Listen up!
Notes
Transcript
Intro
Intro
Listening without listening - It’s not like you can close your ears to noise. In fact there is always noise, even if you go into an anecoic chamber, the quietest place on earth, you will hear your own heart and the blood pumping through your veins.
We are always listeneing, but we need to filter out what is important in the midst of the noise.
We live in a time where the noise is different from what came before. Since the fall there have always been demonic messages, deception, scammers, the ignorant and the faithful proclimation of the Word of God. Yet never before has the noise been so present and unrelenting.
You walk around with a conduit in your pocket, you sit down to one for work, many of us have a conduit hanging on our loungeroom wall. But even if you were to get rid of all those ones, the noise still comes from the radio, and the bilboards and the newspapers and the screens at the pub and the doctors office and the shopping centre, and the junk mail in your letterbox.
There are so many messages vying for your attentive listening. It can be hard to tune into the messages that matter in the midst of the latest contoversy or outrage cycle.
God, in the midst of the noise, whether it be neutral noise or enemy propaganda, in the midst of it all God says “Listen up!”
Our LORD speaks, and he calls people, all people everywhere, to listen.
It is because we have not listened to God that the world is in the state that is in.
This call to listen up is not new. It was a call given to ancient Israel on the eve of their exile to Babylon.
Hear the Speaking God (v1-5)
Hear the Speaking God (v1-5)
We’re going to make our way through Isaiah 48 and see what our speaking God has to say to his ancient people!
I have identified 4 broad calls to listen.
This section opens with a call to God’s people to listen to him. He needs to jolt them into listening to some tough truth:
Hear this, O house of Jacob, who are called by the name of Israel, and who came from the waters of Judah, who swear by the name of the Lord and confess the God of Israel, but not in truth or right. For they call themselves after the holy city, and stay themselves on the God of Israel; the Lord of hosts is his name.
As God calls them to listen, he is touching on a theme of the previous section - the stuborness and hard-heartedness of the people.
These people Are called “Israel” and they come from the right area, they even “confess” the LORD as their God, but it is a sham.
They do not confess “in truth or right” - false profession. Close to God on the outside, not in the heart where God is most concerned.
(This is a particular trap for you who grow up in the church, to be externally alligned with Christ, but far from him in your hearts)
God has been speaking to them for a long time but they are obstinate.
Because I know that you are obstinate, and your neck is an iron sinew and your forehead brass, I declared them to you from of old, before they came to pass I announced them to you, lest you should say, ‘My idol did them, my carved image and my metal image commanded them.’
Because they are likley to attribute the Works of God to idol and false gods, the LORD has to reveal his plans so that when they happen, people know who to honour.
Sadly this often still doesn’t work!
God is continually speaking to a stubborn people, whether it be pre-exilic Israel, 1st century Jews or 21st century Christians. Stephen calls people out for this in his preaching:
“You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you.
We are naturall stubborn and hard hearted, we need God’s spirit to give us hearts of flesh
We need to Hear God speak to us to break through our natural tendancy to want to hide from God.
How often do you attribute the actions of God to ordinary things?
History
Natural phenomena
“coincidences”
God does stuff, and he tells us that it was him so that we can give proper attribution.
When you write an essay or quote somone, you have to give proper citation so that people know where it comes from. We need to do that with the works of God.
Listen to His Announcements Old & New (v6-11)
Listen to His Announcements Old & New (v6-11)
God has been talking for a long time, from the beginning!
To prove his power and leave the people without excuse, God says I’m going to show you someth8ing new
They are created now, not long ago; before today you have never heard of them, lest you should say, ‘Behold, I knew them.’ You have never heard, you have never known, from of old your ear has not been opened. For I knew that you would surely deal treacherously, and that from before birth you were called a rebel.
God knew that his people wouldn’t listen, but he acts now once more to reveal himself.
God is going to act for his own glory! That is why he has been patient with people, but now the time has come for some refining.
“For my name’s sake I defer my anger; for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you, that I may not cut you off. Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tried you in the furnace of affliction. For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another.
God defers his anger - he is not quick. Do not treat the delay of wrath as a sure thing.
God hold back his wrath as a grace to his people, so that they can be used to glorify God.
Finding joy in one’s pupose. - The person who’s job it is to serve should find it a joy to serve. The mother will find it a joy to mother. The builder should find satisfaction in building.
We should find satisfaction and joy in being used by God to bring him glory, because that’s what we’re here for!
God is promising through the coming exile and the rasing up of Cyrus the great to afflict and refine his people for the sake of His own glory.
They will go through heavy and deep affliction. Like metal in a crucible.
The refining of God - he will refine his people.
It’s all for his glory!
According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, ... though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Listen to Who the LORD is and What He’ll do. (v12-16)
Listen to Who the LORD is and What He’ll do. (v12-16)
Because the people are not good at listening, it seems God has to remind them who he is, to give his credentials:
“Listen to me, O Jacob, and Israel, whom I called! I am he; I am the first, and I am the last. My hand laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand spread out the heavens; when I call to them, they stand forth together.
The Lord is the I AM, alpha and omega, creator and commander.
We especially need to remember God as creator.
God is Creator and Lord of all
And he’s going to act, to do a “new” thing. He’s going to raise up a special servant:
“Assemble, all of you, and listen! Who among them has declared these things? The Lord loves him; he shall perform his purpose on Babylon, and his arm shall be against the Chaldeans. I, even I, have spoken and called him; I have brought him, and he will prosper in his way.
Cyrus first, but....
the LORD will raise up a greater Redeemer King to come!
Cyrus speaks, but it doesn’t sound like Cyrus...
Draw near to me, hear this: from the beginning I have not spoken in secret, from the time it came to be I have been there.” And now the Lord God has sent me, and his Spirit.
It sounds like God speaking, but he says “the Lord God sent me...”
The Lord would send and use other kings, like Nebucadnezzar and Cyrus, but they were only temorary and short lived tools.
God would raise up a greater servant who would be much more effective in making His people holy:
God, having raised up his servant, sent him to you first, to bless you by turning every one of you from your wickedness.”
God is the creator, and he will refine his people, and he will do it through a servant king
We should Pay Attention (v17-22)
We should Pay Attention (v17-22)
Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: “I am the Lord your God, who teaches you to profit, who leads you in the way you should go. Oh that you had paid attention to my commandments! Then your peace would have been like a river, and your righteousness like the waves of the sea;
The Lord will send his people out from Babylon
Go out from Babylon, flee from Chaldea, declare this with a shout of joy, proclaim it, send it out to the end of the earth; say, “The Lord has redeemed his servant Jacob!” They did not thirst when he led them through the deserts; he made water flow for them from the rock; he split the rock and the water gushed out.
The Lord will send his people out from Sin and sustain them
Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
“There is no peace,” says the Lord, “for the wicked.”
So What?
So What?
Listen up!
Listen to the Lord, what he has said before, and what he revealed later.
He acomplished what he said he would do.
W e should pay attention, there is blessing in hearing and obeying, but even so, God will redeem the wayward and supply their need!
