Isaiah 54:11-17 - No Successful Weapon

SERMON TEXT:

Let’s open our Bibles as God’s church to the 54th chapter of the book of Isaiah.

We read the full chapter earlier, so I would just like to read verses 11-17, which will be the portion we will focus our attention on today.

[READ ISAIAH 54:11-17]

How are we to understand the promises of God?

In this passage, we see many promises written in poetic language.

If you recall from last week, I pointed out this chapter is written to US, the church.

Coming immediately on the heels of the prophecy of the death and resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ.

You may remember, we saw God’s statement of the everlasting covenant He made through Jesus Christ that He Himself guarantees.

And our passage this week is a continuation of that prophecy for us.

And when I saw “us”, I hope you understand I mean “all believers in Jesus Christ from Pentecost until His Appearing on the Last Day.”

And so we must ask ourselves how we are to understand these great promises in the greater light we have since the advent of Jesus Christ.

In no way “explaining them away” as some might accuse us of:

But understanding the fullness of these glorious promises to people who live clothed in the righteousness of Christ.

This is a vital question: how we understand the promises of God to His church affects everything from our comfort to our confidence in Him.

I suspect, based on the statement Paul makes, that this is the error that caused Demas, Paul’s fellow worker, to desert him in the midst of Paul’s trial.

We see it in 2 Timothy 4:9–10 “Do your best to come to me soon [,Timothy]. For Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica...”

The problem is that if we take these promises without understanding what is being promised, we can risk having a heart of disappointment with God,

Or worse - a heart of Pharisaic hardness toward Him.

Nothing I saw today should make us think of weakening God promises,

Nor is it redefining them for us.

On the contrary, I would like to take these great and glorious promises from our Great and Glorious Lord and see how He intended them for His church through the gospel of His Son.

What He says through them of the calling of His people through His Holy Spirit,

And to see the blessings He is promising us so we don’t lose heart.

I would suggest to you at the beginning here to keep one finger in this passage in your Bible, and place another in 2 Corinthians 4-5.

Because the VERY SAME promises of God are dealt with in each passage.

And so, we will be moving back and forth between these passages to understand with the greater light of the New Testament what God has promised for us and to us.

While you’re turning there, I would like to make this very clear from the outset:

Your salvation, my salvation, is simply not about US.

If you are saved, it is for God’s glory ALONE.

That’s one of the five great “Solas” that were rediscovered in the Reformation:

We are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone according to the Scripture alone to the glory of God alone.

There are SO many errors that can be made, so many traps into which we can fall, if we allow ourselves even for a moment to think our salvation has anything to do with us.

That we caused it even a little,

That we deserved it even a little,

That we keep it even a little,

Or that it’s about us - even a little.

I think perhaps the best way to begin to understand the truth of these great promises is to begin in the 17th verse of Isaiah 54:

Isaiah 54:17 “no weapon that is fashioned against you shall succeed...”

I want you to think about that a minute - NO WEAPON that is fashioned against you shall succeed.

There are many who might take that as poetic hyperbole:

That it’s just a flowery way of God saying “I love you”.

But in the verse before, the beginning of the sentence, He says this if we read it together:

Isaiah 54:16–17 “Behold, I have created the smith who blows the fire of coals and produces a weapon for its purpose. I have also created the ravager to destroy; no weapon that is fashioned against you shall succeed, and you shall refute every tongue that rises against you in judgment. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord and their vindication from me, declares the Lord.””

God is ordaining, decreeing, the weapons, the makers, and the wielders of those terrible weapons.

So we have to ask what it looks like for a weapon decreed by God NOT to succeed.

Does this mean He will turn the hearts of our enemies toward us?

That they will take pity on us, or will be convinced by our arguments to let us go in peace and live in peace?

Or will those weapons simply refuse to work against us?

If that’s what is meant here, how did that work out for the church in the months following Pentecost?

Did the God-made stones bounce harmlessly off the body of Stephen?

Did the God-forged axe glance off the neck of James?

Years later, did the spikes refuse to penetrate the arms and feet of Simon Peter and his brother Andrew?

Did the mouths of starving lions and tigers clamp harmlessly shut as faithful believers were pitted against them in the Roman Circus?

Did the gladiators’ swords miss the vitals of all those who were condemned to the same arena?

Did the flames refuse to burn all those who were chained to the stake because of their proclamation of Jesus Christ?

Of course not. Paul says it this way:

2 Corinthians 4:7 “But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.”

Jars of clay are breakable, easy to damage or destroy.

They are cheap, not valuable.

Your translation might even say “earthen vessels”.

These are the common pots and bowls, the paper plates of their day.

What hope has a pottery vase have against an iron sword?

There are a lot of people who would like to explain away this truth.

Who think that somehow God converts us FROM a jar of clay into something better, maybe jars of steel.

Moving us from being a Dixie cup to a Yeti cup.

But if He did that, how is the “surpassing power” of God being shown actively?

It leads us to the false idea, common to Roman Catholics and the modern Federal Vision, that God simply BEGAN the work in His conversion of us, but WE are the ones who do the heavy lifting after that.

It’s appealing to our flesh - because we can claim to be a better Christian than someone else.

We can listen to a sermon from Scripture and think, “I’m already doing that”

Or “I sure hope THEY will understand that message, because I already know that.”

Or instead of graciously measuring a Bible teacher by Scripture, we feel in our hearts that we know more about the subject than he does.

We can look at what WE have done with our salvation and pat ourselves on the back that WE have used it better than our brother or sister.

Or, sadly, we can look at our brother or sister and say, “I would have done better than them in that situation.”

We can even look around and feel superior to unbelievers.

And none of those things shows the “surpassing power of God.”

All of those things show “my opinion about how good a Christian I am.”

THAT is the heart of the Pharisee.

Believer, if you don’t realize you are a humble jar of clay, you will always exalt yourself rather than showing HIS surpassing power.

You will read the second promise in v. 17 - and you shall refute every tongue that rises against you in judgment.

And think that this has ANYTHING to do with your ability or wisdom or holiness.

It doesn’t.

How should we refute others?

In integrity, never wavering from our faith in the word of God.

In humility, knowing it stands stronger than the most terrible weapon.

In love, knowing it conquers our greatest fears.

In hope in Christ, because He remains long after this life.

The great truth is that it is not we who stand strong, but God who stands with us.

The life we live in the flesh, we live by faith in the Son of God who loved us and gave Himself for us.

This entire promise, indeed this entire section of Isaiah, has another truth that is SO MUCH GREATER than merely making us the best gleaming Christian we can be.

Because, you see, there are two ways a weapon used against you can be unsuccessful:

God could be promising to make you INVULNERABLE (like Superman),

Or He can make you UNCONQUERABLE.

And Scripture is VERY clear - He is making us UNCONQUERABLE.

Back over in 2 Corinthians 4, Paul goes into a beautiful description of the difference:

READ 2 Corinthians 4:8–11 “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.”

You can’t be crushed if you’re not crushable;

You can’t be perplexed if you know everything already.

You get the idea.

If you compare that paragraph to Isaiah 54:11–12 , you will find they say THE SAME THING:

““O afflicted one, storm-tossed and not comforted, behold, I will set your stones in antimony, and lay your foundations with sapphires. I will make your pinnacles of agate, your gates of carbuncles, and all your wall of precious stones.”

If you look in the footnotes of your Bible for this passage, or if you compare versions, you will discover that we aren’t sure what all these words really mean:

Antimony, sapphires, agate, carbuncles - they can mean a lot of different things.

For example: antimony.

You may know its a metal that is used to harden other metals.

It’s used in lead bullets to harden the lead.

But it’s also a beautiful crystal.

So when God says He will set our stones in antimony, is He saying He will make us tougher BECAUSE we were afflicted?

Make us more resilient, harder to conquer?

Or is it saying He will beautify us because of our trials?

Like the leper Lazarus who was comforted while the heartless rich man was in torment?

I really don’t think it’s either one.

Because nothing in this is ABOUT US.

If fact, I don’t even see a promise to remove our trials and afflictions here, although some might try to make it read that way.

We will still be, in this life, the afflicted ones.

In this world, you will have tribulation.

Any who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

God’s promise is not to remove our affliction -

His promise is to be our comfort.

We ARE the afflicted, living every day of our earthly lives in this sin-cursed world.

But instead of living storm-tossed and un-comforted, GOD IS OUR COMFORT in trials.

God is our comfort in life.

The Heidelberg Catechism has this for the very first question:

What is your only comfort in life and death?

The answer: That I am not my own, 1but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ. 

Being afflicted isn’t a mark of shame, as some would make it out to be.

It is not the failure of your faith that you endure crushing trials,

That you suffer pains and sickness,

That you have fears and doubts.

You have those because EVERYBODY has those in some measure.

But what you have in God through Jesus Christ, O beloved child of God, is that you have a Heavenly Father who comforts you in your affliction.

Those promises He makes here in Isaiah are that even though you are afflicted, He is working to GLORIFY you in His Son for all eternity.

If the first part of the chapter is about the Perseverance of God’s love for His saints,

Then we certainly see that continued in the promises He is making here.

You aren’t invulnerable, untouched by the harshness of this world;

You are UNCONQUERABLE.

That’s what Paul is talking about in 2 Corinthians 4:13–18 “Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, “I believed, and so I spoke,” we also believe, and so we also speak, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God. So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”

Though our outer self, this flesh, is wasting away, decaying day by day,

We are UNCONQUERABLE because we are being renewed from the inside out day by day.

For the purpose: that it may increase thanksgiving to the glory of God.

If you are in Christ - you are UNCONQUERABLE.

You can and will be wounded.

You can and will be hurt.

But you will NEVER BE CONQUERED:

Romans 8:35–39 “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Close your ears to those who would shame you for your affliction.

Rebuke the fears of your heart that would condemn you for your difficulties.

Let the love of God and the grace of Christ and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be the constant comfort through His gospel to you in this life,

Because we are His forever.