Let's hear God's Holy Word, Isaiah 29, verses one through 14. Verse one says, Ah, Ariel, Ariel, the city where David encamped. Add year to year, let the feasts run their round. Yet I will distress Ariel, and there shall be moaning and lamentation, and she shall be to me like an Ariel. and I will encamp against you all around, and I will besiege you with towers, and I will raise siege works against you, and you will be brought low. From the earth you shall speak, and from the dust your speech will be bowed down. Your voice shall come from the ground like the voice of a ghost, and from the dust your speech shall whisper. But the multitude of your foreign foes shall be like small dust. and the multitude of the ruthless like passing chaff. And in an instant, suddenly, you will be visited by the Lord of hosts with thunder and with earthquake and great noise with whirlwind and tempest and the flame of a devouring fire. And the multitude of all the nations that fight against Ariel, all that fight against her and her stronghold and distress her, shall be like a dream, a vision of the night, as when a hungry man dreams he is eating and awakes with his hunger not satisfied. Or as when a thirsty man dreams he is drinking and awakes faint with his thirst not quenched. So shall the multitude of all the nations be that fight against Mount Zion. Astonish yourselves and be astonished. Blind yourselves and be blind. Be drunk, but not with wine. Stagger, but not with strong drink. For the Lord has poured out upon you a spirit of deep sleep and has closed your eyes, the prophets, and covered your heads, the seers. And the vision of all this has become become to you like the words of a book that is sealed. When men give it to one who can read saying, read this, he says, I cannot for it is sealed. And when they give the book to one who cannot read saying, read this, he says, I cannot read. And the Lord said, because this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips while their hearts are far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment taught by men. Therefore behold, I will again do wonderful things with this people, with wonder upon wonder, and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the discernment of their discerning men shall be hidden. This is the word of God. Let's pray for his help now. Lord, our God, we thank you, Father, that you have promised the Spirit and you have poured out your Spirit upon your church. We thank you that we, your church, now have this Holy Spirit to guide us. Not only has the Spirit given the Word of God, but now guides us to understand and to teach and to hear the Word of God. We pray that you would pour out your Spirit again upon us. Help us to see your glory and to see your wisdom and truth in these words. We pray that your Holy Spirit would be poured out here upon those who do not yet know you, that you might give them faith. They might trust in Christ as Savior. We ask for your help for these things. We pray in the name of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, amen. Well, if you've ever been to Chick-fil-A and you've ever expressed your appreciation for something there to one of their workers, you've heard the words, my pleasure, my pleasure. Those words are order from the top. The owner of Chick-fil-A, Truett Cathy, has mandated that every store and every worker Every time that someone expresses appreciation, every worker must say the words, my pleasure. And the purpose of saying my pleasure is to welcome the customer and make the customer feel important, to let you know that you are more important as a person than just the money that you're giving them or that more important than the efficiency of the operation of the restaurant, but that it is the pleasure of the workers to serve the customer. And so they are told that they must say, my pleasure. Now the cynic might look at this and say, is it really your pleasure? Is it really your pleasure to serve me when I ask you five times for ketchup and you have to bring me ketchup five times? Is it really your pleasure to do that? Or are you saying this because you have to? And there's a sense in which it is your pleasure to say those words, because if you don't say them, you're gonna be fired, and it's your pleasure to make money and to have a job. And so yes, you can say, my pleasure to serve you, to do this for you. Jesus says that out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. And that is true. We speak from the heart. But the heart is complicated. The heart is deep. Proverbs says it's like deep water. And so there can be many reasons that people speak things out of their heart. One person might say my pleasure because from the heart they truly love serving their customers. Another person might say my pleasure because they're forced to and they truly want to say it because they truly want to keep their job. But then it gets even more complicated. There are also situations where the Bible says we might not even know our own hearts. Jeremiah 17, nine says the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can understand it? You can't even understand your own heart. And so it is true. It is true that out of the abundance of your heart, your mouth speaks, but there can be times when you don't even know the real motives. What are your motives? What are your motives when you speak? When you speak, are you speaking with selfish or pure motives? Sometimes you might know that you're saying words that sound selfless, my pleasure, but you know that you're selfish. Sometimes you might even convince yourself that it truly is your pleasure and you really believe that, but it's actually not. You're actually speaking out of selfish motives. The heart is complicated. The heart is like deep waters. And so we need to evaluate our hearts. And we need to evaluate whether the words that we say from our lips match our hearts. So we need prophets like Isaiah who can come before us and put questions like this in front of us and probe our hearts and our lives to probe whether, when it comes to the worship of God especially, and when it comes to our religious being, religious actions and words, whether those things are actually from the heart. Because the heart is deceitful. You might not even know. the motives of why you say those things that you say in worship. So we need the spirit. We need Isaiah to get us to think about this. And so that's the main idea of what Isaiah is going to do for us this morning. We're going to focus on verses 13 to 14. But we're going to start by giving the context and the setup to this is in the first eight verses, and we can call Ariel's distress and deliverance. And then we see Ariel's apathy, the second part beginning in verse nine. But let's start with just a few minutes and five minutes, maybe on the first eight verses of Ariel's distress and deliverance. You see there in verse one, we're starting a new part of Isaiah, a new chapter, and he starts with the word Ah or the word Woe in some of your Bibles. This is a pronouncement of Woe or judgment. And he calls these people Ariel. Ariel. This is the only place in the Bible where this name is given to Jerusalem, Ariel. And we know that it's Mount Zion based on the end of verse eight. We know that it's Jerusalem because he calls it the city where David encamped in verse one, but he gives them this nickname, Ariel. Now, Ariel could mean something like Lion of God, if you break up the name into two parts. But most people think the word Ariel here is talking about an altar, the hearth of an altar. And so it's a reference to the sacrificial system. He is calling them a sacrificial altar. And so there's, you know, irony and double meanings to that. In verse 1 he says, He's calling them religious people. Maybe you remember Isaiah chapter 1, where he said they offered a multitude of sacrifices and burnt offerings. So these are religious people, and God says, keep being religious, keep offering all your sacrifices, observe all the feasts just like you're doing, and we'll see what happens, what's gonna come of that. And so they are a religious people, and so there's one meaning to that, the name Ariel, the nickname there, But then there's another meaning in verse two. He says, yet I will distress aerial and there shall be moaning and lamentation and she shall be to me like an aerial. She will be to me like a sacrificial altar. In other words, you religious people offering your many religious sacrifices, you're going to become a sacrifice. Your destruction and your being slain is going to be like an offering that comes up to me. And this is what's going to appease my wrath. My wrath will be satisfied when Jerusalem is destroyed as a sacrificial offering. So then verse three, Ariel, Jerusalem faces defeat. An army is going to surround them. But notice it's in the first person. This is what God is doing. It's God who is coming against his people in judgment. And then verse 4, they are brought low. It's as if they can barely speak. They're in the dust. They're laying. And so it appears that they have been almost annihilated. They've suffered a lot, but they have not been totally destroyed. And yet there they face defeat. So Ariel is in distress. This is probably a reference to the story we'll look at in chapter 37. Eventually, one day we'll get there. And when Assyria comes and they are surrounding the city, and they're surrounding the city because they've destroyed a lot of other cities. They've destroyed Israel in the north, they've destroyed a lot of Judah, and now they're coming for the capital. And so Jerusalem is brought low. But then things change, verses five through eight. Jerusalem is delivered. They were in dust, but now the foreign foes, verse 5 says, will be like dust. Because in an instant, suddenly, the Lord of hosts will come. And when God comes and God appears, you might think, oh, this is God coming in judgment. But no, it says the multitude of the nations will be defeated. Verses 7 and 8, it will be like the nations come and they're about to attack and it's like a dream. They're dreaming as a hungry man dreams about food. Oh man, I'm so hungry and I fall asleep and I dream about the pizza and the steak and the cakes and the ice cream and then I wake up and I realize, what? I still got all this hunger pain, what is it? It was all a dream. A thirsty man in the desert dreaming about water, and then he wakes up and he realizes he's still thirsty. It was all a dream. The nation of Assyria, the army, is going to surround Jerusalem, and they're going to be thirsty for blood and hungry for power, and the king of Assyria, it's like he can just taste it. He's about to get them, he's about to destroy them. And then he wakes up. in an instant, suddenly. In chapter 37, it was literally in the night. It was in the night when, as Israel surrounded Jerusalem, the angel of the Lord came through and cut down 185,000 soldiers. The king of Assyria went to sleep one night thinking, tomorrow I get my prey, tomorrow I get my food. And then he wakes up and it's all gone. all his soldiers are dead. Because God instantly, suddenly visited Jerusalem and delivered her out of her distress. So that's the background. But what Isaiah really cares about now is how are the people going to respond to this? And so this is the main portion of our sermon is the second point, Ariel's apathy in verses 9 to 14. In verse 9, Isaiah starts by saying, astonish yourselves. In other words, it's like, listen up. Isaiah is trying to get our attention, get their attention. Either one of these things in the first eight verses would get your attention, you would think. Distress, feeling like you're laid low in the dust. Might that cause you to look to God for help? Well, let's see if that gets their attention. Deliverance, you were about to be totally annihilated and God in one night shows up and rescues you from your enemies. Does that get your attention? He says, astonish yourselves and be astonished, verse nine. And then he says, blind yourselves and be blind. Be drunk, but not with wine. Stagger, but not with strong drink. They are astonished, but they have the wrong kind of astonishment. They're not astonished at, wow, look at God's amazing wonders. Look what God has done for us. No, they're astonished like a drunk man. What? What's going on? They have no clue. They're astonished in their ignorance. They are blind, blind to see what God is doing, blind to how God just intervened and rescued them, blind to the grace of God. They have, in a sense, done it themselves. They've done it to themselves because they have responded in this way. They have responded by astonishing themselves and blinding themselves. But then we also see that there's a cause to why they're doing this in verse 10. There's the word for. And so this is the reason. They've blinded themselves, but there's a reason. It's because the Lord has poured out upon you a spirit of deep sleep and has closed your eyes, the prophets, and covered your heads, the seers. God has put them under. He's put them under anesthesia. He's giving them a sleeping pill. He's giving them anesthesia so that like when you're under anesthesia, people are doing all sorts of things, cutting open holes in your body and you don't even realize, you don't know what they're doing and you wake up and then you hear about what they've done. And this is what the people are doing. They're under the anesthesia, not aware of what's happening outside of them. What God has, what God is doing because God has poured out upon them this spirit of deep sleep. Verse 10 is the fulfillment, another fulfillment of what God told Isaiah in chapter six. He said, go and preach to this people. Make their eyes blind. Make their ears heavy. They're going to stop up their ears. Make their hearts dull. As Isaiah goes and as he preaches to them, it's the very preaching that puts them to sleep. It puts them in a spirit of deep sleep. Because Isaiah preaches, they respond by blinding themselves. God further blinds them. God pours out the spirit of deep sleep upon them so that now they're not able to understand. And so they're apathetic to understand what's happening here. And so now we see that they're not bothered with God's revelation. You could say, in this case, with Isaiah, with what Isaiah has to say. Verse 11 says, the vision of all of this, Isaiah's interpretation of all of this, the word of the Lord, has become to you like the words of a book that is sealed. When men give it to one who can read, saying, read this, he says, I cannot, for it is sealed. Verses 11 to 12 are two responses of a spiritually lazy man, a man under spiritual anesthesia, the spirit of deep sleep that is upon them. And so just like in Proverbs, the man in Proverbs, he has every excuse for his laziness. He calls into work and says, there's a line in the street. I can't make it to work today. That's in Proverbs. Here we see several excuses for the spiritually lazy person. The first person says, I can't open up the book. The book is sealed. Now, the seal here is a piece of wax. It's a piece of wax this big. It's not hard to break a seal of wax. Okay, we're not talking like Christmas morning plastic ensconced toys and you gotta get all these knives and scissors out to get the toy out. No, it's a little piece of wax. But he can't be bothered to understand what God's Word is saying. Because there's a wax seal there. He's too spiritually lazy. It would be like, sometimes maybe if you order a book, you get a book wrapped in cellophane. and he's like, I can't read this book. It's wrapped in cellophane. I would have to rip that off, and that's just too much work. I'm not going to read that book. So that's one excuse of laziness. The other excuse is, I cannot read. Now this isn't talking about illiterate people, people who literally don't know how to read. It's saying, I can't read that book. That book is too hard to read. I mean, I can read, but I can't read that. Not that book. Sometimes one might hand a person a John Owen book, and a few weeks later that John Owen book comes back and the person says, I can't read that John Owen. He's too obtuse. He's too hard to read. There's nothing wrong, unspiritual or sinful about not being able to read John Owen. That's not what I'm saying. But this is the word of God. This is the revelation of God. For one to simply say, well, that book is just too hard for me is not a good excuse. And so this is spiritual stupor, spiritual deep sleep. Too much work, too hard to read. They have a spiritual problem. Now we go to verse 13. Notice the first word of verse 13 is the word and. It's a series 11, 12, 13. They've blinded themselves because God has poured out the anesthesia of a spirit of deep sleep upon them. So here are the results. One person's not willing to crack the book open. The next person's not willing to try to read it. And then here's the other problem. Verse 13, the Lord said, Because this people draw near with their mouth, honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, their fear of me is a commandment taught by men." We'll get to verse 14. What is the finishing of that phrase? But here is another effect of spiritual stupor. It's, they draw near with their lips. But their hearts are far from me." And so the problem with Israel, Judah in that day, was a heartless religion. It was a religion. It was devoted practices and keeping of obligations and rules, but it was all done without the heart. Again, Isaiah chapter one mentioned that God condemned the multitude of their sacrifices. They drew near with their mouth. They came to the temple. They honored God with their lips and they prayed to God. They could say all the prayers. They could recite the Shema of Deuteronomy six with their lips, but their hearts were far from God. And then the last phrase of verse 13, their fear of me is a commandment taught by men. Their worship of God or their fear of God was a worship that was done because men commanded it. So men said, men taught fear God And so I said, OK, OK, I'll do I'll do what you tell me. Like a parents might bring a child to church or a parent might say, you need to memorize Deuteronomy six because Jews memorize Deuteronomy six. You need to pray this prayer. You need to be involved in this feast and sacrifice because this is what we do. And so the child is involved because the child has to be involved because the parent commands it or the priest commands it. The Jewish leaders are commanding that the people go through these different rituals like in modern times. in some Roman Catholic churches. The priest stands up there, and he says, basically, repeat after me, Ave Maria, Ora Pronovis, and the people just, blah, blah, blah, Ave Maria, Ora Pronovis, and they don't know Latin, and they don't know what they're saying, but they're being commanded to repeat a prayer, and so they repeat the prayer, lest something bad happen to them. It's like the flight attendant on the plane. going through the seatbelt thing. I don't think the flight attendant has their heart even in it. Their buckle, there's the life vest, and they don't even really care about the words coming out of their lips. Far less the people listening on the plane. This is what their religion was like in Isaiah's day. So, when the events of verses one through eight happen, Are the people going to look to God? Are the people going to look to God in faith? Are they going to respond with love for the Lord? No, of course not. If your religion is merely with the lips and it's merely because you're being forced and commanded to have it, then when threat of judgment comes, you're going to find some other way to deal with your threat. You're going to find some other way to kind of pacify the threat of judgment. So that's what Israel was doing with their alliance with Egypt. Because they didn't have a heart religion. It was external. And if God would deliver them and do this great work, how are they going to respond? With faith and love and praise and thanks? No, of course not. because their hearts the whole time are far from God. Well, as many of you know, Jesus takes these words and he applies them to his own day. So let's look in Matthew 15. You can turn in your Bible to Matthew chapter 15. In verse 6, I'll start in the middle. Jesus, before this, has been referring to how the Pharisees and scribes are keeping their traditions of their elders, this man-made, passed on orally, not in the Word of God, not in the Bible, but these man-made traditions. And then he says in the middle of verse 6, So, for the sake of your tradition, you have made void the Word of God." Now isn't that reminiscent of verses 9 and 10 of Isaiah 29 and 11 and 12 of how the people do not pay attention to the Word of God. They can't be bothered with the Word of God because they have their tradition. They're used to this heartless religion. They have the spirit of stupor. So Jesus says a similar thing. You have made void the word of God. Now, verse seven, you hypocrites. Well, did Isaiah prophesy of you when he said, this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain do they worship me teaching as doctrine, the commandments of men. So Jesus applies it to his own day. Isaiah was prophesying about you guys, Pharisees and scribes who are hypocrites. You, Pharisees and scribes, honor God with your lips, but your hearts are far from me. In vain do you worship me. And then Jesus says, teaching us doctrines, the commandments of man. Slightly different words, you're probably used to this by now, the New Testament quotes, slightly different wording from Isaiah, but really it's the same meaning. It's the commandments of men. It's men commanding them to believe these doctrines. In this case, it's the Pharisees and the scribes commanding that you tithe certain things in a certain way, commanding that you say, this has been given to Corbin, you know, these kinds of things. These extra traditions that the Pharisees and scribes made up, but they are teaching them as doctrines. And so people are following it, thinking that they are supposed to do the right thing. This is what our leaders say. This is what our religion is. It's doing these things. But it's extra biblical. And so this is what we call legalism. Legalism is a word that is abused and overused. Legalism is not anything that I don't like. Legalism is not anything that I think is strict. Legalism is adding to the Word of God commandments. It's different from, you know, we think this is the best way to do this. It's the best way. There can be other ways, but we think it's the best way. That's not legalism. Legalism is not, this is what we think the Bible says. And we could, you know, theoretically we could be wrong about this, but we believe the Bible says it, and so this is what we're gonna teach. That's not legalism. And so there are many Christians who are sincerely trying to do what the Bible says. Don't throw out legalism as the way to just shut down what they're teaching. Deal with what they're actually saying. Legalism is adding commands to the Bible. And especially it's in reference to salvation, it's in reference to earning favor with God. But it's adding commands to the Bible as if this is what God says. So this is a true legalism that Jesus is pointing out with the Pharisees. But here's the point. for today that Isaiah is making. Legalism is a cover here for nominalism. Legalism is the cover for nominalism. Their hearts were far from God, but they can cover it up before other people. by having commandments that they keep, by honoring God with their lips, by praising Him with their mouths, by worshiping Him. They can do all the outward things and it's legalistic because they're covering up their heart far from God. So nominalism means in name only. And so we're talking about, in our case, nominal Christianity. Christianity in name only. Are you a Christian in name only? To be a Christian means to be a little Christ, to be a follower, a disciple of Jesus Christ. You trust in him as Savior and you follow him as master and Lord of your life. And there are people who bear the name Christian who will say they are a Christian, but whose life does not reflect that they are seeking to follow Christ. Now there is a non-legalism type of nominalism. There is the, I call myself a Christian, but I don't really live any different from the rest of the world. I am very worldly. I live like the world. When there's not a soccer tournament, I'll go to church. I will go to Hobby Lobby and buy some decorations for Bible verses and put them on the wall in my house. And that's about the only thing that makes me different from the unbeliever. So I'm a Christian in name only if that's all that it is, if I love the world and I'm very worldly in that sense. But what Isaiah is talking about is a legalistic nominalism, a strict religiosity, a strict observance, and someone who appears to be very devout and does a lot of things. So we could talk about the Roman Catholic Church, where someone might go to Mass every single day, make sure that they never miss a Eucharist, confess their sins to the priest by the indulgences, and give the church a lot of money, and pray to the saints, and pray the Hail Marys, and do the rosary over and over and over again. And this is a very religious person. This is a very devout, observant person. but it's all done without a love for the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior. We can look at Salmon evangelical churches where their religiosity or their strictness is seen in how much they serve the church. They love to do projects. They love to help out. They love to do bouncy houses outside the lawn of their church. They love to pass out snow cones and hot dogs to people on the street. They're always doing outreach events. They're always going on mission trips. They can build churches in Nicaragua five times a year. They are very devoted people. They sit through the music, and the lights are on, and the music is loud. And they raise their hands, and they feel all sorts of emotions. But it can all be done with a heart that is far from the Lord, a heart that does not see Jesus Christ as Lord. Now that's other people. What about us? What about in our world? Well, there can be a version in the reformed world of nominalism covered by religious observance, There can be people who strictly observe the Lord's Day, spending the entire day in nothing but public and private worship, but who have hearts far from the Lord. There can be people who have read all of the works of John Owen and William Perkins and Thomas Goodwin and Thomas Manton, 68 volumes of works of Puritans and there are people who have read those 68 volumes and it could be that they might still have their hearts far from the Lord. There can be people who have nine children and name them Calvin and Geneva and Knox and on and on. and still have hearts far from the Lord. You could be a housewife who just loves submitting to your husband, who just, since you were a little girl, you just dreamt about having a husband so you could iron his shirts because all you want to do is iron shirts all day. You just love working at home. You're a great housewife and you can do all of that and your heart be far from the Lord. Isn't that what Jesus said in Luke? Mary and Martha. Martha did a lot of work at home, but she didn't want to sit at Jesus's feet. She did not have a heart of love for the Lord. And so in our reformed world, we can make ourselves look really good by doing lots of good things and being busy at biblical things. with hearts far from the Lord. Experience has shown, my hearing of stories after stories of people in the Reformed world, experience has shown that this can be true. There are people, see the thing is you can put on a good show by quoting the Puritans. You can wear the bow tie to church, and all your nine kids come in dressed in bow ties, and you look like a perfect family. But you, as a father, your heart is far from the Lord. It's real, it happens. We can appear to be seen as good in front of others, but the real issue is our hearts. So to those of you who maybe are visiting, don't know who is going to visit today, or maybe to one of you who is one of our children, ask yourself this question that Isaiah 29, 13 is putting before us. Ask yourself, are you really a Christian? Do you really love Jesus Christ? Are you trusting in him? Is he the one you seek to follow? Of course we all sin, of course we stumble, and we do not love him as much as we should, but is your Christianity in name only? Are you just honoring God with your lips, with a heart far from him? Don't think that just because you say you're a Christian, just because you are religious and you do lots of observant things, that that means you are a follower of Christ. And in a different category, I would put those of us who are part of this church. I hope you don't walk away from this sermon feeling like your shepherd beat you up. because shepherds are to feed sheep and not beat sheep. That's what Jesus said to Peter, feed the sheep. So I'm not here to beat you up and cause you to question your salvation and to call you a hypocrite. Jesus was talking to unsaved people, the Pharisees, and calling them hypocrites. So what do we do who are believers who are part of this church? What do we do with verse 13? We should respond by saying, I want my heart more to love the Lord. I don't wanna be far from him, I wanna be even closer to him than I was before. We need to do what Proverbs 3.23 says, above all else, guard your heart. Keep your heart with all vigilance. Keep your heart with all diligence. Be diligent about the state of your heart and do not rest on the observances. The externals don't rest on the amount of books that you've read of the Puritans. Don't rest on the work that you do as a housewife. Don't rest upon the hours that you spend at church on the Lord's Day. All good things. But make sure you're keeping the heart. Make sure your heart is near the Lord. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, and all your soul. I think about verses like Psalm 36, verses seven and nine. This is the attitude of a Christian. How precious is your steadfast love, O God. The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings. They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights, for with you is the fountain of life. In your light do we see light. That's what you should want as a Christian. This is how we want to respond, that we would see God as the feast, the abundance of His house, the river of delights that we want to drink from, the fountain of life that we want to go to, because we don't want our hearts to be far from Him. So, because of this, in Judah's day, Here's what God is going to do. This is the last point here in verse 14. God's response to their responses in verse 14. Therefore, behold, I will again do wonderful things with this people with wonder upon wonder and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish and the discernment of their discerning men shall be hidden. God's going to do wonderful things. Now, we think wonderful is a good thing. If someone says, how was your trip? You say, wonderful. The other person will say, oh, that's good. But wonderful can mean good or bad. Wonder means that it puts you in wonder. I don't understand. I am in awe. I've never seen this before. God says he's going to do wonderful things. Wonder upon wonder for the unbelieving people of Judah. It's bad. It's bad. They're, they're astonished in their ignorance. What is God doing? I don't understand. And it's bad because verse 14 says he makes the wisdom of their wise men perish. It's a, it's a wonderful thing for an angel of the Lord to come and kill 185,000 soldiers, but it makes you look really bad. If you thought you were going to save yourself from a Syria by making an alliance with Egypt and all you had to do was pray. All you had to do is pray. God save us. And the angel would have come. And so here they go, they're doing all this work, making all their alliances, and God says, you know, all you had to do was pray. Oh, well, that makes us look stupid. We're not very wise men. We're not very great leaders of the country. We've got all these political plans and schemes, and all we had to do was look to God in faith and prayer. And so when God does this wonderful work, all the wise men will look like fools. God is great in wisdom. God is a wonderful counselor, Isaiah 9 said. His Messiah was a wonderful counselor. In chapter 28, verse 29, God is wonderful in counsel and excellent in wisdom. God knows more than we do. We're not wise. We think that we're wise. We think we have sages and wise men, and we have all these leaders who think that they are wise. We're not wise. God is all wise. He's the only wise God, the Bible says. But this is just a quick reminder to us. Remember to live by the principles of what God has revealed in his word. Live by God's wisdom. Don't try to interpret God's providence in your life. We always try to do that. We think if this happens, it's because God is doing this and it means he's going to do that and he's going to do that. And so I got to do this. You don't know. We don't know what God is doing. Nobody expected an angel to come and kill 185,000 soldiers. It's the wisdom of God. God can intervene and do anything according to his wisdom that he wants. So what do we do? Well, instead of trying to figure out life and figure out what do I do with my life and just live by the principles of God's word and in his wisdom, things will happen in your life. So God shows his wisdom in Isaiah's day. But before we close, we have to look at how Paul applies this verse in his day. Let's go to First Corinthians, chapter one, verse 18. First Corinthians, chapter one, verse 18. Paul says, the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God, for it is written. Paul quotes Isaiah 29, 14, for it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart. Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where's the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. God is gonna thwart the wisdom of the wise. He thwarted the wisdom of the wise in Isaiah's day when he brought that angel to destroy Assyria. He made those leaders look really foolish. But God was gonna bring an even greater deliverance that would destroy the wisdom of the wise. He says it's in verse 18, it's the word of the cross. The cross destroys all human wisdom. It makes everyone look really foolish to those who think they can save themselves by their own righteousness, who were like the Pharisees, thinking that they were right with God because they could keep a bunch of commandments. The cross is foolishness. If you can keep all the commandments and be made right with God, you don't need someone to die for you. So the cross is foolishness. to those religious observant Jews. The cross was foolishness to those who wanted to be saved by the Roman Empire, just like the people in Isaiah's day wanted to be saved by enemies that were threatening them. People were looking for a messiah who would overturn Rome. And Paul says, here's the wisdom of God, a man killed by Roman soldiers. voluntarily laying down his life to be hung on a cross by Roman soldiers, not the one killing the Roman soldiers. And yet Paul says this is the wisdom of God that destroys the wisdom of the wise because it's as Jesus hangs on the cross that he takes the punishment of sin on himself. He bears the guilt that sinners deserve. He makes his people right with God by taking their sin and giving them their righteousness. The foolishness of Christianity is that salvation is only in Jesus Christ. There is no salvation under any other name. Salvation from sin and hell and judgment comes through a baby born in Bethlehem who is called the Son of God. It comes through a man who grows up in the backwaters of Israel in a place called Galilee. It comes through this man who dies on the cross. but then rises from the dead, ascends into heaven, sits there as the king of kings. And the wisdom of God comes, Paul also says, by the means, the medium. It's through the foolishness of what we preach. Paul is writing to Corinthians, who loved human wisdom. who loved Greek philosophy, who studied the great speakers, who would go for entertainment and fun to listen to great speakers and talk about who was the best speaker. And this attitude is infiltrating the Church of Corinth as they say, well, I like Paul, I like Peter, I like Apollos. And they're saying, I like this speaker better than the other guy. And Paul is probably referencing Isaiah partly because he's drawing on this idea That it's not about your lips. It's not about who preaches best with their lips or who honors God with their mouth. It's about the heart. It's about those who from the heart are preaching Christ. And they are preaching the cross of Jesus Christ. That's where the wisdom of God is. It's not in the people who honor God with their lips. It's in the preaching of the cross. So this is the wonder of wonders that Isaiah said would come. God would do this great work. Not only would he put the wise to shame by sending his son to die on the cross, but then he would save people through foolish sounding, simple preaching of the cross. So do you live by man's wisdom or by God's? Do you follow Christ? Do you follow Christ from the heart, or is it just a matter of saying it with your mouth? May you respond to the cross of Christ with a heart that loves him, is devoted to him. May your heart see him as the fountain of life. Let's pray. Our God, we thank you that by your spirit you reveal your wisdom to show us Jesus Christ in his glory, his glory as he is crucified, that he is our savior and king. We thank you, Lord, that you have revealed yourself to us and by the spirit to us, your people. And so we pray that you would give us more and more love for you with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Oh God, we also pray that you would save through the foolishness of preaching those who do not believe. We pray that people would not be deceived to think that religion is merely with words and from the mouth, but that they would love you and trust you with their heart. We pray these things through Jesus Christ. Amen.