Title: Fatherly Judgment
Text: Isaiah 27: 7-13
Date: April 25, 2010
Place: SGBC, New Jersey
God the Father is a faithful Father to correct his children. The LORD's church is his vineyard and he is the Husbandman. These are the two offices in which our God is magnified in our text. The LORD said of his "vineyard of red wine" in verses 3, 4: "I the LORD do keep it; I will water it every moment: lest any hurt it, I will keep it night and day. Fury is not in me." The reason fury is not in God toward his chosen children is because Christ Jesus the Lord, the Son of God willingly had the sword of God's fury plunged into his own soul in their room and stead.
The gospel in a verse is in Isaiah 27: 5
V5: Let him…are you perishing in your sin? Do you see that there is no hope of salvation in your own hand? V5: Let him take hold of my Strength--Christ Jesus is Power and Wisdom of God, the Strength of God to remain just and yet justify hell-deserving sinners. V5: Let him take hold of my Strength, that HE [Christ Jesus] may make peace with me. I beseech you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God, by laying hold of Christ and trusting him to make peace with God for you. God the Father promises you shall make peace with him by trusting Christ to make peace for you. V5: And he [who lays hold of Christ] shall make peace with me. V6: He shall cause them that come of Jacob to take root. Israel [God's Vineyard, his church] shall blossom and bud and fill the face of the world with fruit.
This is why God does not deal in fury toward those who are in Christ. But though our Lord does not deal with his children in fury, he does chasten and correct his children. This is the subject of verses 7-13. Let's read them together.
I. THE LORD DOES JUDGE--CORRECT--THE CHILDREN IN HIS HOUSE
Isaiah 27: 7: Hath he smitten him, as he smote those that smote him? or is he slain according to the slaughter of them that are slain by him?
Has God smitten Israel, his elect, as God smote those that smote him and his church? Is Israel slain in the same way that the God's enemies are slain? The answer is no. God does smite all those who smite his church (Isaiah 26: 21; 27:1) But God does not smite his children in fury as he does our enemies.
Because his people were all in Christ he will not charge them with sin:
Romans 4: 7: Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. 8: Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.
God does not and will not, according to his own righteousness, condemn those who are born of his Spirit:
Roman 8:1: There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after
the flesh, but after the Spirit. 2: For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.
The Lord “hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities”(Ps. 103:10).
But God will not allow the children of his vineyard to live in sin. He will have his house in order and his children in subjection to him. How then does God deal with us who are the children of God.
God corrects his children with the love of a Father toward his children.
Hebrews 12: 5: And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: 6: For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. 7: If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?
Our heavenly Father corrects us in measure.
Isaiah 27: 8: In measure, when it shooteth forth, thou wilt debate with it: he stayeth his rough wind in the day of the east wind.
The metaphor: is of a vineyard, of his tender plants taking root, blossoming and budding. Sometimes as the plants grow in the garden "suckers"--little worthless branches have to be pruned away. So the Father prunes away, dealing tenderly with his children, as with little plants. The east wind was a rough wind when it swept across Judah. But the LORD allows the rough, east wind, to only do what he needs it to do then he stops it from blowing.
Illustration: Children under the same roof need different measures of correction. Mine are not each the same.
Our heavenly Father knows, as only he knows, how much each of his children can bear.
I Corinthians 10: 13:…but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.
In Jeremiah 10:24, Jeremiah prayed, "O LORD, correct me, but with judgment; not in thine anger, lest thou bring me to nothing."
Psalm 103: 13: Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him. 14: For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.
Our Father corrects us to purge his house of iniquity.
Isaiah 27: 9: By this therefore shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged; and this is all the fruit to take away his sin; when he maketh all the stones of the altar as chalkstones that are beaten in sunder, the groves and images shall not stand up.
We erect many altars, many groves, and gaze too fondly upon many images.
· It may be loved ones that come between us and our God…
· It may be the world, its praise, its honor, power and position…
· It may be our substance--we get to thinking life depends upon those things…
· It may be the things of our religion…
Just as God brought in the winds of warriors from other nations to purge his elect in Israel of idolatry, so he purges us from all that would separate us from our God. Our iniquity is purged by his chastening hand in the sense that as he brings us to repentance, he turns us to Christ in whom all our sin has been purged--atoned for, completely put away. And this is all the fruit to take away his sin--this is the same as what the Hebrew writer says,
Hebrews 12: 11: Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.
When our faithful Father, maketh all the stones of the altar as chalkstones that are beaten in sunder, the groves and images shall not stand up.
II. OUR DEFENCED CITY IS CHRIST JESUS AND NO OTHER
Isaiah 27: 10: Yet the defenced city shall be desolate, and the habitation forsaken, and left like a wilderness: there shall the calf feed, and there shall he lie down, and consume the branches thereof.
Some think by "the defenced city" is meant Jerusalem and some think Babylon, some mystery Babylon. But all of those are meant.
The law and the temple and all the ceremony was a shadow of good things to come, a means to an end, not the very image of the things. But when the Jews thought they had life in that earthly city, in the earthly temple, in the earthly priest, in the earthly sacrifices, it was to them mystery Babylon. And when Jerusalem was plundered, and Solomon's temple destroyed, they were carried into the literal city of Babylon, and they fell in love with that city and mixed in even more idolatry with their unbelief. Yet, not long after being delivered, having built the temple again, in the days of our Lord, the religious host had their hearts so fixed on the earthly means that they missed Christ the End for which it was all given.
John 2: 19: Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. 20: Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? 21: But he spake of the temple of his body.
Hebrews 10: 11: And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins: 12: But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God; 13: From henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool. 14: For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.
The LORD destroyed it all in 70 AD, yet in our day they are still fighting over that little hill of dirt. Nations all over this world still treat that political nation like it's a lucky rabbits foot. Folks still thinking one day everybody is going to gather to that little hill.
Isaiah 27: 10: Yet the defenced city shall be desolate, and the habitation forsaken, and left like a wilderness: there shall the calf feed, and there shall he lie down, and consume the branches thereof. 11: When the boughs thereof are withered, they shall be broken off: the women come, and set them on fire: for it is a people of no understanding: therefore he that made them will not have mercy on them, and he that formed them will shew them no favour.
Our city of refuge is not in these temporal means.
They are means to teach of Christ, of heavenly Jerusalem, of our true land of Caanan. I want you to serve Christ by first giving yourself to him then using every bit of substance he has given you and every gift he has given you, but I want you to do so because you are constrained by the love of Christ for you rather than because you are in love with the service.
I am thankful the Lord has entrusted me to preach this gospel, but my life is not in preaching but in Christ whom I preach. Be thankful for the gifts our Lord has measured to you, but your life is not in the gifts but in God who gave them. Right now we are children, speaking as children, but one day very soon we will put away these childish things, then shall we know our Redeemer even as he knows us know.
Isaiah 26: 1: We have a strong City; Salvation will God appoint for walls and bulwarks. [that City, that Salvation, is a person-]...4: Trust ye in the LORD for ever: for in the LORD JEHOVAH is everlasting strength:...27: 5: Let him take hold of my Strength...
Isaiah 60:18:…thou shalt call thy walls Salvation, and thy gates Praise.
Ezekiel 48:35…the name of the city from that day shall be, The LORD is there. (Jehovah-Shammah.)
Heavenly Jerusalem, the city of God, which cometh down out of heaven is where our LORD is, at the right hand of God and in the midst of his church. Christ is all our defense.
III. THE CHASTENING HAND OF OUR FATHER RESULTS IN THE SALVATION OF ALL HIS ELECT.
[Alternate translation NAS95] Isaiah 27: 12: In that day the LORD will start His threshing from the flowing stream of the Euphrates to the brook of Egypt, and you will be gathered up one by one, O sons of Israel.
The channel of the river Euphrates is the northeast border of Canaan, and the stream of the Nile in Egypt is the southeast border - The significance is this - “All Israel shall be saved!” Canaan is a picture of the new heavens and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.
Judgment always begins at the house of the LORD. He began by breaking off the branches of those natural sons of Abraham who were not the elect of God and did not believe God. He chastened his true children by driving them away from those things they held dear. Then he gathered his true, elect Israel out of that physical nation Israel, one by one, from all those nations into which he scattered them, north, south, east and west in Christ Jesus the Lord. When our Lord ascended he sent the elect Jews forth with the gospel trumpet and he began grafting in his elect Gentile branches (children), one by one, from all over this globe, into Christ the Vine, into heavens holy mount, new Jerusalem, the church and kingdom of God. Notice the next verse extends beyond the borders of Israel.
Isaiah 27: 13: It will come about also in that day that a great trumpet will be blown, and those who were perishing in the land of Assyria and who were scattered in the land of Egypt will come and worship the LORD in the holy mountain at Jerusalem.
God will gather his elect from the north, the south, the east and the west - All the heirs of promise shall be gathered into the land of promise, the heavenly Jerusalem, worshipping in his church, his holy mountain, and one day in the land where Christ has made all things new!
Romans 11: 25: For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. 26: And so [in this manner--first he gathered his elect out of Israel, then he is gathering his elect one by one out of the Gentiles--and when he has gathered the last of them] all Israel shall be saved: [not that he will turn back to national Israel, but the bringing in of the last Gentile will be the completion and thus all true, spiritual Israel--every elect Jew and every elect Gentile--will be saved] as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: [the elect of God] 27: For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins.
Application: If our faithful Father and Husbandman has been able to perform this work over his whole house, over his whole vineyard, that is with entire nations then he is able to do so over this congregation and every congregation which is a part of his house and vineyard. And not only that, but he is able to prune us and chasten us individually so that we bring forth fruit pleasing unto him. And how does he do it? What is Isaiah doing? He is preaching the gospel of God's grace. That is how it pleased God to save his house.
Amen!