REFORMED CHURCH, BELLVILLE: SUNDAY 28 OCTOBER 2001: MORNING SERVICE

REFORMED CHURCH, BELLVILLE: SUNDAY 28 OCTOBER 2001: MORNING SERVICE

Our help is in the Name of the Lord,
Who made heaven and earth.
Beloved, grace and peace be to you from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ, through the mighty working of God the Holy Spirit.
AMEN.

Psalm of praise: Psalm 145:1,12.

Nicene Creed

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all the worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.
Who, for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again, with glory, to judge the living and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.
And I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life; who proceedeth from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spake by the prophets.
And I believe one holy catholic and apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. AMEN

The Law : Ex. 20:1-17

Psalm 99:4,5.

Prayer

Hymn 24:1,2,3.

Scripture reading: Isaiah 33.

Text: Isaiah 33:22.

For the Lord is our Judge,
The Lord is our Lawgiver,
The Lord is our King;
He will save us.

The Lord is a Redeemer of people who have gone astray and become lost through sin.

He will pronounce judgement on us for all that we have done wrong - but His judgement will not bring condemnation.
In this life He already lets us rule victorious over sin, and literally over all the works of the devil - we must only follow Him as our Ruler.
Furthermore this chapter states another principle very strongly: Sin against the Lord is always punished, regardless of who the sinner is.

Let us now consider the following matters pertaining to the governance of the Lord:

   1. The Lord reigns over believers and unbelievers.

   2. The irresistibility of God's dominion.

   3. Our obedience to the governance of the Lord.

1.    The Lord reigns over believers and unbelievers.

The events which Isaiah recorded in the chapter we have read together all happened in the time of King Hezekiah. Sennacherib, King of Assyria, had sown violence among the people of Judah. In addition to this oppression he burdened them with very heavy taxes.

The Lord accused Sennacherib of treacherously breaking his agreement and of acting rashly and without regard for the consequences of his actions.

That was because Sennacherib had burdened Hezekiah with very heavy taxes and then, when he paid these, Sennacherib demanded the surrender of Jerusalem (Chapter 36:2 et seq.).

The Lord indeed wanted to use Sennacherib to punish Judah because their faith in the Lord had become so greatly weakened that a large portion of the people had fallen into heathendom.

But the Lord did not wish Sennacherib to exceed his brief by breaking his agreements with the people and increasing his demands upon them.

That the Lord regarded as sinning against Himself.

This treachery by the heathen now led to this prophecy in which the Lord informed His people that He would destroy this heathen in His own time for sinning against the Lord. (People could nowadays easily argue that these heathen did not worship the Lord and that they were therefore innocent - the Lord would then be unfair if He punsihed them.)

The Lord saw the matter differently.

All peoples - believers and unbelievers - were subject to His authority.
He punishes all sins, regardless of who commits them, and He holds treachery against all who commit it, whether they serve Him or not.
He remains the only God of all creation and He will at no stage negotiate the surrender of His requirement that He be worshipped and obeyed.

Immediately after the pronouncement of judgement against Sennacherib, the prophet pleaded with the Lord to nevertheless be merciful to them. That was because the Lord let him see in a vision how terrible the enactment of His judgement against Sennacherib would be.

This filled the prophet with such fear that he pleaded with the Lord that His wrathful judgement should not in those moments also be visited upon Judah - because he realized that they too deserved this fate.

He pleaded that the Lord be merciful to them.

His prayer is at the same time a confession of the great need and depair in Judah.

That is why the prophet prays specifically that the Lord will renew their strength every day.
Hear the sadness in his prayer: he does not ask strength for years and years to come - only for every new day.

While Isaiah prayed, the Lord revealed to him in some way that his prayer would be answered, because he then prophesied that the Lord would come with might.

The prophet describes the aggression which will accompany the coming of the Lord: the Lord would exalt Himself above all nations.
That means that the enemies of the Lord will see that He will not come in an unexceptional manner - He will come to destroy them.

For that reason the coming of the Lord will put all the nations to flight.

Nations is a collective term for all the heathen.
Here it refers to all the various nations comprising the armies of the Assyrians.

The flight of the Assyrians will be so headlong that the Lord will strip them of all that they have robbed and plundered from other nations, just as locusts strip bare the fields through which they pass.

They will cast away and abandon everything in their retreat.

The prophet convinced the people who listened to him that what he said was true. They had only to remember Who the Lord is.

His power is infinite, and there is no one who can climb high enough to elevate himself against the Lord.
The Lord is exalted, for He dwells on high; He has filled Zion with justice and righteousness (Verse 5)

2. The irresistibility of God's dominion.

Isaiah was a prophet who had come deeply under the impression of God's majesty and omnipotence, probably the more so since the Lord had revealed this directly to him.

For instance, he said that he had once seen heaven itself (6:2-3):

Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to out to another and said, "Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts, The whole earth is full of His glory."

This God and Lord who lives in the highest heaven and who is served with the most profound fear and trembling, would fill Zion with justice and righteousness. Today there are many different views of what justice and righteousness comprise. For Isaiah understanding these terms was an easy matter, for the Lord revealed to him what He regarded as comprising justice and righteousness.

In Isaiah 1:21-26 he describes what justice and righteousness are not.

He says that murderers dwelled in Jerusalem by night, and the sellers of wine adulterated their wine with water.

They were therefore dishonest in their business practices.

Their rulers were rebels and the companions of thieves, because they allowed themselves to be bribed and for sums of money they let wrongdoing continue under their very eyes.
When injustices were done to widows, they saw to it that the widows' causes never came before those who were supposed to uphold justice.

When the Lord restored justice once more, He would require things to be very different from the picture at the time as described by the prophet:

The Lord would provide judges and councillors like those who in earlier times spoke the truth and did the will of the Lord.
In Isaiah 33:15 the Lord expands on this matter:

He requires people's faith to be so firm that they could not be bribed.
And they must not accept gifts to subvert justice.
Furthermore they had to keep their eyes open for matters that were evil and wrongful, and put these right immediately.

Something very important stands in Isaiah 1:27: The Lord would make them righteous once again, but first He would punish them for their wrongdoing.

That is why the Lord says in Isaiah 33:6 that He would restore their stability, and He would redeem them fully, but they would then have the wisdom and knowledge of the Lord. They would then know to be in awe of Him.

The wisdom and knowledge that they would then have, would, naturally, be spiritual wisdom and knowledge of the Lord Himself.
They would know that He exacts punishment and that nobody escapes this.
They would then have the wisdom which Sennacherib (the heathen) lacked.

In their folly the heathen committed treason against the Lord and thought that He was powerless.
After their punishment, the believers would be free from this kind of folly.

That is why Isaiah at this point changed the focus of his prophetic testimony away from Sennacherib to direct attention to Judah.

A number of them were also godless.
They should not gain the impression that the Lord would punish the heathen, but that they would be saved just because they were of the chosen people of the Lord.
The wrath of the Lord would consume them as a fire consumes dry stubble and grass.

To ensure that all people got the message, the Lord called upon those who were far away to hear what He had done, and upon those who were near (Judah) to acknowledge His might.

3. Our obedience to the governance of the Lord.

How did the people of Judah receive Isaiah's sermon?

The Bible says that the sinners in Zion were terrified and the godless trembled.
All who were nominally members of the church, but who did not maintain the acceptable standards of the faith, realized that they were in trouble.

Then they tried a different way out of their predicament.

They asked what person could live with such a consuming fire.
Note that they realized that they had done wrong, that is why they referred to the Lord as "a consuming fire".
What they acually meant, was that all would then be condemned and lost by the judgement of the Lord.

Isaiah then replied that it was not true that all would be lost when the Lord came near them. All who lived righteously would remain close to the Lord:

He who walks righteously and speaks with sincerity,
He who rejects unjust gain
And shakes his hands so that they hold no bribe;
He who stops his ears from hearing about bloodshed
And shuts his eyes from looking upon evil...

There were such people in Judah, and there are today still such people. These will all live with the Lord.

At this point the prophecy leaped from that time to a later time after that. In verse 5 Isaiah said that the Lord is exalted and that He dwells on high. He now links up with that statement with a description of the dwelling place of the righteous - it closely resembles that of the Lord:

He will dwell on the heights,
His refuge will be the impregnable rock;
His bread will be given him,
His water will be sure.

We are not Judah, but the meaning of this prophecy is the same for them and for us.

Unless we repent, the Lord will punish us when we sin.
The Lord will punish us exactly as He punished Judah.

We read that their country suffered because of their sins.
The land mourned and the trees stood leafless, while the most fertile agricultural fields became like a barren desert.

When the Lord appears on the clouds, he will in His wrath consume those who did not believe in and live in complete submission to Him.

This does not leave us in comfortless and helpless despair. Those who believe, will see the King in His glory, and with Him a far-distant and extensive land. It is here that we will dwell on the heights, and where the outstretched arm of the Lord will preserve us every day.

There will be no want nor need of any kind.
The blessing of the Lord will ensure bread and water. By this the freedom from cares in the hereafter with the Lord is depicted.

In this new land and new time there will no longer - and never again - be anything like bribery and dishonesty. There the Lord will be our Judge. This verse is indeed a song of jubilation which tells why our salvation stands firm, beyond all doubt:

The Lord is our Judge
The Lord is our Lawgiver
The Lord is our King.

There the Lord will maintain justice and righteousness.

The Lord has already defeated the devil. With Him as our Leader in battle against any hostile power, not one of us will ever again fall into sin or serve anyone else but the Lord alone.
All power in heaven and on the earth will then be subject to the kingship of God.

The kingship of the Lord in the hereafter is nothing other than the kingship of and redemption through Jesus Christ. It is the same thing. It is precisely in this that the redemptive ministry of Jesus Christ will become manifest in its fullness.

That is why Jesus also had to suffer under weak judges.

The shameful judgement of mankind had to sentence Him to death, although He was innocent.
The chastisement which He suffered as a result of this shameful and wrongful judgement was at the same time the chastisement of the Lord which He bore for our sins.

The birth, death and resurrection of Jesus brought Him into direct conflict with the full might of the devil.

His entire life was a struggle against the devil and his dishonesty.
The devil attempted to employ against Jesus the same dishonesty and bribery of which Isaiah accused the people of Judah.

He tried to bribe Jesus to worship him rather than die.
He would have given Jesus the entire world as reward.

Jesus withstood all these assaults and died as a righteous person.

Jesus Christ the Lord will return.

Then He will judge all who have existed from the beginning of creation up to His coming.
But He will come not only as Judge: He will also come as the supreme Commander of the legions of heaven.

Revelations 19 describes Him as the victorious Commander on His white horse, who vanquishes the nations and sets free His chosen ones.
He will come as the eternal King who reigns over His church and preserves and protects His chosen ones with His omnipotent might.

Come, let us bow down before this eternal King.

Let us rejoice every day in prayers of praise in our redemption in Him and in His preservation of us.

And when the unbridled rashness of our sins and the despair of our times overwhelm us, then we will remember:

For the Lord is our Judge,
The Lord is our Lawgiver,
The Lord is our King;
He will save us.

AMEN.

Closing prayer.

Closing psalm: 62:2,9.

The Lord bless you, and keep you;
The Lord make His face shine on you,
And be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up His countenance on you,
And give you peace.

AMEN.

Rev. M.J. du Plessis
Reformed Church, Bellville
28 October 2001
Scripture quoted from NASB