Let's read together, Isaiah 49, 13 through 16. Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth. Break forth, O mountains, into singing. For the Lord has comforted his people and will have compassion on his afflicted. But Zion said, the Lord has forsaken me. My Lord has forgotten me. Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands. Your walls are continually before me." We have been going through the book of Exodus and had planned to be in Exodus today. And yet the passage for Exodus today was the death of the firstborn. And I just decided I don't want to do that on Mother's Day. Not that that's something that could not be done on a day like today. But we are just taking a week here in Isaiah and we'll return to Exodus next week. There are certain subjects that seem to get rehashed by almost every generation in Christianity throughout Christian history. Certain things that just have to relearn over and over again every generation. One of those subjects that comes up continually is the subject of a Christian's emotions. What should be the role of emotion in faith as opposed to logic and facts and reasoning? Should it be us having an emotional faith or should we have a logical, reasoned faith? And the answer is both. The answer is both. You see that in the scriptures and we see that in the scriptures today. If you want a really, really good explanation of how that is and how that works, the greatest book that's ever been written on that subject, other than the Bible, I think is The Religious Affections by Jonathan Edwards. The Religious Affections. But he just goes through and shows over and over from the Scriptures that there is no disconnect between knowing the truth of God and our hearts rejoicing and having emotions that are connected with the truth of knowing God together. And this is one of those places in the Scriptures where those things go together, and they go together in a way that just is to cause our hearts to overflow with joy for the truth of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. We see in this passage that it is good to be emotional about the things that are true for us in Jesus. This is something that's actually on our church sign right now. Psalm 1611, in your presence there is fullness of joy. That joy that we are to have in Christ. And it's not just something that we are supposed to have, it's something that we are commanded all the time. Philippians 4-4, rejoice in the Lord always, again I say rejoice. All the time, even in the midst of sadness and sorrow, just as Jesus wept, we are commanded all the time to rejoice in the Lord, even underneath that and through that. So it's good to be emotional about what's true. It's bad to be emotional about what's not true. And we'll see that in the scripture as well. And we'll also see that we need our emotions to be driven by true assurance of God's true love for us in Jesus Christ. The passage we're in is in the book of Isaiah. Isaiah was a prophet who came and prophesied to the nation of Israel and also to Judah, and he was prophesying primarily to the northern kingdom, but about this coming exile as the Assyrian Empire was rising up, as God was going to bring a discipline upon his people by allowing them to be overtaken by an enemy power and carried off into exile. First, the northern kingdom of Israel, and then secondly, the southern kingdom of Judah. He was prophesying of this. He was God's messenger to tell the people what was coming. But in addition to prophesying about God's discipline toward them, and also prophesying to many nations around that they needed to hear the word of the Lord, he was also called and instructed and given the words from God to comfort this people. To tell them, not only will you be disciplined, not only will you be carried off into exile, but also there will be a return. There will be a restoration. I will not deal with you so as to destroy you. says the Lord, but instead to rebuild. And then ultimately he's going to, at the end of the book, point them to the ultimate deliverance of the new heaven and the new earth that is coming. Where we find ourselves here in chapter 49 is part of the comfort that God gives to his people. the comfort that they will be restored after experiencing God's discipline in exile. And he's telling them that they will be comforted by this mysterious figure who comes up throughout the book of Isaiah, who is called the Servant. If you ever read about this, if you ever read anything that talks about Isaiah, you will see that word Servant with a capital S. Because we know that the Servant who is coming is Jesus. He was a mysterious figure though, when Isaiah wrote, people had an awfully hard time figuring out for about 700 years, who is this servant that is coming? This even happened back in chapter eight of Acts, as one of the deacons of the church at Jerusalem was carried in the spirit, Philip was carried to meet with this Ethiopian eunuch. who was, he says that this leader of the court of Candace was on the road and he was reading the book of Isaiah. And as he was reading the book of Isaiah, he was in chapter 53, which is one of these chapters who's about the servant. And he was confused by it. He says, about whom I ask you, does the prophet say this? Does he say this about himself or about someone else? It's just really confusing because sometimes the servant sounds like it is the nation of Israel. Sometimes it sounds like it's Isaiah. Sometimes it sounds like it's someone else altogether. But we figured it out when Jesus came. Jesus is the prophet and the priest and the king. He is the conquering king who is coming. He is also the humble servant who is coming. He's all of it. He is it. And the comfort of Israel and the comfort of all the nations and the salvation that was coming from God was coming in the servant, Jesus. So that's what this chapter has been about up to this point, is that the servant is coming. And that the servant is coming not just to bring salvation to the nation of Israel and to the Jewish people, but also to people of all nations. As it said back in verse six of this chapter, is it too light a thing, or it is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel? I will make you as a light for the nations, or for the Gentiles, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth. So that's just to let you know where we are when we come to this. God has been announcing that through a servant who we now know as Jesus, that he would bring salvation to Jews and Gentiles alike to the ends of the earth. that there could be rejoicing over the salvation of God in the servant who is coming, in Jesus Christ. And so because of that, when we get to verse 13 in Isaiah 49, there is a call for singing. A call for singing because of the reality of true promises in the servant, in Jesus Christ. So here's what it says. Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth. Break forth, O mountains, into singing. For the Lord has comforted his people and he will have compassion on his afflicted. You see here there's a call for singing not just to Israel but to the heavens and to the earth. Remember we sang just a minute ago that we should praise God from whom all blessings flow, all creatures here below and in heaven above. We want all of creation that we see and that we don't see to praise God. And there's a command here, sing for joy heavens and exalt earth. And even the mountains themselves are to sing. That there is salvation coming that is observed by the angels in heaven. There is salvation that is embraced and to be accepted and rejoiced in on earth to all the nations. And there is salvation that is coming that even the creation itself, even the dirt is longing for. According to Romans chapter eight is longing for the revealing of the sons of men or the sons of God. So there is a command here to rejoice and there's a basis for that rejoicing. It says for the Lord has comforted his people and he will have compassion on his afflicted. Comfort and compassion. It's before and it's behind. It is surrounding. It is those who have been afflicted and yet are God's people who will be saved by the servant Jesus by faith in Him. It is coming. And because of that, there is rejoicing. I want you to know this Jesus. I want you to be among those who are part of God's people who will know this comfort and who will know this compassion that God has. You know how this comes? It comes through the servant. Through Jesus who has come. There's a verse that we looked at together in Sunday school. If you don't come to Sunday school, you should start coming to Sunday school. Alright? We were in Revelation 4-5 today. It says in Revelation 5-9 that this servant Jesus is the Lamb who was slain and by His blood He ransomed for God from every tribe and language and people and nation a people for Himself. This is how it happened. This is how God made it so that He could have comfort for His people when we deserve suffering. How He could have compassion on these people, on us, who deserve not compassion, but wrath and punishment for our sins. He has done it by sending Jesus, His servant, our sacrificial Passover Lamb, to ransom us by His blood. to be our substitute, to pay the penalty for our sins on the cross so that we could have compassion and comfort and eternal life. So that we would not have the wages of sin that we've earned, which is death, but have the free gift of God, which is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. It was purchased at the cross. It's appropriated to us by faith. It comes to us by believing in him. So if you would be one who would receive these promises of God's comfort and God's compassion. and believe in Jesus. Believe in Him as the Lord. Believe in Him as the servant. Believe in Him as the one who was slain for our sins. So He takes us and He turns us from a state of being under God's condemnation to a state of being maybe under God's discipline sometimes, as the nation of Israel was going to be here, but always under His compassion, always under His comfort, always under His love as our Father. There's a commentator named Alec Motier who pointed out in this verse, he said that throughout Isaiah, singing is a picture of entering with joy upon benefits for which one has done nothing. Entering with joy upon benefits for which one has done nothing. That's what we have here. That's because of the free gift of eternal life. not the earned wage of eternal life, the free gift of eternal life. It should cause our hearts to rejoice and to sing. This is just a natural thing that happens as you start making noises out of your mouth of joy when you have received something that you didn't deserve that has just now come to you. You guys remember, maybe if you grew up at the same time as I did or before I did, then you remember the publishers clearing house sweepstakes and how big of a deal that used to be back when lots of people bought print magazines with cash money. Things have changed a little bit. But the Publishers Clearinghouse, they used to go around to people's doors who had signed up for magazine subscriptions and entered into this sweepstakes. And sometimes you'd watch on TV and they'd say, we're going to award this live on TV. And you'd watch Ed McMahon and this camera crew with these lights sneaking up on somebody's house in the middle of the night. And everybody across America is just glued to their TVs saying, is that my neighborhood? Is that my house? Is that my front door? And then they'd knock on this door and they'd have this giant check for a million dollars. And they'd say, you have won the Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes. How did that person react when they heard that? They'd just say, It's about time. I've been working for this for a long time. No. They were as great joy. I think that's why they put it live on TV. You know what the reaction's gonna be. They're gonna jump up and down. They're gonna scream for joy. They're gonna say, I have received something, a benefit, that I have done nothing for. How much greater have we received something that we have done nothing for in the salvation that is given us in Jesus Christ, the free gift of eternal life. And the natural response that is pictured all over scripture for receiving that is singing and joy. And it is okay to sing to God, and it is okay to be joyful when you sing to God. Sometimes I'm kind of a subdued, laid-back guy. I've heard me described as stone-faced before. That does not mean that we as a church need to be stone-faced, all right? It is okay to rejoice with singing and joy. How embarrassed would we be to get to heaven and see everybody jumping up and down with joy and singing for all eternity? It won't be the only thing you do in heaven to sing, but you will be praising God with joy for eternity. How embarrassed would you be to say, well, why didn't I start that earlier? Why did I have no joy in singing to God about the salvation that I've been given freely in Christ? But what you have here is actual joyful emotion expressed in outward singing. that is based and rooted in the real, logical reality of our salvation in Jesus Christ. These are not two separate things. You don't have the logic over here of here is the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement, and then over here is a separate thing of those emotional people are just wacky. No, if you know the truth and you know Christ, that's gonna fill us with real joy based on real truth. Those things go together. It says, he has comforted. They don't feel it yet, by the way. They don't feel this comfort yet. But he's saying it's true. The comfort is so sure that he can put it in the past tense and say, it's a done deal. You may not feel the comfort of God today, but if you are in Christ, God can say to you, I have comforted you, because it is so sure that you will be comforted. You have the Holy Spirit, who is the comforter believer. And He says He will have compassion. This is something that you see in Jesus' life all the time in the four Gospels. Like in Mark 6.34, it says He saw a great crowd and He had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And He shows that compassion toward us. who were lost and wandering. The Lord's people are surrounded by His comfort, surrounded by His passion. It's His doing. It's not ours. And because of what we've been given freely, the right response is to sing and to rejoice in what God has done for us. But they don't just have this command to have real joy on the basis of real truth. They also experience lamenting because of their false feelings. Look at v. 14. But, Zion said, Zion here is a shorthand for Jerusalem, it's kind of a shorthand for God's people, the nation of Israel. But Zion said, the Lord has forsaken me. My Lord has forgotten me. Now that is a lament. And laments are not always bad. In fact, there is a lot of lamenting that is extremely good. We prayed from Psalm 22 a little while ago. There was real lamenting in that Psalm. Did you hear it? We need to know that. But we need to know that sometimes we are sad, and we don't understand the circumstances that we are going through, and it is okay to open up your Bible to a psalm of lament, and pray it right there together with the author who wrote that, with the Holy Spirit who breathed it out. There is good, worshipful lamenting. This verse, and what was being expressed by God's people in this verse, was not good lamenting. This was lamenting that was not based on truth, but based on falsehood. These negative emotions that they are expressing here were on the basis of a satanic lie, which is, the Lord has forsaken me. My Lord has forgotten me. He uses two different names of God here. The first one is capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D. That's the name Yahweh. That is the name that God has revealed for himself to Moses when he was up on the mountain at the burning bush. And it means that he is the great I am. It is a name that carries the weight of the fullness of his attributes and his being and his faithfulness, his character. And yet Zion is saying, that's the Lord who has forsaken me. That's not possible. The Lord does not take a people to himself and then forsake them. The Lord does not show his covenant love toward a people or toward someone in particular and then just take it away and say, nope, nevermind. That is not something that is possible with the Lord. Here's what it says in Exodus 34 verse six. The Lord passed by before him. and proclaimed, that's before Moses, and proclaimed, the Lord, Yahweh, the Lord, Yahweh, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. He is connecting his very nature, the character that is represented in his name, with steadfast love and faithfulness. To say, my God has forsaken me, is simply not true. And yet they are mourning on the basis of that falsehood. It's almost like saying, the great I am is not in my situation. You may feel that way, but it's not true. God is still God. And then they think that he has forgotten. They say that, well, he was going to rescue, but he forgot his promises. Well, is that possible? No. Absolutely not. Deuteronomy 31.6, it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you. He will not leave you or forsake you. That, by the way, that's quoted in the book of Hebrews. And the way that it is translated by the author of Hebrews is just beautiful. It's got five negatives in it. He will never, ever, nor never, ever leave you or forsake you. He just won't do it. It is not in God's character ever to forsake his promises or his people. He will not forget. Isaiah 44, 21, remember these things, O Jacob in Israel, for you are my servant. I formed you. You are my servant, O Israel. You will not be forgotten by me. You hear that? So they have this feeling of, he has forsaken me, his character has fallen through, he has forgotten me, his promises have fallen through. And yet their feelings were not based on the truth, but on falsehood. Their feelings were wrong. Our feelings can deceive us. Our feelings can be wrong. That's why we need to be rooted in the truth of who God is. This is what we need. If we are doubting the character of God and thinking that He has forsaken us, we need to go back and we need to meditate on the actual, real character of God, who does not forsake His people. If we are doubting the promises of God, it's been a long time, this is not coming through, we need to go back and we need to meditate on the faithfulness and the truthfulness and the unforgetting nature of God. We need to know his character, we need to know his promises. Here's what to do if you feel distant from God today. James 4.8, draw near to God and he will draw near to you. You hear that? I'll say it again, because you might have missed it. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. That's really good, isn't it? So if you feel far off from God, draw near to God. Go to him with what we call the means of grace, the ways that God has set up to just pour out oodles of grace on you on a regular basis. Go to his word, go to him in prayer, and be consistent in the people of God, the church. We call that the word, the prayer, and the ordinances. And through those things, you will draw near to God. Draw near to God in his word and in prayer and with his people, and remember his character that you are not forsaken, believer. Remember his promises that you are not forsaken, forgotten, believer. We need these assurances of God's covenant love. He's gonna give those here, starting in verse 15. Now, remember, he's told them, have emotions fitting with the reality of the salvation that I am giving to you in Jesus. That's how I would summarize verse 13. But then he also says, I see that you have emotions that are not fitting with my character. that you would say, no, I am forsaken, I am forgotten. Well, the answer is root yourself in the truth and here it comes. Verse 15, can a woman forget her nursing child that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. What he's saying here is that there is a love of God. And that love of God is absolutely unbreakable. This is God's covenant love. This is where God has made an agreement and he is not going to go back on it. God does not break his contracts. He does not break his promises. Zechariah 9, 11 says this, as for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit. It says there is a blood of the covenant. This is the blood of Jesus that's been poured out. And because of that, this is going to happen. The salvation of God will come. It will come to you. He compares himself here to the love of a mother for her child. Now I've got to pause right there and I've got to clarify something just because of the wackiness of the culture that we live in and the persistence of false teaching that comes up in every generation. This is one of about five places in the Bible where God's love for his people is compared to a human mother's love for her child. There are also about three places in the Bible where God compares himself to animal mothers. A mother bear, a mother eagle, and a mother hen. But we've got to say that those places where God compares himself to a mother, those are always metaphors for the kind of love that God shows his people. They are never statements about who God is or which pronouns we should use to refer to God. So in the Bible, God always speaks of himself as he and not she. And he always speaks of himself as father, God our father, and not God our mother. So we don't want to get thrown off by sort of the cultural zeitgeist and say, well, because God compares himself to a mother, then we can just start calling God mother. That would be to disrespect what God has called himself consistently throughout scripture. He calls himself a he. I heard a story about a Bible translator who had sort of a feminist theologian come to him and say, as you're doing this Bible translation, can we move past the idea that God is gendered and can we call God she and mother sometimes instead of he and father? And the Bible translator said, well, should we do the same thing with Satan? The Bible, if you want me to write, draw near to God and she will draw near to you, should we also write, resist the devil and she will flee from you? It's just, we need to respect the words that the Bible has given us. So God has referred to himself with male pronouns, as a father, and so we should refer to God in the same way. But what I don't want to downplay here is the actual metaphor that God is bringing up, the actual comparison that he is making, which is a comparison between his love for us and a mother's love for her baby, for her nursing child. What you see here, the impossibility that he brings up that a mother could forget her child. Can a woman forget her nursing child? You think of that bond of love that there is between a mother and a little baby. I mean, surely there is a bond of love lifelong between a mother and her child. And the place where you see that just in the most intense terms is when that baby completely depends on that mother for its existence. And that mother just has the kind of love for that baby that you cannot hardly imagine a love in this world that the earth would have to offer that is a stronger bond of love than the love between a nursing mother and that child. And he says, can a woman forget her nursing child? He's saying, you think that I have forgotten you. Let me give you something to think about here, a picture for yourself. Is it really possible for this mother to forget about this baby? The built-in answer to that is, of course not. But then you might be one of those annoying people who thinks about all the exceptions to every rule, and you say, well, but it's possible she could get a really hard bonk in the head and not remember anything. Well, God built that in here. He said, well, even these may forget, which is extremely difficult to imagine, and yet maybe there are circumstances where this could happen. in this broken, sinful world that we live in. Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you." He's saying the strongest bond of love between two people that we can see in this world is not even nearly as strong as God's love and faithfulness toward His people. These may forget, yet I will not forget you. It's just not possible. God's love is surer than that. How could it fail? It can't. He has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you. And then He gives another picture for us to consider. To root ourselves in this truth so that our emotions will come together with the truth. He says in v. 16, Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of My hands. I have engraved you on the palms of my hands." You know what behold means? It means look at this. Now does God have literal hands? No. He doesn't. God is a spirit. He is invisible. When he uses this word picture of hands, he's not talking about literal hands, but think of the things that he has said with that word picture elsewhere in Scripture. He said in Isaiah 48, the chapter right before this, my hand laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand spread out the heavens. When I call to them, they stand forth together. This is the hand of God that created the heavens and the earth. He said in Exodus 13, by the strength of the hand of the Lord, you were brought out from Egypt. That saving hand of God. In Exodus 15, it says, your right hand, O Lord, glorious in power, your right hand, O Lord, shatters the enemy. The hand that made the heavens and the earth, the hand that shatters God's enemies, the hand that rescues God's people, he is saying to his people, behold, look at my hands. And what's He saying about them? He's saying, look, you are graven into My hands. You are cut into My hands. How could I forget you? You know what this reminds me of? John 20, 27. Jesus, after He had risen from the dead, He said to Thomas, put your finger here. See My hands. Put out your hand. Place it in My side. Do not disbelieve, but believe. It is just so hard not to make this connection. How have we been graven into the hands of God? Well, it's because the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And he gave himself up for us. He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. When he died for us, he wasn't just taking physical nails in his hands. He was specifically dying for his people from every tribe and tongue and nation so that these people would be graven into the wounds of his hands. And he could say, look at my wounded hands. Do you think I'm going to forget you? Of course not. I won't forget you. I won't leave you. I won't forsake you. And then he says, and your walls are continually before me. This is saying, look, I'm looking at your walls. What does that mean? Well, this is talking to Jerusalem as a city, sort of picturing the people of God as a people. And these walls of Jerusalem were going to get literally torn down. But God is saying, I'm watching out. I see what is going to happen there. I see what I'm going to allow you to go through, and I'm going to rebuild. The walls will get broken down as they got ransacked and carried off and put into exile, which is one little hint in scripture that things are not always going to go as we would wish that they would go in this world as followers of God. It says Psalm 80 verse 12, why then have you broken down its walls so that all who pass along the way pluck its fruit? But then, there's going to be a restoration. This is the very second to last chapter of the Bible, Revelation 21 verses 12 through 14. I think I wrote in your bulletin 22, it's 21. verses 12 through 14. He's talking about the place where we will live with Jesus forever and ever, the New Jerusalem and the New Heaven and the New Earth. He says this city, the New Jerusalem, had a great high wall with 12 gates, and at the 12 gates, 12 angels. And on the gates, the names of the 12 tribes of the sons of Israel were inscribed. On the east, three gates, and on the north, three gates, and on the south, three gates, and on the west, three gates. And the wall of the city had foundations, and on them were the 12 names of the 12 apostles of the Lamb." He's saying, I will rebuild you, and I will put you in my city forever and ever, and it's going to have very good walls. And on those walls are written names that represent the 12 tribes of Israel and the 12 apostles. They represent that God has purchased for himself a people not just from among Israel in a literal sense, but also to the nations. And he is bringing us in and he is building us up. What does a wall represent? Well, it represents distinction and it represents protection. Distinction, because some are on one side of the wall, and some are on the other side of the wall. Some are in, some are out. God is saying, I will rebuild that, and I will make it clear who are my people. And it represents protection. Those of you who are inside are protected from whatever may come on the outside, so that we can keep watching. They can't get through. He is going to preserve his people, make a distinction, and say, these are my people. He is going to protect His people forevermore. His walls, our walls, are continually before Him. So what do we need to do? We need to have a right emotion that flows from the right truth. Your emotions can deceive you. Your emotions can say to you, everything is great when everything is not great. You need to come to Christ. If you are not in Christ, everything is not great. No matter how happy you may feel about this or that thing today, you need to know that eternity is where you need to root your hope. If you have hoped in this life only, you are of all people most to be pitied, says 1 Corinthians 15. You need the hope of Jesus Christ. You need the real joy that is rooted in the real reality of eternal life. And believer, if you are here today and you are doubting the promises of God for you, as one who trusts in Christ for eternal salvation, you need to get your feelings rooted in the truth. You need to know that it is impossible for a mother to forget her nursing child and it is even more impossible for God to forget and to forsake you who have been purchased by the blood of Jesus. Let's pray. God, I pray today that you would grant us to know what is the truth of Christ, and I pray that you'd bring together our affections and our emotions with the truth. God, I pray that you would grant us a fullness of joy even when there are things that really need to be mourned over and that we really lament over. I pray that you would also grant us to rejoice in the sure hope that we have for things that we don't see yet that Jesus has purchased for us on the cross. God, I pray that if there are those who are here whose hope and feelings of joy are rooted in something that's not true, God, I pray that you'd open their eyes to the true truth and the real reality of eternal life that is offered in Jesus Christ. And God, I pray for those of us who know Christ, I pray that you would grant us to sing for joy and exult and break forth into singing because Christ is our Savior and it's in Jesus name we pray, amen.