"'Ah, stubborn children,' declares the Lord, "'who carry out a plan but not mine, "'and who make an alliance but not of my spirit, "'that they may add sin to sin. "'Who set out to go down to Egypt "'without asking for my direction, "'to take refuge in the protection of Pharaoh, "'and to seek shelter in the shadow of Egypt. "'Therefore shall the protection of Pharaoh "'turn to your shame. and the shelter in the shadow of Egypt to your humiliation. For though his officials are at Zohan and his envoys reach Hannes, everyone comes to shame through a people that cannot profit them, that brings neither help nor profit but shame and disgrace. An oracle on the beasts of the Negev. Through a land of trouble and anguish from where come the lioness and the lion, the adder and the flying fiery serpent. They carry their riches on the backs of donkeys and their treasures on the humps of camels to a people that cannot profit them. Egypt's help is worthless and empty. Therefore I have called her Rahab who sits still. And now go write it before them on a tablet and inscribe it in a book that it may be for the time to come as a witness forever. For they are a rebellious people, lying children, children unwilling to hear the instruction of the Lord, who say to the seers, do not see, and to the prophets, do not prophesy to us what is right, speak to us smooth things, prophesy illusions, leave the way, turn aside from the path, let us hear no more about the Holy One of Israel. Therefore thus says the Holy One of Israel, because you despise this word and trust in oppression and perverseness and rely on them, therefore this iniquity shall be to you like a breach in a high wall, bulging out and about to collapse, whose breaking comes suddenly in an instant. And its breaking is like that of a potter's vessel that is smashed so ruthlessly that among its fragments not a shard is found with which to take fire from the hearth or to dip up water out of the cistern. For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, in returning and rest you shall be saved. In quietness and in trust shall be your strength. but you were unwilling. And you said, no, we will flee upon horses, therefore you shall flee away. And we will ride upon swift steeds, therefore your pursuers shall be swift. A thousand shall flee at the threat of one, at the threat of five you shall flee till you are left like a flagstaff on the top of a mountain, like a signal on a hill. This is the word of our Lord, let's pray again. Our God, we thank you for your word and for your son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and that he is full of grace and truth. Grace is poured out upon his lips. And as we look at a passage that is Isaiah's judgment against Judah, we pray that even here we would know and see your grace, that you would show grace to your people, that we would return and rest in you, And we pray that you would give us the grace of the Holy Spirit to help us to understand your word. And may your spirit apply it to our hearts. May your spirit help us to worship you. We pray these things through Jesus Christ. Amen. Well, the memory is a strange thing. There are many things I'm sure you've encountered in life that you wish that you could remember and you forget. And day by day, you find yourself forgetting things that you try to remember. If that is you, and you are over 40, you have a bit of an excuse. According to the National Institute of Health, once we turn 40, our brains start to shrink at a quite rapid rate. At about 5% per decade, so I guess what a... I don't know the math per year. I'm not going to do that. But 5% per decade, your brain starts to shrink. And so I suppose that part of that is throwing away, pressing delete on all of those memories that maybe your brain doesn't think is worth holding on to. But then you have things that you wish you could forget. You wish you could forget some things, and yet, do you find yourself remembering these things? Maybe there are painful experiences from your past, and you're going about your day, you're doing something like washing the dishes one day, and as you're just doing the dishes, all of a sudden, a memory pops into your head, and it's a memory of a bad experience, and it gets you down for the rest of the day, and you start to think, Why am I thinking about this? Why did this thought pop into my head? Well, in our day, there's a word that people like to use a lot. It's the word trigger. they talk a lot about being triggered by a lot of things. Experiences, words, people, they say, it triggers me. And so, you know, we talk about safe spaces and things like that, spaces where people don't get triggered. But the reality is that the brain does actually get triggered by things. And this is a lot of what we call now PTSD, where a sight or a smell or a sound or a similar experience will trigger something in your brain. And this is your memory's way of telling your body to defend itself. Your body, your brain, is trying to learn how to avoid danger in the future by remembering there were sights or sounds that were dangerous in the past, so you need to get out of that similar situation. So this is what our memory does. And in general, we think about that as a bad thing. But what if there are good aspects to that? What if it's a good thing to be reminded of painful experiences, negative experiences, so that we don't go back to those situations? And what if there is such a thing as also a spiritual memory, where there might be places or things or sites or even smells and sounds that remind you of what your life was like before you were a believer. So I'll give you an example. I knew someone who, once he became a Christian, could never get on a bike again. He refused to get on a bike. And that was because he, as an unbeliever, was obsessed with cycling. He devoted himself to it. He was involved in competitions. He spent his whole life basically training, exercising, preparing for competitions, winning competitions. He was an excellent cyclist. And he would say now that cycling was his idol. It was his god. One day God saved him, and when God saved him, he became aware that he loved and was obsessed with and worshipped cycling. And so if he was going to be a follower of Christ, cycling had to go. And so for him, it wasn't just, well, I won't be so obsessed with it anymore. For him, every time he would get on a bike, It would bring back all of those emotions and feelings and that whole past life of who he used to be. So he doesn't get on a bike. He had very expensive bikes. He threw them in the dump. He got rid of it and he totally changed his life because for him, cycling was a trigger of the old man. But we're talking about all of this because the nation of Judah ignores certain warnings. The nation of Judah is going back, we could say, to the life of the old man, the life before God, before God saved them and brought them out. Judah is going back to Egypt. And Egypt The word Egypt itself was already supposed to be a warning sign to them of something that they were never to go back to again, never touch or even get close to. And yet they are ignoring the warning and going back to their old way of life. So this is what we want to see and apply to our own lives. Where are the places or the things where God says to you, never go back there again? Instead, return and rest in the Lord. Let's begin looking more closely at the verses here in Isaiah. First in verses one through seven, we see God telling them not to go back. to Egypt. So verse one starts out, whoa, or, ah, stubborn children. Here's another whoa judgment against them because they are rebelling against God. And already here in verse one, he calls them stubborn children or rebellious children, rebellious sons. And that name is already calling to mind Egypt. It was in Egypt that God first referred to Israel as his son. And God adopted Israel, we could say, there in Egypt, and he said this was so that he would bring them out of Egypt to bring them to himself. God said in Exodus 4, verse 22, Israel is my firstborn son. Let my son go. So you need to let my son go. I'm bringing Israel out because Israel is my son. These are my children. And so now they are sons brought up out of Egypt to be adopted because they are God's son. Now they are rebelling. They are being stubborn children, rebellious sons, rebelling against the very God who brought them out of Egypt. They're rebelling because, verse one goes on to say, they carry out a plan, but not mine. They make an alliance, but not of my spirit. And they add sin to sin. This plan or this alliance, we find out in verse two, they are setting out to go down to Egypt. They're making an alliance with Egypt to save themselves from Assyria. So they're carrying out a plan. They are counseling together. The leaders are getting together and having cabinet meetings. about how they might save themselves, and they decide to make an alliance with Egypt. So we finally find out here in chapter 30, although we've been looking ahead, skipping ahead, but we finally find out what they're doing. Remember, chapters 28 and 29 were more talking in general terms, where Isaiah said, you're like the clay trying to be the potter. And you're trying to hide deep from the Lord your counsels or your plans, you're you're making all these plans, trying to be secretive about them. To be like the potter, the clay who is taking over the potter's job. What is that plan? It's that they are setting out to go down to Egypt. And God says in verse two, you did this without asking for my direction. Why do you think they didn't ask God for direction? Because they knew what God was going to say. They already know from God's spirit through the prophet Isaiah, what God's will is. So they know if they were to go ask Isaiah, hey, what should we do? They know what the answer is going to be. It's like a son, a child who doesn't ask their parents, If they think this or that is a good idea, should I go that do this? Am I allowed to do this? They're not going to ask because they know what the answer will be. So they think, well, maybe I'll hide it. Maybe I'll carry out my own plan and hide it from my parents and they might not find out. So instead of asking permission, I'll just go do it anyway. I know what they're going to say. This is what the stubborn children of Israel are doing. So they set out to go down to Egypt. Now, you might think, OK, so Isaiah has already said the bad thing that they're doing is making an alliance. And God has told them many times to rest, to trust Him, that God is the mighty fortress for them, and all they have to do is do nothing, and God will protect them, so don't make an alliance. In chapter 7, King Ahaz was told by Isaiah, don't make an alliance with Assyria, and God will protect you if you stand firm in faith, and King Ahaz ignored Isaiah. So you might think, okay, so the problem here is that they make an alliance. But it's also that they make an alliance in particular with Egypt. This is like going an extra step. This is making it even worse. Not only are they making an alliance to reject God's protection, but they are making an alliance with Egypt, Egypt of all places and of all people. And one of the clearest places that we see this, that they are not meant to ever have any interaction with Egypt at all, to never go back to Egypt. One of the clearest places we see this is Deuteronomy 17, verse 16. When God, through Moses, is giving instructions about the king, the future king, he says, Only he must not acquire many horses for himself. Or cause the people to return to Egypt in order to acquire many horses. What's the problem? What's wrong with having many horses? Well, he says, since since the Lord has said to you, you shall never return that way again. You shall never return that way again. Those are the crystal clear instructions that God gave to Israel about Egypt. Now, he only made it that clear once, but do you really have to say it more than once? When a father looks at his son, maybe those of you who have younger sons, bend down and you look him straight in the eye and you say, you may never cross that road by yourself. It is dangerous. Never ever do it. I'm telling you once, don't ever do it. Or you tell another child, you may never go down that road. You may never go to that part of town. Now, if the child is disobedient, can the child say, well, you only told me once? No. Will the child then say, oh, well, I thought you meant until I turned 10 years old. And after I turned 10, I could then start going down that road. Or once I turned 16, then I can go over to that part of town. Oh, I thought you really just meant never go there during daylight. No. You shall never go there. That's crystal clear. there would be no reason, no excuse, no justification for Israel to ever go back to Egypt. Egypt is the house of bondage. Egypt is the place of slavery. When God brought them out of Egypt, he said that he led them the harder, longer route through the Red Sea. because there was a shorter route up through Philistia, but he says in Exodus 13, 17, he doesn't take them by Philistia, lest the people change their minds when they see war, so they will encounter opposition there, and they change their minds and return to Egypt. They would be tempted to return to Egypt, but God brought them out of there. Egypt was the place of physical and spiritual death. In Ezekiel, Ezekiel calls Pharaoh the great dragon, named after a serpent. Pharaoh is the great dragon in Ezekiel 29 verse 3. And really, Pharaoh represents the offspring of the serpent from Genesis 3. The offspring of the serpent persecutes and seeks to destroy the offspring of the woman. Pharaoh even has a big snake on his head, a picture of a snake on his turban. I mean, can you imagine being a Hebrew at the beginning of the days of Exodus and you look at Pharaoh or you look at the statues of Pharaoh and every time you look at him, you see a giant snake. And you would know the story of Genesis 3, that the serpent and his offspring is seeking to kill the offspring of Eve. And this is why Pharaoh is a murderer. Pharaoh loves death because Satan is a murderer. And in Exodus 1, this is why the Pharaoh seeks to kill the Hebrew children. because the seed of the serpent is trying to snuff out the seed of the woman, the godly line that will bring the Messiah. Pharaoh is an anti-Semitic dictator who wants to crush the Hebrews. So if you're from Judah, what would make you think it's a good idea to make an alliance with that nation, with that dictator, who sought to extinguish the male children of your family, who kept your people in many years of slavery and bondage. You shall never return that way again, God said. And yet they set out to go down to Egypt. Now, they don't just set out, but the rest of the passage tells us how they do this. They set out with gusto and with great zeal. Verse one says they make an alliance, and literally the wording there is they weave a web. Now, maybe weave a web is just like an alliance joins things together, but it gets across this picture of weaving a web of sin. People don't just fall into sin. Sometimes when we use that word, people make it sound like, oh, you know, I'm just driving down the road and there's a pothole. And I drove into a pothole and I'm walking down the path and I just fell into sin. That's not how sin works. People have to weave webs of sin. We weave webs of lies to try to cover our tracks. People who steal money have to weave a web to try to cover themselves. People who are sexually immoral have to weave a web of planning and schemes and lies to accomplish their sexual immorality. That's what they're doing. Oh, they don't just find themselves somehow over in Egypt. No. They are making intricate, detailed, intentional plans to go to the house of bondage in the place of slavery. They go to great lengths. Verse 4 says they're at Zoan and Hanes. Those are cities that are further north than where they needed to go. They are extra distance. That's what's being represented here is that they go deep into Egypt. They're going really far into Egypt. And that's also what verse six is talking about when it talks about this oracle, this strange prophecy about the beasts of the negative. The Negev was that route that I was referring to before when God did not want them to go through that route, through Philistia, which would go then to the Negev. God said, don't go that way. And so they came out of Egypt by the Red Sea, but now what Judah is doing is they're going back to Egypt through the Negev. In other words, they're going the easy pass express lane. They're going the quick and easy route because they want to get there fast and they want to go to Zoan as far away into Egypt as they can get. Verse 16 says, We will flee upon horses. We will ride upon swift steeds. Let's get our best horses and get there as fast as we can. There's no shame here. There's no trepidation. There's no self-doubt. There's no, oh man, what if we get caught? No, they're very confident that they're hiding their counsels deep from the Lord, and they're not gonna get caught, and they're gonna go as fast and as far as they can into Egypt. But the way of transgressors is hard, Proverbs says, and so In verse six, it says they find trouble and anguish. They meet with lions, snakes, poisonous serpents. They find themselves loaded down with all these great treasures that they wanted to take down to Egypt, and it's now slowing them down and loading them down. And so they find out Egypt's help in verse seven is worthless. and empty. They were tempted by the protection, the shelter, that verse 2 mentions. But verse 3 says your protection turns to shame. The shelter is just a shadow that turns to humiliation. You find it's worthless and empty. Isaiah gives Egypt a name, a nickname, Rahab. Rahab represents chaos. The chaos of the sea. Rahab is Miss Chaos. She just brings you chaos when you go back to her. And she sits still, meaning she does nothing. She's useless. She can't do anything for you. So Judah reminds me of the prodigal son in Luke that Jesus talks about. The prodigal son ran off in rebellion as the son. He ran off and Luke says he went to a far country. He didn't go down the street. He didn't go to the next town. He ran off to a far country. He had many treasures, just as Judah has loading up its treasures on its donkey to go over to Egypt and to pay off Egypt and to go as far as they can into Zoan. The prodigal son had many treasures of his father's inheritance, and he lives it up. He spends all his money. He lives up his life of reckless living, he says, a life full of immorality. He does anything and everything that his lusts and pleasures desire to do. But then he finds out that the way of transgressors is hard. He finds out that that life is worthless and empty. He finds himself destitute with nothing and he's sitting at a pig farm looking at a trough and he's starving and he says, I don't want to eat this pig food. What am I doing here? I spent all my father's inheritance. I've wasted it all. Here I am in a far country and it's all been worthless. This is what Judah did. But will Judah repent? Is Judah gonna be like the prodigal son and return? Well, before we get to Judah's response, think about this for yourself. We could ask it this way. What is your Egypt? What is the place where you are told to never return that way again? What is the place or the thing or the person where God says, do not ever do that again? Don't get even close. When we think about sin, we need to think about how we are told to put sin to death, to run from our sin. Not just that we are to avoid sin, but we are to run away from sin. Put our sin to death and never even get close. What are the things in your life where God says to you, don't even get close to going there again? like the person who was a cyclist. This might not be something that in itself is bad. Cycling is not a sin itself, but for the person, that was that person's God or idol. And I think this is what Paul is talking about in Romans 14, 23, when he says, whatever is not of faith is sin. He was talking in the context of meat and eating meat and I think there were there some pagans who had become Christians and they were now vegetarians. And for them. They got triggered by the smell or the sight and especially the taste of meat. For them to eat meat would bring back to their minds the life of emptiness and worthlessness and idolatry and paganism. And so they said, we can't in good conscience eat this meat. Paul says, if it's not of faith, if you're not eating that meat in faith, then to you that is sin. And so I think he's talking there of things where it might not be black and white. It is bad for everybody to murder. Do not murder. Don't get close to wanting to murder someone. Well, that's clear. But there are also things that for you, your conscience might say to you, no, I can't go back to that old life. No, I have to change my lifestyle. I have to change my activities. I have to change the places that I go and the people that I'm around because if I'm around those situations, it brings back the old life of Egypt. What is that for you? And may this be a reminder to you to put your sin to death and not even get close to going back to those things. Throw it away. Do whatever you have to do. Change your life. It doesn't matter how inconvenient it is. Do not sin against God. Do not sin against your conscience. Don't go back to Egypt. Well, the second thing we see here is the command to not ignore the warning. So the son, the prodigal son, came to his senses. What am I doing here? What does Judah do? Judah ignores. Judah refuses to repent. We see this in verses eight to 14. In verse eight, God says, now go write it before them on a tablet and inscribe it in a book that it may be for the time to come as a witness forever. God says, write down this prophecy. It's written in a book and in a tablet. It's written in the book or a scroll because it's meant to be a legal document. So in a hundred or 200 years, When lawyers are arguing and there's a court case and somebody might say, well, we didn't know. We didn't expect this to happen. The judge says, can we get that piece of evidence? Can you get out that Isaiah scroll? Please read, sir, read that Isaiah scroll. What does it say? I read the scroll. Okay. So, so Isaiah told you what you were doing wrong and Isaiah told you what would happen if you kept doing this. And so you agree that what has happened is what Isaiah said was going to happen. Yes, your honor. Okay. Okay. So it's a legal document to be a witness that Isaiah was right and the people deserve their judgment. So that was the scroll and then it was written on a tablet. The tablet was a billboard. It was a public service announcement. Maybe Isaiah wrote verses six and seven. Egypt is worthless and empty. There's the campaign slogan. Your politicians are worthless. They're making you empty promises because Egypt is worthless and empty. And Isaiah was trying to announce to the people what the leaders were doing. So it was written on a tablet. It was written on a scroll because God knows verse nine, he says, for they are a rebellious people, lying children, children unwilling to hear the instruction of the Lord. God knows they would rebel. And they rebel by responding to the prophets. Verse 10, they say to the seers, do not see. And to the prophets, do not prophesy to us what is right. Speak to us smooth things, prophesy illusions, leave the way, turn aside from the path. Let us hear no more about the Holy One of Israel. Their conscience is hardened. They're not just falling into sin. They are weaving intricate webs of sin, going back to the place of death of Egypt. They are trying to hide deep from the Lord, their counsel, as chapter 29 had said. And now their conscience is so hard that when the prophets say to them, stop, you're doing what's wrong, and you're gonna get the judgment of God, they say, be quiet. We don't want to hear you. We don't want you to talk about that. And you remember that these are religious people. These are people who are offering sacrifices. They still want to claim religion. And so they say, OK, OK, we'll hear the prophets. We like listening to prophets. But just just give us some of the good stuff. Give us some of the feel good prophecies. Don't talk about judgment. Speak about smooth things. Speak about smooth things that make us feel good inside. They don't want to hear, verse 11 says, about the Holy One of Israel. Give us a God that is tame and makes us feel good about ourselves. Don't give us that Holy One stuff. Now look at how Isaiah responds in verse 12. Therefore, thus says the Holy One of Israel. Actually, it's pretty funny. Don't tell us about the Holy One of Israel. Okay, thus says the Holy One of Israel. You don't want to hear about the Holy One? Well, I'll tell you about the holy one. This is the one I'm talking about. This is the one that I must tell you about. How could Isaiah, the one in chapter six, who sees God as holy, holy, holy? How could he talk about anybody else? How could he deny the God who has sent him? Therefore, thus says the holy one of Israel, Isaiah's message is given to him by God, not by the market trends, not by what the polls say. The polls might say prophesy smooth things, Isaiah says, but it's my job to prophesy about the holy one. So here's what he says, because you despise this word, trust in oppression and perverseness and rely on them. Therefore, this iniquity shall be to you like a breach in a high wall, bulging out and about to collapse, whose breaking comes suddenly in an instant. And its breaking is like that of a potter's vessel that is smashed so ruthlessly that among its fragments not a shard is found with which to take fire from the hearth or to dip water out of the cistern. And so Isaiah preaches to them a message of God's coming judgment because of their sin. Verse 13, the wall has a beam that's going to fall. And so this is an internal, you could say, judgment. Their sin is going to fall. And isn't this the case with sin? Sin is always going to lead to your destruction. Sin has a beam inherent in it that is going to fall. Sin is like building a wall without the right beam. Eventually, over time, it's going to fall. You keep trying to live a life of sin. You keep trying to weave your web and hide your plans from the Lord. But eventually it's just going to collapse. It can't work. And so there's the internal, the sin itself is going to collapse. And then there's the external. God is going to smash like a potter, like a potter's vessel, like someone smashes a piece of pottery. So God's judgment will come to destroy the people in the nation. So, they ignored the warnings. They wanted to hear smooth things. And the same goes for us. Don't ignore the warnings of the conscience, the warnings of the Word of God. the warning of the Holy Spirit, the warnings of maybe teachers of the Word of God. Don't turn off the radio. Don't turn off the frequency because you don't like what it sounds like. You don't want to hear about the conviction of your own sin. And so you continue to walk in the path of sin. Some people might want something like this. And so they say, well, I'm just going to stop going to church. I'm just going to turn it off completely. I'm not going to listen to the word of God being preached. So so I'll just not go to a church altogether. Some people will still want to feel religious and feel good and Christian. And so they'll say, well, I'll just go to church, but I don't like that church where they keep talking about the Holy One of Israel. I'm going to go somewhere where they make me feel good, prophesize smooth things. Or. to be more relevant to those of us who are sitting here. Sometimes we could say, OK, well, we're we're sitting here. We are at a church where the word of God is preached. But, you know, I'm just going to get the remote and turn the volume down. And we can sit through faithful preaching and be at churches where the word of God is actually preached. But sit there and not listen to a single word that is being said. Because we would rather just pursue our own pleasures and sins. We could go to a faithful church where the word of God is preached and sit through it and listen to the word of God and the words are coming into our ears and we might even have a sting of conscience that says, Oh yeah, I should do this. I should stop doing that. I need to change. But then an hour later we forget. We move on. We've got other things to do. We've got other thoughts to distract us. And so still our lives continue without change, without repentance. There might be even another step where we might be able to hear the word of God being preached publicly, and we might be able to listen and say, oh, yeah, I should change. But but then we want to keep that at a distance. Stay up in the pulpit. Don't get in the mess of my life and my sin. Remember that Paul in Acts chapter 20, the apostle. He said that he admonished. With tears, the Ephesians admonish them day and night with tears publicly and from house to house. So there are times where we don't just need the public preaching, but we need to receive private correction and private admonishment so that we will repent and change. Don't ignore the warnings. Finally, God tells us what we should do here in verse 15. He calls us instead to return and to rest. Isaiah says, Thus said the Lord God, the holy one of Israel. In returning and rest, you shall be saved. In quietness and in trust shall be your strength. There's a lot of what not to do, but here's what we need to do. Return and rest, quietness and trust. People had gone down to Egypt at any moment. All they had to do was come to their senses and say, you know what? This is worthless and empty. I should just go back. I should just get out of Egypt. I should go and listen to what Isaiah has been saying, and I should go and return and rest in the Lord. When the prodigal son ran off to his far country, he could have spent half of his father's money and just said, you know what? That was really dumb. I need to go back to my father. And his father would have welcomed him after spending half of the inheritance. And he could have done the same after spending 90% of it. But he stayed and he kept going until he spent all of the father's inheritance. But still, finally, he said, I can just go back. All I have to do is return to my father. He had no fear that his father was not going to accept him. He repented. He returned and he was welcomed with open arms by his father. All Israel had to do at this point was just return. Out of Egypt. In returning. And rest. You shall be saved. Returning is repentance, turning away from your sin. Just. Get out of it. If you know that you have been going down in Egypt, then Do something, change, stop your life of sin. Know that you will be saved if you return to God, you rest in him. God brought them out of Egypt by them doing nothing. God told them when they came to the Red Sea that all they had to do was wait and be silent. Now, can you imagine how hard it would be when you've got chariots coming after you, and you've got an ocean behind you, and you're trapped, and you don't know where to go or what to do, and then God says, wait and be silent. God will fight for you. And this is a picture of salvation that it's by silence, by waiting, by not doing things that we are saved because it is God who does the saving. It is when we rest from our works and our own attempts to be pleasing to God and favorable to God by all the good things that we think we can do, that's then when we rest from that and we realize we can't do all that, that then we can be saved because we rest in the work of Jesus Christ. And in quietness and in trust is our strength. Quietness and trust makes you strong. The word here that he uses for strength is the word for might, or it's the word for a warrior. And so you can think of it like this. The strong warrior is the quiet one. the trusting person. So in this scenario with a Syria coming to attack, they think that they need an alliance with a powerful empire. And God says, No, if you want a strong warrior soldier in your army, be quiet. Stop. Rest. Just in their case, just sit there. Sit there in Judah. Don't go around to Egypt. Don't call all the politicians. Just sit there and wait. And that's your strength. The proverb. 1632 says. Stronger is he who can rule his spirit. And he who takes a city. It takes more strength to rule your spirit in quietness than to be a mighty warrior. And so this quietness, it can apply to anxiety and fear or anger. Self-control over our spirit requires the greatest strength, but our strength is by having self-control so that we're not trying to figure everything out, fix all our problems, but wait on God to save. I've been thinking about this for a long time. How does that work? What does that mean? It sounds nice, but what does it mean? How do we do that? And I've been thinking about this ever since we were going through 2 Corinthians. This was one of the thoughts that kept coming up. And then as we've been going through Isaiah, the thoughts keep coming up. What does it mean, quietness and trust? And Pastor Hill talked about a lot of this this morning, This is basically what I think it means. It's when Paul talks about suffering in 2 Corinthians as light momentary affliction producing in us an eternal weight of glory. So when you're suffering, when you've got the Assyria coming to attack you, what you want to do is you want to figure out a way to get out If I have to go down to Egypt, I'll do it, but I got to do something to get out of this suffering. But Paul says light's momentary affliction produces an eternal weight of glory. So suffering It's not just that, well, in 10 years, I'm going to be more mature, although the Bible talks about that. It's not just, well, in 20 years, I can look back and see how God used this for good. The Bible does talk about that. But there's another aspect of suffering. The actual affliction is doing something. It is producing something. an eternal heavenly weight of glory. So as you endure, go through the suffering, there is something being built up, an account being piled up there in heaven. There is this weight of glory. So Paul doesn't tell us, well, if you're suffering, figure out a way to fix it, figure out a way to get out of it. No, he says, what you do when you're suffering is you endure it. Quietness, trust, return to the Lord, rest, and as you're enduring suffering, you're being saved. This is your strength. Now, that's not gonna, you're not gonna see that until heaven. but you will have your strength, the eternal weight of glory in heaven. Second Corinthians, Paul says, my grace is sufficient for you, my suffering, my strength is made perfect in your weakness. Strength is being perfected. So that's why God's people are called to return, to rest, quietness and to trust. What does that mean then? How do you do that? It just really just means we endure. We bear the weight of our suffering. Now I'm not saying again that you can't do anything to try to fix your problems or get out of your problems, but you are willing to endure suffering. because you have a heavenly, eternal perspective. As I wait through this suffering in quietness and trust and returning and rest, I'm doing this because I believe God's gonna save me. I believe by faith that God's telling the truth about this. Because if I just spend my life suffering and then I die and God doesn't come through, then what a sad life that's been. but I believe God will keep his promises, and so I live by faith. Maybe you're tempted to go back to Egypt, to give up, to just want to throw in the towel of all of this following Christ, taking Christ seriously, Christianity, Persevering, seeking holiness. What's the point? What good does it do for me? Maybe I just go back to Egypt. Don't go back. It's a place of spiritual and physical death. Hear the warnings of God by his spirit. God gives you