If you have your Bibles, you can turn to Isaiah chapter 12. I have good news. A whole chapter this week. But the chapter is also pretty small, so, you know. Here's what I'm going to do to begin with. I'm going to read some verses of Psalms right after the other. And then I'm going to read portions of Isaiah 12 And you're going to see some similarities here. I will give thanks to the Lord according to His righteousness, and I will sing praise to the name of the Lord Most High. I will give thanks to the Lord with all my heart. I will tell of all thy wonders. I will give thanks to thee among the nations, O Lord, and I will sing praises to thy name. Give thanks to the Lord with the lyre. Sing praises to Him with harp of ten strings. Give thanks to the Lord. Call on His name. Make known among the nations what He has done. We give thanks to Thee, O God. We give thanks, for Thy name is near. Men declare Thy wondrous works. In God we have boasted all day long, and we give thanks to Thy name forever." Now this is from Isaiah chapter 12. On that day, I will give thanks to You, O Lord, for the Lord God is my strength and song. In that day you will say good thanks to the Lord, call on his name, make known his deeds among the peoples, praise the Lord in song, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel." This is the sort of a text that a preacher loves to preach on. These songs in Isaiah 12 have two different periods of time in mind, but they are connected by one God with one name, with one work, one proclamation among the nations. Isaiah's song is going to be sung by all Christians on the great day of the Lord. In that day is how it begins. The day of their salvation, the day when God's anger is turned into final comfort. I got to thinking about this. It's not that difficult to figure out and to see how a saved people would be able to sing a song like the one that Isaiah sings when they're in glory. Because if you're without sin, and you're without worry, and without trial, and without pain, and without suffering, then you're going to be able to see perfectly how God has done such mighty and wonderful things, and you're going to be able to praise Him for it. But for many Christians, it often does seem difficult to understand how we can sing such a song now. We live in a time of great sin and evil. Things unfairly happen to the best of us. We get robbed, or beat, or hurt, or sick, or depressed, or anxious about life. We fight with other people, whether they're our enemies, or our friends, or our family, or even our brothers and sisters in Christ. We get prideful, arrogant, and haughty in the way that we act out our love and we act charitably and kindly and patiently with others. We don't do that as we ought to do. Even nature is against us as we think about what's happened to Florida for the past couple of months. Nations attack us and we attack them. Our lives do not go the way we wish they would go. We do not make the kind of money that we would like to make. Or if we do make the kind of money we would like to make, it doesn't make us happy. We do not have the ability to create our families the way we would wish or to bring our children about exactly the way we would want. Many people live in broken families or in poverty or in physical pain or emotional distress. In a word, we suffer in this life. Sometimes we're able to set aside our troubles for a time in order to praise God. And this is good. But quite honestly, sometimes our circumstances and personal feelings drive us back to ourselves after that brief period of Thanksgiving is over. Other times, our lives get so bad that we all together are unable to give thanks at all. So how is it that someone like David can sing these things that he sang in this life at this time? Far too many people in our day think that the way to go about praising God and giving thanks to Him is by juicing up our emotional state. That's just the way people think. Especially young people. They view praise and thanksgiving as emotional outcomes of the way that you feel at any moment in time. And so if you feel good, then you praise. And if you don't, then you don't. Brothers and sisters, this is fundamentally not what praise and worship and thanksgiving is about. And this is exactly why so many people let their lives dictate their worship, rather than letting their worship dictate the response that they have in their lives. Now, I put Isaiah and the Psalms together on purpose. Their content is identical, but their time frame is not. What we're going to do is to look at Isaiah's future song and let that speak to our present song that we are commanded to sing now. And interestingly, it's the same song. Unlike those who want to sing about themselves, even if it be their response to God, I love you. David does that sort of thing. This is not what Isaiah's song is particularly about. We're not to be fooled into singing about ourselves, driven to a self-centered, feeling-based worship that is supposedly about God, but it's not at all. Rather, we're to sing about that which is objective. Or at least to have that as the outcome of the emotional response that we have in our song. We're to sing about one who is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, and truth. And in doing so, the Holy Spirit then takes our emotions and lets them flow in such a way that God transforms us in a deeply emotional and experiential manner. When our emotions flow from truth and from thinking about their created source rather than thinking about ourselves, then they have the power to transform us, not to control us. So I want you to notice several things about our passage. First, I want you to notice the outward flow of the text. Now, you're not going to get this in most English translations, but it's there in the Hebrew. It begins with the singular form of you, the word you, in verse one. Then you will say on that day, you, singular. This is the praise of one man. This continues through verse 2. One man is singing. Then suddenly in verse 3 in the Hebrew you have a change from the singular form of you to the plural form. So the solo of one man has now been joined by an entire choir who are singing harmony and choruses to their creator. The one has become many. It's very interesting how this happens. But the song doesn't end here. We see that it extends even beyond the choir to the whole earth in verse 5. It says, let this be known throughout the earth. So there is an outward movement of our text. The praise and worship of God never ends with oneself. It spreads outward and grows until it reaches to the farthest ends of the world to all types of people who will then join in the song. And we're going to keep this in mind throughout our conversation this morning. The next thing to notice about the song is its subject. The praise goes to God alone. Now, many times we will hear in churches songs that praise God. But oftentimes these songs, especially contemporary songs, the good part that they sing is praising God, but they oftentimes leave out the reason why you're praising God. But you'll never find this in the Bible. So we know that there is some reason to praise God here. It's because of His name in verse 4. It's because of His deeds in verse 5. It's because of His presence in Zion in verse 6. This is why we sing. We don't just sing as an end to itself. We sing because of these things. This is why we give thanks. This is why we praise God. Now, I've said that Isaiah's song is about the future. But there's a curious verse in our passage this morning. It's Isaiah 12-2. I want to compare this with Exodus 15-2. Now Exodus 15 is that passage where you find recorded a song of Moses and a song of his sister Miriam after Pharaoh was tossed into the sea. These are both songs of deliverance, of mighty works that God does, that God has shown to both Israel and to Pharaoh. Compare these verses. Isaiah sings, Behold, God is my salvation. I will trust and not be afraid. For the Lord God is my strength and my song. He has become my salvation. Moses sang, identical words. The Lord is my strength and my song. He has become my salvation. Now it's interesting that we have seen Exodus themes in our passage in chapter 11 and other places. Back in chapter 11, listen to these words of the Exodus that we saw last week. In that day, the Lord will reach out his hand a second time to reclaim the remnant that is left of his people. He will gather the exiles of Israel. He will assemble the scattered people of Judah. And there will be a highway for the remnant of his people, as there was for Israel when they came out of Egypt. Second Exodus. In quoting Moses' Song of Deliverance, here in chapter 12, it's clear that Isaiah has this second Exodus still in his mind. This is made even more evident in the next verse, chapter 12, verse 3. It says, therefore you will joyously draw water from the spring of salvation. More Exodus imagery, and we're going to look at that near the end of our time together. This places us in a perfect position to understand what is meant then, in verses 4 through 5 of our text. Make known his deeds among the peoples. Make them remember that His name is exalted. Praise the Lord in song, for He has done excellent things. Do you understand this then? God has written biblical history in such a way that the past has very real and very literal bearing upon the future. This will be for us the remnant of His people. It will be a second exodus. The past has bearing on the future. But as we've seen previously, we are in the initial stages of this second great exodus event. That's what begins at Christ's death and resurrection. On the last day, we will plunder all our enemies, as he said in chapter 11, and God will provide a highway for us to walk through, like Israel walked through the divided sea on dry land. And we will finally enter our full promised rest in the heavenly land. But the great part of this is that the future history for the Christian, and this is why I put Isaiah and the Psalms together, also has very literal bearing upon our present life. Because the song that we are going to sing in the future is the song that Moses sang, and that David sang, and that you and I are commanded to sing. Because we have been delivered, even as we will be delivered in full, we may sing the future song now. Even though you and I were not in Egypt in Moses' day, and we do not see any of those miracles take place in our lives, we can still sing the same song, because we've been delivered. This is very exciting. I hope that it puts a smile on your face. I want you to understand the absolute life-changing nature of this truth. So let me put it for you another way. All of this hinges upon one thing. It's that God is present among his people. That's what he says at the very end of verse 6. It was the presence of God in Israel, with the fire and the cloud, on the mountain, in the tents of meeting, in the temple, In His full glory, that was for Israel, her hope and her fear. It was the presence of God. Do you remember how afraid the people were at the presence of God? Do you remember? Sometimes He even broke out and killed them because of their great sin in His holy presence. They were terrified of God's presence, but this is also a double-edged sword because The presence of God in the temple meant for Israel that He was their God and not other people's God. He was with them and this became for them their comfort. He was for Israel and not for her enemies. When the Spirit Glory Cloud came upon the temple in Solomon's day and filled the temple, it must have been one of the grandest sites in all of history. When the presence of God left the temple in Ezekiel's day, it must have been equally as devastating. The presence of God is everything for His people. So the presence of God among us is for our comfort. For the Christian, this is everything. I don't think we talk about the presence of God very often, but He's in our midst even now. The solo that Isaiah sings begins on this very note. Listen, although you were angry with me, there's the anger, the fear, the presence of the Lord. Your anger is turned away and you comfort me. Why? Because God was present with him. Here we have Isaiah recalling to his mind the great encounter that we looked at in Isaiah chapter 6. Isaiah was terrified. That angel came and touched his lips, and his sins were forgiven, and Isaiah was comforted. As with Solomon, the glory of God filled the temple. And as we learn from John, Isaiah was in the very presence of Jesus Christ when he spoke about him. I don't think that we can take this seriously enough. It's impossible to take this seriously enough. Because you see, it's not enough to give thanks to a great being like the pagans do, if that being is totally other than his creation. As it is the case with deism or with Islam. If God is not with them. If this were the case, that he was completely transcendent from us, We would have no reason to give thanks because we would have no way of knowing that this is what we were supposed to do in the first place. It does not merely take a prophet to reveal God to you. It takes God himself to reveal himself to you. This is why the incarnation of Jesus Christ, the God-man, is so vitally essential. And it's why Islam and deism and other such things are so terribly, disastrously wrong. It's also why you must understand that it was the pre-incarnate Christ who spoke to Isaiah and to the other prophets, not God the Father in his bare essence. I want to ask you some questions. Are you satisfied in Christ today? Are you satisfied in him? Or are you looking for more glory than is hidden in the human flesh of Jesus Christ? Do you think of Christ as being superfluous to the Old Testament? that he only sort of came around in the New Testament? Or do you rest in his mediation on your behalf, knowing that if you have seen the Son, that you have seen the Father? Or do you want to see the Father Himself in His glory, foolishly thinking that any man could ever see the Father apart from the Son? These are very important questions to ask yourself. Because how you answer them is going to tell a lot about the way you're going to worship him, what you're going to like in church, the things that you're going to listen to, the things that you're going to read, the things that you're going to do. It affects everything. One thing that Isaiah explains is that God and his Christ are to be praised because of their very name. Do you remember how the names of God were mentioned to us back in chapter seven? Wonderful is His name. Counselor is His name. Everlasting is His name. Father is His name. Prince of Peace is His name. All of these things point out those attributes of God that we study with such passion. I said it before, God is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable. And this is why He is to be praised. He is such these things in His being, His wisdom, His power, His holiness, His justice, His goodness, and His truth. I was reading about these things, you can read about these very things in Infini, Eternal and Changeable, in these seven things. You can read about them in Systematic Theologies. I was looking through the hymnal this week for the songs to sing. I looked at the very beginning, Table of Contents, and I noticed that our hymnal is laid out in exactly this way. Go to the beginning of it and you'll see that the songs are divided into these attributes of God. Very interesting. All of this is true for you and I only because He is present among us for our benefit, not for our destruction. At this point, go back to the text, and I'm going to do something for you. And I hope you listen. Because I'm going to give you the pure gospel here. It doesn't get any more clear, more distilled than this. You need to be listening to this if you care about your own soul. Do you understand that when we sing that the wrath of God is turned away from us and that God is in turn comforting us, that He must do this according to the very attributes that we've just mentioned? Do you understand that? In other words, God cannot sacrifice His justice or His holiness by just forgiving us and forgetting us. forgetting and forgetting our wicked sin. He can't do that. He can't sacrifice the justice of God at the expense of the love of God just so that he can show you comfort. And this is where the gospel lies hidden to be revealed in the fullness of time. Do you understand that Jesus had to die for you to be comforted? Do you think about that very often? Do you care? For all eternity past, the Son was comforted by the Father. in the way that they communicated to each other. Because the son had no sin. Jesus had the father's comfort, and he had this to be able to give to somebody else. But it can only come at a price. Because we sinned. Each of us sinned in Adam. God cannot just give us comfort like He gave to Adam and like He gave to the second person of the Trinity from all eternity. Instead, because of sin, He must judge our sin because He is unchanging in His holiness and in His justice. God cannot stand in the presence of sin. It has to be judged. Even love demands this very thing. But God provided a way for judgment to fall upon one who was not deserving. He would take the judgment of all who live by faith upon his own body, suffering the mercilessly infinite powerful blows of the Father's wrath upon his own body and soul. The great thing for you and I is that the one who did not deserve our punishment took it upon himself. In turn, God may then show forth his love and mercy and his mighty strong hand to the objects of his mercy by giving them the comfort that belongs to Christ alone by his nature. Now, this is not just automatic for you, though election is guaranteed. All of this happens to a person only by faith. And this is true for them personally. Never in the Bible is a person saved without faith. Ever. Do you believe this proclamation? That Christ took your wrath and gave you his comfort? Do you believe that? Like the Bible says everywhere, Trust in God's mercy and His holiness as they are shown to you in the person of Christ today and come alive by these great truths. Now, I don't just tell you this for a brief synopsis of the gospel because that's what preachers are supposed to do. I felt it just because I felt like saying it this morning. This is the very heart of Isaiah's personal song. Remember when the angel touched his mouth and his sin was taken away? That was, for Isaiah, his salvation. And salvation, our comfort, is why we sing. Never mind our circumstances in this life that I've talked about. We are saved people, delivered from our sin and from the corruption that belongs to the order that is passing away. Verse 2 says, Behold! Behold! It's a great Hebrew word that points you to something wonderful that is right ahead. Behold, God is my salvation. I will trust and not be afraid. There's faith. Take away that pronoun there. God is my salvation. Take that away. What do you get? God is salvation. It's not just that God saves sinners. It is that God is salvation. God is salvation. To be saved is not just to go to one place and not to another. Do you get that? To be saved is to flee to God. It is to know God. Salvation is found nowhere else and no one else. Salvation belongs to God. It comes from God. It is to God's glory alone. Here, then, is an important theological truth for you to understand. Salvation is from God. Jesus is God. And there is only one God. This is why He is the only way to the Father. Not a way, like you hear in Boulder, walking down the street. Not one of many truths. The truth. The way. The life. Because God is salvation, and Jesus is God. If you do not trust, you do not receive comfort. It's as simple as that. If you do trust, then you will not be afraid of God's presence, which is terrifying indeed, because your future song is the same as Moses' song. The Lord God is my strength and song. He has become my salvation. Now, everything that we've talked about today is summed up in Jesus Christ. Everything. Again, I cannot say this strongly enough. You may not look upon God without looking upon Christ. You cannot do that. There are several things in this text that we learn about God that we learn about Christ. He is our comforter, verse 1. Our salvation, verse 2. Our choir leader. Our Living Water, verse 3. Our Miracle Worker, verse 4. The Exalted One, verse 4. The Creator. Mount Zion, the Holy One of Israel. Perhaps you do not see Him here, would you read Isaiah, chapter 12. But this is my solemn promise and vow to you as a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. As God is my witness, I will never cease to make Him known to you, and will never cease to proclaim Him to you. This is what I am called to do. This is my only task as I stand before you each week. That's it. And you must see Him if you are to have any hope in this world, friends. Let me take you through a mostly New Testament odyssey for a few minutes. We're going to work backwards through Isaiah 12 now for a minute. The evil spirits knew full well what many in our own day refuse to admit. And what a strange comment it is to know that demons have more belief in God than many people. Mark chapter 1, verse 24. What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God. There it is. Mark begins his gospel by telling us that Christ is the same One of Isaiah 12.6, where Isaiah tells us to cry aloud and shout for joy, for He is the Holy One of Israel. John chapter 1 tells us, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. We all know this text. Then the Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. And then it says, We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. Now understand this. When Jesus came to us, literally He made His dwelling among us. He tabernacled among us. He's fulfilling Isaiah's psalm. Great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel. I didn't cut John short. I wanted you to see how from John in verse 15 of chapter 1, the glory and the presence of God are the same thing. We saw his glory. His name is Jesus. Now Isaiah says, Shout aloud, O inhabitant of Zion. Now the Hebrew there is a construct relationship. between the inhabitant and Zion. Two words, put right together. There's no of word in the Hebrew language. So you have to determine the meaning by the context. Is this the people who come from Zion? Or is this Zion's people? Make the decision. Either way, we know from many places in this book, from Hebrews and elsewhere, what Mount Zion itself is. What is Mount Zion? It's God's way of picturing for us Jesus Christ. These are Christ's people, not just people who live on top of some small mountain. He's done excellent things. What has God done? Let me tell you. For this is why we're all singing on this day. He made all things. He destroyed the world and started over with Noah. He chose Abraham out of a family of idol worshippers. He increased his people so that they became a mighty nation, just like he promised. He enslaved these people so that he might redeem them. He hardened Pharaoh's heart so that he might display his glory. He killed the firstborn of Egypt. He protected Israel from the mightiest army on earth. He opened a mighty sea so that his people would cross over on dry land, but he shut that sea so that Pharaoh and his army would be drowned. And Moses and Miriam sang greatly about that. He provided food and water in the desert for them. He gave them his law so that they might live well in the land that they were going to. He made them wander for 40 years in the wilderness because of their rebellion. But he delivered them and brought them through the Jordan the same way he brought them through the Red Sea on dry land to the promised land. He was with Joshua in the mighty battles. He broke down the walls of Jericho. He destroyed the hundreds of thousands of men in an army in one night. He made the sun stand still in the sky. He gave great strength to Samson so that he could deliver Israel from the Philistines. He let the people become a great nation. He expanded their territory to encompass all of the promised land. He gave one ruler great wisdom such that has never been seen before or since. He brought them again into exile. He let the land have its rest. He again delivered them, let them return to their land and let them rebuild their temple. But he didn't restore things the way that they were before because he wanted the people to look forward to a final deliverer. one who could again release from sin and from death. Does not the continual cycle of restoration, degeneration and destruction tell you that you have to look forward to something greater than just temporary return to your land? When he finally came, he cast out demons. He walked on water. He fed 5,000 people with a couple of loaves of bread and some fish. He restored sight to the blind. He raised the dead. He conquered sin. He lives forever. These are the mighty deeds that have spread to every corner of the earth because God's people remember them. to this very day, and we sing about them whenever we come together. This is why we praise, is it not? This is what His name means. This is what He does. This is why we are comforted. It says we sing. Do you understand that we sing only because He is our song leader? Christ leads us in worship. It is Jesus, Hebrews tells us, who will proclaim thy name to my brothers in the midst of the congregation, I, Jesus, will sing your praise." He is the soloist that even Isaiah cannot match. His voice is perfectly in tune, and it is a wonder to behold because it fills the entire universe with praise. And he leads the congregation into singing these very praises to the glory of God. I want to come back to verse 3 for one moment. Water is such a major theme of the Exodus. God turned the water into blood. He parted the sea. He split the rock and water came out. He brought the people to the oasis of Elam with its 12 springs and 70 palms, which is probably what Isaiah is picturing here. He led them through the Jordan until they entered a land flowing with milk and honey. Water is everywhere in the Exodus. But what do we learn from Jesus and from the New Testament on the matter of water? You all know very well what it is. Jesus said to the woman at the well, whoever drinks of the water I will give him shall never thirst, but the water I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life. Revelation says the lamb in the center of the throne shall be their shepherd and shall guide them to springs of the water of life. And God will wipe every tear from their eyes. And finally, this New Testament truth has been true all along. It's been true all along. All the Israelites drank the same spiritual drink, for they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them. Paul says in First Corinthians 10, and that rock was Christ. So may you take your eyes off yourself today. Place your hope upon God for what He has done, what He is doing, and what He will do in the future. You have heard of His works. It's like Habakkuk saying, one of my favorite verses in all of the Bible, Lord, I have heard of your fame. I stand in awe of your deeds. O Lord, renew them in our day. In our time, make them known. In wrath, remember mercy. Because of what you know, you can sing His tune among the congregation and to the rest of the world. As Paul says in the same chapter that he quotes from Isaiah 11, in Romans 15, Paul says, so that with one accord you may with one voice Glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And as it says elsewhere, you have turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God. And now you wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath. This is the promise of God. He says this promise in Isaiah 41. The poor and needy search for water, but there is none. Their tongues are parched with thirst. But I, the Lord, will answer them. I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them. I will make rivers flow on barren heights and springs within the valleys. I will turn the desert into pools of water and the parched ground into springs. Because God is salvation. He is our salvation. He is my salvation. He is our strength and He is our song. Be of good cheer. Let's pray. Father, I just feel so strongly this morning that we need to be fed with Christ. He is a person. He's not an abstract thing to think on. He is alive. He is in our midst through the Holy Spirit. He lives now in heaven. We participate in His death and in His resurrection in a few minutes in the Lord's Supper. Lord, your people are in desperate need of Christ this morning. I am in desperate need of Him. We may not even know that we're in desperate need of Him. We may think that we need something else. We don't, Lord. We need Jesus. We need to be fed by Him. We need to understand that He is our life, that He is our salvation, that He is our song. I pray You will teach us this truth and that You will apply it to us in ways that only Your Spirit can. We desperately need to hear this truth. We need it to change our lives. This is everything to us. If we're not satisfied in Him, we're going to look for anything and everything else. And nothing that You tell us in Your Word will make sense to us. And we will go searching for things, groping around in the darkness. And we will be just like the heathen who do not know You. I pray, O Lord, that this will not happen to Your people who are here this morning, but that they will trust in Christ, that they will flee to Him, that they will desire Him, that He will be everything to them, that He will be their comfort, that He will take their eyes off of their present circumstances, that He will take their eyes off of the anger that they have in their life for whatever it may be that they're angry about. Please, Lord, give us the peace that can only be found in Him. He is the way, the truth, and the life. May it be true for us that we understand and know these things. In Christ's name, Amen.