Isaiah 12
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
[READING - Isaiah 12]
1 Then you will say on that day, “I will give thanks to You, O Lord; For although You were angry with me, Your anger is turned away, And You comfort me. 2 “Behold, God is my salvation, I will trust and not be afraid; For the Lord God is my strength and song, And He has become my salvation.” 3 Therefore you will joyously draw water From the springs of salvation. 4 And in that day you will say, “Give thanks to the Lord, call on His name. Make known His deeds among the peoples; Make them remember that His name is exalted.” 5 Praise the Lord in song, for He has done excellent things; Let this be known throughout the earth. 6 Cry aloud and shout for joy, O inhabitant of Zion, For great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.
[PRAYER]
[TS] This passage has two PARTS…
PART #1: The Giving of Thanks
PART #2: The Call to Give Thanks
Major Ideas
Major Ideas
PART #1: The Giving of Thanks (vv. 1-2)
PART #1: The Giving of Thanks (vv. 1-2)
1 Then you will say on that day, “I will give thanks to You, O Lord; For although You were angry with me, Your anger is turned away, And You comfort me. 2 “Behold, God is my salvation, I will trust and not be afraid; For the Lord God is my strength and song, And He has become my salvation.”
(12:1) ‘Then you will say’ is a prophetic word; Isaiah is prophesy by a word from the Lord what the Lord’s people will say on that day.
‘On that day’ refers to the time referenced in Isaiah 11, the day of Jesus’ return.
And what a day, glorious day that will be!
A day when the Kingdom of God will be made fully manifest on the earth!
A day when Jesus returns as King of kings and Lord of lords!
A day of wisdom, justice, fairness, righteousness, faithfulness, and peace!
A day full of the knowledge of the fear of the Lord!
A day when the nations stream to Jesus to learn his ways!
A day when the Jewish people come home to their true Messiah!
The only appropriate response to the joyous gloriousness of a day like this is thanksgiving!
In that day we will give thanks to the Lord Jesus who we saw in Isaiah 6 as the Lord of hosts, holy, holy, holy.
When the prophet Isaiah saw the majestic holiness of Jesus in Isaiah 6, he knew that he was a ruined sinner, an unclean man among an unclean people.
And it was only by the sovereign grace of Jesus that a seraphim was sent with a burning coal from the heavenly altar to take away Isaiah’s iniquity and forgive his sins.
Isaiah knew what it was to be personally transformed by the grace of God, and he knew what it was to praise the Lord for his grace.
When Jesus returns, we will praise him for his grace.
“For although You were angry with me” - The Lord was angry with his people in Isaiah’s day because of their sinfulness. The broke God’s laws. They did not trust him. They trusted in idols rather than him. They sinned in myriad ways. And the Lord was angry with them.
It’s important that we understand that God isn’t just angry with sin; he is angry with sinners.
11 God is a just judge, And God is angry with the wicked every day. 12 If he does not turn back, He will sharpen His sword; He bends His bow and makes it ready.
The Lord’s anger is a great terror to sinful man unless Lord’s anger is turned away. Isaiah says that in the day of Jesus’ coming, we will praise him because his anger is turned away.
The Jewish people who first heard that the Lord’s anger would be turned away might have wondered how it would be turned away.
Would the people suddenly repent and trust in the Lord like they should’ve been doing all along?
We know the Lord’s anger was turned away because he took that anger upon himself on the cross.
In the death of Jesus, the anger of God toward the sinful was appeased for all those who belong to him.
The anger of God is only turned away by the death and resurrection of Jesus.
Because of Jesus, God is no longer a terror to us but a comfort; (12:2) He is no longer our condemnation but our salvation; and because his perfect love toward us in Jesus has driven out fear; he is our confidence, and the only thing for us to do is to only trust him, which is to say, the only thing for us to do is to only fall in his arms.
It can be hard to trust only Jesus.
We might ask, “Isn’t their something more I need to do?”
No; Only trust him.
Put all your spiritual weight on Jesus; place all your hope on his perfect life, his sacrificial death, and his victorious resurrection; lean totally and only on Jesus; completely abandon yourself to him alone.
He is your strength!
When you don’t have the strength to resist the temptation to sin, he does.
When you don’t have the strength to endure to the end, he does.
Take him for your song!
When you don’t have the desire to lift up praises, he does!
When you don’t have the joy to sing hallelujah, he does!
Take him for your salvation!
You don’t have the power to save yourself.
You cannot be your own salvation.
You must rest in Jesus, put it all on him. He must your salvation.
[ILLUS] You’ve heard the saying before, “Don’t put all your eggs in the same basket.” If you did and you dropped your basket or lost it, all your eggs would be lost.
But if you diversify by dividing up your eggs between multiple baskets, then even if you lose a basket or two, you still have plenty of eggs.
This strategy makes sense when it comes to eggs and investing.
But this doesn’t make sense when it comes to Jesus.
When it comes to him, all our spiritual eggs must go into his basket.
There can be no diversification.
We invest it all with Jesus or we go spiritually bankrupt.
But if we do invest all our trust and hope with him, we will give thanks to him on that day, the day of his return.
Before we go on to v. 3, I do want to point out that this thanksgiving will be not only corporate but also personal.
What I mean is, yes, the church as a whole will give thanks to Jesus at his second coming, but each individual Christian will also personally give thanks to him.
All throughout Isaiah 12:1-2, Isaiah prophecies…
“You will say on that day… “
“I will give thanks to you, O Lord…”
“You comfort me…”
“I will trust and not be afraid…”
“For the Lord God is my strength and song…”
“He has become my salvation.”
These are all first-person, singular pronouns.
Not ‘you all’ but ‘You will say on that day…”
Not ‘we will’ but ‘I will give thanks to You, Or Lord...’
Not ‘the Lord God is our strength and song’ but ‘my strength and song’.
This thanksgiving to Jesus is personal because his grace is personally transforming.
His grace transforms us from enemy of God to friend of God, from rebel to child, from sinner to saint, from lost to found, from condemned to save, from hell-bound to glory-bound.
This what Jesus has personally done for every Christian, and its why we all will be personally thankful to him on the day of his return.
And its why we are thankful now on this day as we await his return.
PART #2: The Call to Give Thanks (vv. 3-6)
PART #2: The Call to Give Thanks (vv. 3-6)
3 Therefore you will joyously draw water From the springs of salvation. 4 And in that day you will say, “Give thanks to the Lord, call on His name. Make known His deeds among the peoples; Make them remember that His name is exalted.” 5 Praise the Lord in song, for He has done excellent things; Let this be known throughout the earth. 6 Cry aloud and shout for joy, O inhabitant of Zion, For great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.
(v. 3) In Jeremiah 2:13 God referred to himself as the fountain of living waters and said that his people forsook him by hewing for themselves broken cisterns that could hold no water.
In other words, they turned to idols rather than trusting the living God.
But when Jesus came he offered himself to his people as living water.
37 Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. 38 “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’ ”
As Jesus said to the woman at the well in John 4, if they had really known who it was speaking to them, they would have asked him for a drink, and he would have given them living water.
But having come to God by grace through faith in Jesus, we believers joyously draw water from the springs of salvation! That is, we through faith we partake of the salvation graciously given in Jesus Christ, our spiritual thirst is forever satisfied in him!
And no what is our task?
And what will be our task when he comes again?
To call to the whole world, “Give thanks to the Lord, call on His name!”
For there is no other name under heaven by which man can be saved!
Our task is and will be to make known his deeds among the nations!
As happened on the day of Pentecost when…
9 “Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the districts of Libya around Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, 11 Cretans and Arabs—we hear them in our own tongues speaking of the mighty deeds of God.”
Our task is and will be to proclaim to the world that his name is exalted!
Because if he be lifted up, he will draw all men to himself!
Our task is and will be to praise the Lord in song for he has done excellent things!
Our task is and will be to let his glory be known throughout the earth!
Our task is and will be to cry aloud and shout for joy, for great is the Holy One of Israel among us!
In Isaiah’s day, Jerusalem, the temple, and the Holy of holies was still considered the place where God dwelt, but through faith in Jesus, the Spirit of the living God has come to live in each one of us, so yes indeed, great is the Holy One of Israel not just among us but even within us!
But notice this order beginning in v. 3.
First, you draw water from Jesus, the living water.
Second, you give thanks to him.
Third, you call on His name.
Fourth, you proclaim his deeds.
Fifth, you exalt his name.
Sixth, praise him in song.
Seventh, you do this throughout the earth because is great and greatly to be praised!
Is this not a great missions plan!?
Is this not a great plan for a church!?
Is this not a great plan for our lives as followers of Jesus!?
Of course, it is.
We ought to adopt this plan as the plan for our lives.
Conclusion
Conclusion
If we do, we’ll be glad we did, when Jesus returns.
[PRAYER]
