Dennis Tuuri

# SERMON TRANSCRIPT: ISAIAH 54

For today is Isaiah 54. Isaiah 54 is the response to the wonderful gospel of Isaiah that we just recited responsively. Isaiah 54 and your outline articulates a sevenfold response called for by the people of God in response to the gospel of Isaiah 53, the victorious suffering servant. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Isaiah 54.

Sing, O barren, you who have not born. Break forth into singing and cry aloud, you who have not labored with child, for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married woman, says the Lord.

Enlarge the place of your tent, and let them stretch out the curtains of your dwellings. Do not spare. Lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes. For you shall expand to the right and to the left. And your descendants will inherit the nations and make the desolate cities inhabited. Do not fear, for you will not be ashamed, neither be disgraced, for you will not be put to shame, for you will forget the shame of your youth and will not remember the reproach of your widowhood anymore.

For your maker is your husband. The Lord of hosts is his name, and your redeemer is the holy one of Israel. He is called the God of the whole earth. For the Lord has called you like a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit. Like a youthful wife when you were refused, says your God. For a mere moment, I have forsaken you. But with great mercies, I will gather you. With a little wrath, I hid my face from you for a moment, but with everlasting kindness, I will have mercy on you, says the Lord, your redeemer.

For this is like the waters of Noah to me. For as I have sworn that the waters of Noah would no longer cover the earth, so have I sworn that I would not be angry with you, nor rebuke you. For the mountains shall depart, the hills be removed, but my kindness shall not depart from you, nor shall my covenant of peace be removed, says the Lord, who has mercy on you. Oh, you afflicted one, tossed with tempest and not comforted.

Behold, I will lay your stones with colorful gems and lay your foundations with sapphires. I will make your pinnacles of rubies, your gates of crystal, and all your walls of precious stones. All your children shall be taught by the Lord. Great shall be the peace of your children. In righteousness you shall be established. You shall be far from oppression, for you shall not fear, and from terror, for it shall not come near you.

Indeed, they shall surely assemble, but not because of me. Whoever assembles against you shall fall for your sake. Behold, I have created the blacksmith who blows the coals in the fire, who brings forth an instrument for his work. And I have created the spoiler to destroy. No weapon formed against you shall prosper. And every tongue which rises up against you in judgment you shall condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord and their righteousness is from me says the Lord.

Amen. Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for the wonderful gospel contained even in this response to the gospel. We thank you for your unutterable kindness and mercy and grace to us through the merits of the suffering servant who now rules the whole world. Bless us, Lord God. Empower us by your Holy Spirit that we may respond to the gospel of our savior as drawn out in the lines of Isaiah according to how you have drawn out the responses as well, God through him.

Bless us as we consider this sevenfold response to the gospel of our savior. In Jesus name we ask it and for the sake of his kingdom not ours. Amen. Amen. Please be seated.

We are in Isaiah 54. We are at the conclusion of the sixth section of the book of Isaiah. This section begins with the word “listen.” It instructs us on the man, the incarnate servant who would come, the suffering servant, and die on the cross for us. It instructs us how we’re to be in union with him, like him. And so, as it comes to its conclusion in Isaiah 54, it describes the way we’re to be in response to the wonderful gospel of the victorious suffering servant in Isaiah 53.

We talked about that last week. Read it responsibly again today. I hope you meditate on it repeatedly throughout your lives. Teach Isaiah 53 to your children. It is a wonderful description of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and quoted so often in the New Testament. It is a blessing to us. It is good news.

Now the good news in Isaiah 53—do you remember the good news? It is that when Jesus comes, when the second person of God becomes incarnate, when Jesus Christ does his work on the cross, everything changes in history. That’s the gospel. The gospel is not limited to nor even, I think, centered on the imputation of righteousness. That wasn’t news. That was true throughout history. Men were imputed with the righteousness of God and right standing with him through faith.

The news is that God has now come and done what he had promised for 4,000 years, uniting the world and that the kingdom of Jesus Christ would grow to fill the earth. That’s the gospel and the suffering servant in the middle of Isaiah that we all remember hearing about so often, but so often we don’t hear the bookends of that section where it talks about him ruling in the context of the nations. So that’s the gospel and this is a response to the gospel that we are supposed to engage in.

I wanted to mention one thing more from Isaiah 53. I mentioned this last week. Bob Kitsmiller afforded me a link to a series of five or six sermons by a professor from Western Seminary in Portland. Excellent sermons. You know, I think he’s a little too reductionistic in some terms he’s using like salvation and righteousness, et cetera. But excellent, you know, strongly Calvinistic sermons. And he talked about this verse in verse one of Isaiah 53: “Who has believed our report to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” And the answer of course is no one. No one will believe this report. And he goes on to give the report of the suffering servant and how Jesus wasn’t a people pleaser. Jesus didn’t have external glory and all that stuff. Who would believe that report that was the Messiah? And the answer is apart from the grace of God, nobody.

But this is quoted in John 12 and I mentioned this last week that John 12 quotes this verse and the whole point of John chapter 12 in the citation is the sovereignty of God and he goes on to quote from Isaiah blinding the eyes and hardening the hearts of the hearers, lest they should see with their eyes and he quotes that verse that talks about how they can’t believe in Jesus Christ but I think it’s important that in the context of considering that we remember verse 43 of John 12. He says this: “These things Isaiah said when he saw his glory and spoke of him. Nevertheless, even among the rulers, many believed in him. But because of the Pharisees, they did not confess him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue. For they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God.”

That’s what blinds the eyes, loving the praise of men more than the praise of God. That’s what leaves us utterly incapable apart from the saving grace of God to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ and to respond in faith. Do not seek the praise of men, brothers and sisters. Seek the praise of God for your life.

And how do we do it? Well, the text tells us today in Isaiah 54. At least seven responses to this wonderful gospel. Those responses are articulated on your outline. I hope you have one. I should mention before we get into the specific seven responses that this outline, while not kachiastic, is totally based on an excellent outline my wife did of Isaiah 54 that is chiastic.

And actually, if you took your outlines, points 1, 2, and three are really kind of one section of Isaiah 54. Point 4 is the central section, and points 5, 6, and 7 are the third section. So, it is ABC or ABA middle point 4, ABA the last three. There is that structure to it, and I may do a little bit more with that as we move along. But understand that while I haven’t given you the outline of the text that way, that’s where it came from. That’s how I identified the central teaching of Isaiah 54 was by looking at the structure, looking at how God had set it up, what the rhythms and patterns were, and what he wanted to draw our eyes to in terms of focus. And I’ll try to do that today as well.

Okay, first response, sing. Simple enough. Sing. That’s the response to the gospel. But what does it say? Who’s singing? People that have been brought back out of the Babylonian captivity, people that are now in Jerusalem. Everything’s cool. No. What does he say? Sing, oh barren, you who have not born, break forth into singing. The response to the gospel is belief in it. And a belief that tells us that while we are barren, the promises of God are true and our experiences have to align themselves with the promises of God, not the other way around.

The response is to sing in faith, to sing in faith. You have troubled minds. You’re barren. Remember Rich Bledsoe talked about this at camp. There’s so much about barrenness in the Old Testament and our lives can feel barren. They frequently do. And the response to that is to believe the promises of God and to sing forth in our barrenness. In our barrenness because we believe that what the Lord has said is true.

What does he say? You have not labored to give birth to a child. For more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married woman, says the Lord. More are the children of water than the children of blood. More are the children of faith, those who aren’t the children of God, didn’t receive that right by their own choice, but rather as a result of the will of God. Greater are those descendants in history than the descendants of those who are simply descendants of blood to a family. Water trumps blood in history. Water trumps blood.

And this first response is what we do every Lord’s day. We come together and you know we’re blessed in many ways. But you know, some of us go through periods of barrenness as well. And we’re in a particular period of barrenness as a country here. The effect of Christianity is not that great. But we sing praises to God with postmillennial victorious optimism because that’s what his word says. We respond to the gospel by singing praises.

Now, this singing of praises is corporate. It may not, you know, appear that way to you and we can certainly make the sort of application that I just did to us individually, but he’s addressing now the mother, two mothers, the pagan mothers who seem to have lots of kids and have great victory and all this stuff and that they’ve been enslaved to, and the faithful mother with faithful children, the church is what he’s describing here.

This isn’t just reading into the text. This verse Isaiah 54:1 is quoted in Galatians 4. Paul says, “This Jerusalem that above is free, which is the mother of us all.” And then he talks about this text: “For it is written, rejoice, O barren, you who do not bear, break forth and shout, you who are not in labor, for the desolate has many more children than she who has a husband.” Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are children of promise.

So Paul directly applies the text to the church, to Jerusalem, to the mother of us all. So it’s a singing in faith, but it is also a singing in a corporate setting. The response to the gospel of Jesus Christ is religion. It is the coming together to perform acts that God tells us he wants us to do. In this case, singing as the church of Jesus Christ. It is cultic actions, not cult in the sense a bad cult but that simply means it’s a religious set of actions that we engage in.

I mentioned this last week and I want to talk about it again this morning. I think it is a big problem and I could be misunderstood. Of course we rejoice in the fact that we have a personal relationship with Jesus. I you know I we all rejoice in that. But when this phrase this rhetoric is used that Christianity is not a religion it is a personal relationship with Jesus. A number of problems ensue from that rhetoric from that advertising slogan.

First of all, Jesus in the phrase is not Jesus Christ. Jesus means savior. Christ means Messiah or Lord. And when we emphasize a personal relationship with Jesus, we’re diminishing the importance or significance or even necessity of lordship. And this has been a controversy in the church you know for 50 years or more lordship salvation or not and so it diminishes the lordship of Jesus Christ. We have a personal relationship with Jesus. He is also the king as well as our savior and as that king he commands us to do things and graciously gives us the power through the holy spirit to fulfill them and we lose that with the reduction of Christianity to a personal relationship with Jesus.

Secondly the implication is of this is that this personal relationship is optional. A personal relationship with Jesus Christ is not optional. There are no brute facts in the world. This is not a neutrally created environment that God has given to us. Everything is the result of the personal actions of the triune God. A personal relationship with the triune God is inescapable. The question is the nature of that relationship. Do you have the wrath of God abiding upon you or have you bowed the knee to Jesus Christ and seen the love of God, the kindness and mercy of him to you?

That’s the only difference. It’s not whether you get a personal relationship with Jesus or not. It’s the nature of the relationship. And in other words, that rhetoric reinforces this lie that somehow the world is basically neutral that we can have some kind of relationship with anybody or anything apart from God. Impossible. Impossible.

Third, there’s no Father. There’s no Christ in the phrase. I know phrases are reductionistic. Religion doesn’t mention the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit. So, I understand well how phrases are used. But again, this is a problem in the contemporary church that the Father is set off to one side. The Gospel of John that we just quoted from, Jesus says over and over again that he’s come to reveal the Father. He’s come to direct us toward a personal relationship with the Father. He’s come to restore us to the Father. And when we only think about the Son and kind of a horizontal relationship, you know, we get rid of trying to understand the relationship of the heavenly Father are superior.

You know, Charlotte’s gone to various schools and they have the first rule in the classroom is something like obey all teachers and authorities over you, right? And they have these hand motions. Well, we all should do that every day. Remind ourselves that we’ve got a Father that Jesus has put us in relationship to and that relationship is mediated through authorities in the context of the land and we should honor them. So that’s the third problem. The Father’s set off to one side.

The fourth problem is the church, the institutional church, which is the body of Jesus Christ. Yeah, that’s what it is. Clearly, the church is the body of Christ becomes optional. I’ve got a personal relationship with Jesus. Yeah, I may go to church. I may not go to church. If I do go to church, I’ll go to this church and that church and this church. And there’s no connection to the body of Jesus Christ. And so we have some kind of amorphous cloud-like Christianity as opposed to the kind of vibrant visible manifestation of the church of Jesus Christ through local churches.

Fifth, subjectivism replaces the objective covenant and God’s law. Now, I’m all for subjectivism. I’m all for feeling good. I feel great. I go to bed. I raise my hands frequently to God and I thank him and I thank Jesus for the days given to me. That’s okay. But when we contrast religion, a set of actions that God requires in response to the gospel and say that’s no good and what we want is a personal relationship, a touchy-feely kind of a thing. And that’s what it becomes all too often in our day. Then what we’re doing is we’re replacing the objective reality of a covenantal relationship with God and the objective fact that he has called us to do particular things with just some sort of touchy-feely thing.

Now, I know that’s an overemphasis. That’s not what people that probably invented the phrase had in mind, but that’s the way that rhetoric pushes the church today is that the church becomes optional and feelings tend to supplant reality or facts.

Sixth rather, it disses religion, you know. So, religion isn’t good. So, you guys go to church. I don’t like organized religion. I like Jesus. I don’t like, you know, having to get together and do things and pastors and all that stuff. I just like Jesus, right? And so, it disses religion and which is corporate observances of things that God tells us to do. And yet, what we have here in Isaiah 54:1 is precisely a corporate response.

The church responding liturgically through singing the praises of God in the midst of difficulties. That is specifically the first response in what most commentators regard as clearly a series of responsive actions in Isaiah 54 to the gospel. The first response is Christian religion. It is the church. It is the corporate worship of the church. Now it doesn’t stop there. And hopefully when you sing on the Lord’s day, you sing a little more during the week and you praise God and you praise Jesus and the Father and the Holy Spirit in the context of your songs as well.

So it disses religion and religion is important when defined properly. Now, I know that cold formalities aren’t of use, but Christianity is a religion. It is a corporate activity. And that’s precisely what this first verse of response tells us it is about. And there is a sense in which—and now okay I can be misquoted I might misspeak if I do forgive me—but there’s a sense in which Christian religion is the gospel not a personal relationship with Jesus you could always have a personal relationship with the Father through the imputation of the merits of the coming savior throughout history but you couldn’t have the sort of worship together in unity of Jew and Gentile.

You couldn’t sing that. Now things have changed. Now Jesus has been enthroned at the right hand of the Father and now the great commission is put into effect and now all the ridiculous nonsense that you know God has winked at for 4,000 years is over as Paul told people in the book of Acts. You couldn’t do that then except in anticipation of what would happen. The gospel is the good news that what we’re singing of here is true that the children of faith the ones that are born of the will of God will be more numerous in the context of history, not even close, than the children of blood.

So in a very real sense, Christian religion is the response to the gospel of Jesus Christ as articulated in Isaiah 53. So that’s the first place to start. And you know, it’s interesting because there’s kind of a sevenfold series of things here. And the very first one, you know, is the first day of the week is what we do. We obey this first verse to come together and praise God liturgical actions.

Well, okay, moves on.

Two, prepare for church growth. Verses two and three. Enlarge the place of your tent. Let them stretch out the curtains of your dwellings. Do not spare. Lengthen your cords. Strengthen your stakes. You shall expand to the right and to the left. So, the second thing we’re supposed to do is get ready. Get ready for conversions. Get ready for growth. Be missional, be outward facing, expect people to be coming into the family of God as pictured here in the context of a tent.

We don’t come within the walls and cover up and just try to dog paddle through life until Jesus comes back. We’re supposed to be getting ready for growth. Now, you know, there’s lots of things that are part of this. That’s what we did with this auxiliary worship seating that we’re trying to do downstairs. We’re trying to get ready for growth. That’s what we do when I pastor people. I think about this all the time. Why in the world would God give us at RCC, the elders and pastors here, more people to pastor if we’re not pastoring correctly the ones he’s given to us? Why would he do that?

If we want growth, what does the scripture say? If you want to have more responsibilities, be faithful in small things. Be faithful in small things and God will give you blessing. That’s the key to church growth. Having an attitude of wanting to bring in more and diverse kinds of people. The gospel is people of all kinds of different varieties, stripes and personalities and backgrounds coming together to sing those corporate praises to Jesus. Okay, that’s the gospel. And any church that becomes identified mostly as one sort of people, unless that’s what their community is, if we’re segmented up, something’s wrong there. If we got artist churches over here and engineering churches over here and, you know, blue-collar churches over here, probably not too good. They’re supposed to be unity.

We’re supposed to get ready by having a missional attitude, by being faithful in the small things that this church is called to do and trust God for the rest of it. We’re to get ready for growth. Now, this was certainly true when the gospel happens and when Jesus is raised up, you got, you know, a little handful of guys and they knew what Isaiah said. They’re going to sing the praises and they better get ready for growth. And God gave it to them, didn’t he? So, it certainly was particularly true in the opening days of the church. But it’s true in individual congregations. It’s true in particular periods of time.

The world’s being shaken. I’ve never seen it. But this kind of thing before. People are wondering, is war going to break out between Islam and Christianity? People are getting pretty hot and worked up on either side. Is war going to break out between the Republicans, the moderates and the Tea Party people? Both parties seem to be splintering off into their particular, you know, going real far right and real far left. What’s going on? Well, I’ll tell you what’s going on. God’s shaking the world and I don’t know how it’s going to work out. I don’t know what’s going to happen in November and beyond, but God’s getting us ready. And he wants us to be ready.

You know, if he’s plowing up the ground, we got to be ready to plant seed and receive growth in the context of where God has placed us. The second response to the wonderful gospel of victorious suffering servant is get ready for growth. Understand what missional means. Figure it out. Look at the terms, look at some of the books. That’s what we’re trying to do as the elders here. And we wouldn’t want to be cloistered off. We want to get ready for growth. And that involves all kinds of things, but mostly it involves a right attitude. It’s more belief. They’re not flocking now. Let’s get ready for when they do and be faithful with what God’s given us in the meantime.

Three, put off fear and shame. Do not fear. Verse four says, “You will not be ashamed, neither be disgraced, for you will not be put to shame, for you will forget the shame of your youth and will not remember the reproach of your widowhood anymore.”

That’s amazing. I was talking this week, you know, my we’re going to have the how to study the Bible study or Sunday school class start in a couple weeks, three weeks, I think. And you know, this would make a great passage for a word study. There’s actually five words here, but there’s four basic Hebrew terms that are used for shame and reproach and being scoffed at, et cetera. And so it’s real interesting to look at these verses and look at this verse however and look at these different words.

They’re all there for a reason. You know, they’re parallel, but they’re always a little different. And so to understand the nuances of the differences is really quite helpful. This would be a great single verse to preach a sermon on. Can’t do that today. Can’t go into all the things going on, but suffice it to say that, you know, this putting off of fear is exceedingly important as a response to the gospel.

In fact, when the gospel happens, when Jesus is raised up, that’s what he tells people over and over again until he ascends to heaven. Don’t be fearful. Don’t be fearful. Don’t be fearful. Fear kills mission. I mean, you know, if we’re fearful, there’s no way we want strange people coming in, right? So, if we’re going to have a missional attitude, if we’re going to expectantly look forward to what God is doing, we got to put off fear.

Now, there’s a proper fear. There’s a proper shame shamefulness that we had, you know, corporately in Israel and with us personally because of our sins. Jeremiah, I think it’s 6:15, says, you know, man, Israel was so bad that she wouldn’t even blush when she sinned anymore. Felt no shame. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but my daughter Charity was telling me that she heard that I think I’ve heard this before that the difference between people and animals is people blush and animals don’t.

Well, as you move away from Jesus, people get more like animals and they don’t blush anymore either. They’re doing bad things. So this third putting off, you know, assumes that you recognize the shame that is rightfully yours as a result of your sins, as a result of your trusting in things other than God. And God says that every week, you know, what we do here is to pronounce to you the forgiveness of your sins.

You can process shame a couple of different ways. You can paste it over and pretend that you’re not feeling that way or say, “I shouldn’t feel that way.” Or you can, you know, confess your sins to God and receive forgiveness. Watched a movie yesterday, Get Low. A guy who has shame that locks him up for 40 years away from people. 40 years, good number for a film that has a Christian theme in it. 40 years of wilderness shame. He didn’t process it right.

What are we going to do? Well, we’re supposed to recognize that God has forgiven us our sins and put off fear and believe that, yeah, we’ve been horrible. We’ve trusted in idols. We’ve trusted in foreign powers. We’ve trusted in our own strength. We’ve disobeyed God’s law. What’s the summation of sin in the Gospel of Isaiah 53? All the horrible things we do in the Gospel of Isaiah?

Please know this. Please know if I ask you, how does God summarize sin? “All we like sheep have gone astray. We’ve turned everyone to our own way.” It’s as simple as that. Our own way. And that should shame us when we turn to our own way. Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, the life. Every Lord’s day, that’s what you go through here. That’s what this liturgy of the church is all about. You confess that you went your own way.

And Jesus says, “I’m the way. I’ve restored you back in it. I’ve empowered you to walk in it. I give you glory through the forgiveness of sins.” At the beginning of our service, and then he says he’s the truth and we confess we don’t know anything apart from your truth Jesus and your word and he gives us the sermon and he preaches his word to us and he tells us what truth is and how our world should be understood based upon his eternal truth.

And then he brings us to this table rejoicing life together in the context of the church of Jesus Christ. There’s no life no place else. And so the way the truth and the life is a reminder to us that sin what we should be ashamed of is just doing our own thing. It’s as simple as that. You don’t got to be bad, wicked mean you might be very moralistic. Might be a better person than I am. Might be more friendly than me.

But if you’re going your own way, you see, that’s what Jesus looks at. He says he is the way. And he wants us to be ashamed of going our own way. And then he wants us to put off fearfulness because he’s dealt with the problems that we have that cause a proper sense of fear. Yeah. We’re supposed to be shameful and fearful and then we’re supposed to have that process correctly by accepting the forgiveness of our sins.

And that’s what the center of this text is all about in verses 5 to 10.

Four, remember God’s comfort and attributes. I said these seven things have a center. And if we took the time to look at the structure of this chapter, as my lovely wife did, it’d become quite obvious that this is the center. These verses, God’s comfort and his attributes. Once more, that’s what we talked about several weeks ago from what was it? Isaiah 42, I think. God’s comfort and his attributes.

What do we read here? So, at the center now, of these actions is an implied trust. Now, it’s not a specific command, but it’s trust. Trust of God’s attributes in relationship to his people.

Your maker is your husband. The Lord of hosts is his name, and your redeemer is the holy one of Israel. He is called the God of the whole earth.

Interesting there. Name is at the center. And two titles for God are either side. The maker, the Lord of hosts, the redeemer, the God of the whole earth. So, he’s now telling us here at the center. You know, our trust is in who he is as declared in his name.

For the Lord has called you like a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit like a youthful wife and you are refused, says your God. And then here’s the very center of this text. If we were to look at this carefully, we’d see this.

For a mere moment, I have forsaken you, but with great mercies I will gather you. With a little wrath, I hid my face from you for a moment, but with everlasting kindness, I have mercy on you and says the Lord your redeemer, which matches back up to the top.

So the very middle section here is mercy, kindness, kindness. Yes, I had wrath on you because of your sins. But the suffering servant just described in the gospel is that those things have been done away with through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And now he has tremendous kindness. What’s the attribute of God here now? It’s not his omnipotence, his omniscience, his omnipresence. It’s his love. His love, his kindness is why he has called you. That’s at the very center. That’s the beating heart of the response to the gospel that God calls us to do is to know at the center of all of our responses the kindness, the mercy, the grace of God.

And God wants us to see that repeated over and over again. Yet for a little while I was angry, but it’s done away with now. The world has moved forward. My relationship to you now is tremendous mercy and kindness. This is who I am.

I have sworn that the waters of Noah would no longer cover the earth. So I have sworn that I would not be angry with you nor rebuke you. For the mountains shall depart, the hills be removed, but my kindness, fourth occurrence of these words, kindness, mercy, grace. My kindness shall not depart from you, nor shall my covenant of peace be removed, says the Lord who has mercy on you.

Fourth slot, sevenfold structure. The center, representing the glory of God. The rule of God is what these responses are all about. But the rule of God is a calling for a response to his grace, his mercy, his kindness. The covenant of peace is put in parallel here to my kindness. The God who commands us, who’s the Lord of hosts, who’s the creator of the world, who commands a response wants us to know that the center of our response is an acknowledgment of his character, his kindness, his grace, his mercy. All these things are what this covenant of peace is all about.

You know, personal relationship with God. Yeah, you bet. And a God who is kind, loving, merciful. That’s the beating heart of the response to the gospel of the victorious suffering servant. That’s the center of this text and the very center is wrath for a little while. Acknowledge your sinfulness, but recognize that I have called you now in kindness and mercy. I’ve paid the price for your sinfulness. My wrath wasn’t put out on you ultimately and totally. It was put out on myself, the second person of the Trinity, suffering for us on that cross, the gospel.

You know, so maybe here’s a way to think about it. What you’re supposed to do this week, every day, is to preach the gospel to yourself. Is to say, “Boy, I’m barren. Things don’t look so good. But wait a minute now. I feel like God is angry with me. Wait a minute. I’ve confessed my sins. Wait a minute.” He says at the very beating heart of the center, my response is believing that Jesus has paid the price and that God in mercy and kindness is drawing me to himself even through the difficulties.

Preach the gospel to yourself. That’s a required response to the gospel. Don’t forget it, you know. Remember the past, seeing in the present, looking with hope to the future. That’s what’s going on in this thing. That’s the response to the gospel of Jesus Christ. What a wonderful thing it is.

Five, anticipate the beautiful city. Verses 11 to 13. Behold, I will lay your stones with colorful gems and lay your foundations with sapphires. I will make your pinnacles of rubies, your gates of crystal, and all your walls of precious stones.

Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with God. We’ve talked this a couple of times. Won’t belabor the point except to say we have an obligation to anticipate the transformation of all cultures with the worship of God, the high places that’ll be beautified, the high places with justice at the gates, with safety and protection being the walls and all set in a beautiful context of God’s development of beauty and culture in a city.

Part of the response to the gospel of Jesus Christ is doing justice, loving mercy, walking humbly with God, and wanting to see that be the hallmark of the places where we live. We’re to do these things. We have an obligation to respond.

Now, the handouts today. So, the coloring page is Sunday, right? They’re singing. They’re doing Christian religion. They’re worshiping, praising God, and faith. That family is. But then we move into the week and we seek to do justice and we’ve got an election cycle going on. That’s remarkable. I can’t believe it. All kinds of people are starting to say what people from our perspective have been saying for 30 years.

You know, limited government, limited civil government, turning away from the idolatry of statism. This is now a movement in the context of our country. It’s remarkable. This is, you know, unheard of in my lifetime. This is a big deal going on. I’m not sure where it’s going or which direction it’ll lead. It’s a big deal. And you’ve got an opportunity this year, this next month, to be part of that, you know, to try to seek to respond correctly to the gospel, not just by dead religion on Sunday, but for having that religion inform what you do in the week and what your cities look like.

There’s a candidate fair this Saturday. I don’t know what candidates will be there. I’ve given you a flyer for that. The group’s a little funny. Americans for Prosperity. I’ve had tough time getting good information from them, but there it is. 5 to 8 this Saturday. Right there across the corner from this building. There’ll be some statewide candidates there that’ll be there.

There’s a conference coming up, two things coming up by the church in Oregon City. That’s this handout on the back of your outlines. What is it? Well, this Steven Williams guy that we had here at RCC a year and a half ago for our school fair, Christian education fair, he’ll be doing a seminar in America at the Crossroads right over at Victorious Faith. That’s a church we almost bought once upon a time 10 12 years ago. We bought this place. Victorious Faith, good pastor there, good people. Strongly encourage your participation October 7th at that conference with Steven Williams.

And then a week later on October 14th, not sure the place yet, but this scribble down here says CIOC church in Oregon City. That’s all the churches coming together. We’re going to do a candidate forum for local candidates. Try to get all the city people running for Oregon City council. Try to get the mayor candidates here and probably county commissioner seats, too. And that’ll be sponsored by the church in Oregon City. We’ll try to invite all kinds of other people. We hope to have it at a church. Not sure the place in your pew.

Postcard from parents education association. We’re up more active than ever. Grab some of these. Give them to your friends. We’re mailing them out this tomorrow. They’ll mailed out. Give them to your friends. Follow the parents education association. That’s part of my purpose. You know, one of our vision statements as a church is to have a mission to the political arena to see the transformation of our cities. And so, Parents Education Association is largely a vehicle for that.

Voter registration cards. If you’re not registered to vote, get registered. Well, unless you don’t know what you’re doing, then don’t register. Don’t vote. I’d all be I’d be all in favor of a literacy test. People got to have some knowledge of something before they can vote. But that’s not where we’re at now. But I’m telling you, if you know anything about what the scriptures say about what how that city should be look like and you’re willing to get a little educated on the issues and upon the candidates, fill out a voter registration card. Make sure you’ve transferred from Idaho or wherever you came from, make sure you’re registered in Oregon and can vote.

And if you are, take this card, give it to a friend, tell them to vote. They’re right there in the pews. Each of the pews here in the sanctuary has those two cards in it. And it’s the response to the gospel. It’s being involved, seeking justice, seeking safety, prosecution of criminals, et cetera in the context of the city and trying to see the city’s rules and laws conformed to the high places of Christianity. What the word of God says to do. That’s the response to the gospel.

Six, seek the peace of children through Christian education. So what does the next verse say? All your children shall be taught by the Lord and great shall be the peace of your children.

Well, this really of course now in the context we got a mother, we got children. Children are all the Christians, all the believers of Yahweh that were being restored back from the captivity, the Christian church. We’re all children. We’re all children of the church. She’s our mother. Paul says, so that’s what it’s talking about in the first place. But surely we can see the application of this to the little ones. The only way that this transformation of the city or our cultures comes about is through instruction in God’s word. That’s what it’s all about here. Christian education is put in parallel here. Taught by the Lord to great peace. Children taught by the Lord. Great peace children.

You get peace, the presence of God and his blessings through being taught by the Lord. And that means knowing the word of God, knowing the word of God, having things subjects taught from a Christian perspective. You know, I know I’ve gotten in trouble for this. If I get in trouble again, I don’t care. I do care. But, you know, look, we know how important many of us have been involved in the anti-abortion battle for years and years and years, right? Praise God that it’s being effective.

By the way, why aren’t we just as concerned about those kids who are born and then who are being trotted off down to the local school system to be trained to be status anti-Christian bigots, anti-free market people. Why aren’t we concerned about those kids? We’ve taken care of our own kids, so that’s all we got to do in terms of education. I don’t think so. The Christian church is weak today. They don’t understand what you understand.

We want to serve them and we want to serve our own people. We don’t know what’s going to happen the next few years. Honestly, we got no idea what’s going to happen economically. But what we know is and what we should be planning for is to make sure that the people of God who constitute Reformation Covenant Church have a tremendous desire to see blessings upon the children of Christians and those blessings accruing to them through Christian education.

We’ve had a thing in the announcements for the last couple of weeks. I want to start a sub team under the Christian education team. We’re talking about it this week at the CA team meeting to try to formulate together whether we can or not. I don’t know if we can or not. Get some kind of Christian education option going that RCC is a big part of first of all for our own people who may not be able to afford nothing next year and maybe two people working et cetera.

But then also for other Christians in our city you know I we’re part of the body of Christ and if these other pastors in we’re part of the church in Oregon City if the other pastors don’t get the importance of Christian education we do and that doesn’t mean we wag our tongues at them. That means God’s called us to serve in that way. That’s one of the gifts we have for them. Let’s get a gift going. Let’s try to provide some kind of, you know, co-op, Christian school, whatever it is that helps young kids avoid the kind of brainwashing techniques that are going on through the Oregon Education Association, the teachers unions, and collectivist school systems.

The country’s mostly socialist today. Why? Well, they’ve been trained in a socialist education system for a long time. That’s not their fault. That’s our fault if we don’t try to do something about it. Okay? So, pray for that. Take seriously the education of your own children, of course. But take seriously the education of other children in this church. Try to help them as well. And try to help these weak Christian parents who may not get good teaching at other churches and don’t quite realize the importance of what this verse says.

Proper response to the gospel is making sure that children receive an education in the word of God. That’s the only way to true peace. So that sixth response is Christian education.

Seven, and last response, is to practice righteousness. And again we’ve talked about this but this sort of caps off the whole thing. So the seventh section verses 14 to 17. In righteousness you shall be established. And then at the bottom it says their righteousness is for me says the lord. Those are the bookends of this little section.

You shall be free from oppression. You shall not fear. He’s not talking about righteousness just in the sense of imputation of righteousness. He’s talking about justice. He’s talking about vindication. He’s talking about our enemies being defeated and Christians being victorious through the providence of God. That’s what he’s talking about here.

Righteousness in Isaiah is over and over again primarily what you do and what God is doing faithfully to his covenant. I just talked about the covenant of peace. Peace. We’re supposed to be faithful to that covenant. We’re supposed to have practical righteousness. And God says, “They shall surely assemble, but not because of me. Whoever assembles against you shall fall for your sake.” That’s not imputation of imputation of righteousness stuff. That’s practical righteousness in history stuff. That’s what the gospel is. The working out, the exaltation of Jesus Christ and all who are united to him and the putting down of those who won’t submit to Jesus and who just want to walk away and are more concerned about men and themselves rather than the praise of God.

And he says the end result is that no weapon formed against you shall prosper. Every tongue that rises against you in judgment you shall condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord. And their righteousness is from me, says the Lord. And as we saw, you know, this is what the New Testament says as well. We’re supposed to be followers of the anointed one by practicing righteousness.

So what does the text do? It begins with religion and it ends with the sort of personal relationship with Jesus that practices righteousness because of it in the week. That’s the movement. Notice, by the way, the shift when the New Testament comes. Saturday isn’t the day of assembling anymore. It’s the day of work. It’s the day of practical righteousness. The first of the seven sets is where corporate praise happens. These are the responses to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

There are things we can do now. Our country is at a tremendous turning point. America is at a crossroads. Praise God you know that he has shaken things up. Be prepared to give the Christian message and gospel the proper response, a full response to the gospel to your neighbors and friends, to our cities, to our state, and to our nation. Be prepared to have that message. Be prepared for the way God is going to bring people to him through shaking their trust in civil government and in individualism and in any other god that raises itself up.

We’re at a critical time in our nation’s history and it’s time for the basics. Isaiah 54 gives us some very basic stuff to do. Not tough. The list is short. The basic stuff and if we run those plays, we’re going to roll like, you know, Oregon’s been rolling, right? We’ll do 62 to nothing, 6, whatever it was. Play, you know, do the basics. If we don’t do the basics, we’re going to say arm of the Lord awake. And he’s going to say, “You’re the arm of the Lord.”

Be the arm of the Lord this week, dear people. You’re a wonderful church. I praise God for you. I praise that you don’t I’m not told anything new really this morning. It’s the stuff you’ve known and you’re doing. Praise God for you. Our time is kind of come now. Okay?

The light that flies out from this church in the form of you people is there’s I’m convinced that we’re at a time in history when that light will have a lot of effectiveness in the midst of the sort of darkness we’re in now. Our time has come. Let’s do the basics. Let’s respond to the wonderful gospel of Jesus in the manner in which he’s told us to and trust him for the results.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for the wonderful gospel of victory.