You have given to us a focal place for our worship in Christ Jesus. And so we pray, Lord, that we would look to Him with eyes that see and listen to Him with ears that hear. The one who manifests God, who is Himself the express image of God and the shining glory of Him. Cause us to completely focus ourselves upon Him. And to lay aside all that we value in our lives, that our emotions attach themselves to, which are not of you. Which our intellect is excited by, which are not of you. And that in every inclination of our heart that is away from you, you would meet us. and you would change us and transform us in order that we too may throw away all of our idols that we may look at the work of our hands and be ashamed and so turn to you in order that we may not be ashamed and confess you before men throughout our lives do this in our hearts oh lord and we pray that you would do it in this world because you have promised that these are the things that you will do and you will not leave them undone and so Lord we pray that in our time that we will do according to your will. What is in our place to be done. To destroy the idols of the earth. For we lift all these things up to you in the name of Jesus.