Blessed by the God of the Amen

Do you ever want to shout amen? Admittedly, in churches in the north, particularly in New England, it is not as much as a cultural norm to be expressive in that way during a worship service. There are cultures, however, where responsive, lively interaction is a large part of the worship service. When we were living in Tennessee in college for the first years of our marriage, were were part of a church and maybe a church culture where it was widely accepted and really expected for many people to shout loudly, “amen” during the worship service.

What are we saying when we say, Amen? You may not shout or say amen during the preaching in a worship service (at least not audibly), but you probably say the word “amen” on a regular basis. You most likely end your prayers with the word “amen.” You may jokingly or casually say “amen” when you are in agreement with something. Why is that? What is the meaning of this word?

This word “amen” appears twice in our passage today, and it is actually used to describe God. God is the “God of truth.” or literally, the “God of the Amen.” “Amen” in the Hebrew scripture conveys firmness, truthfulness, fidelity, and faithfulness. It came over into the New Testament, where we see Jesus use the word. You know those times when he is teaching, and he says “verily verily, I say to you.” or “truly, truly, I say to you.” The word he is actually using there is “amen.” “Amen, Amen, I say to you.” Jesus ties his teaching to that firmness, fidelity, truthfulness, and faithfulness that is really found in him alone, in God alone.

So in what context does Isaiah speak of God as the “God of the Amen?” Well, Isaiah 65 is really a passage that lays out the contrast between judgment that is coming because of idolatrous living, and blessing that comes to God’s faithful servants. Isaiah speaks of those who bless themselves by the God of Truth, as opposed to those who falsely worship, participate in evil, because they are following their own imaginations.

The sin of Idolatry is perhaps one of the most consistent themes in Isaiah. Idolatry is at the heart of Isaiah 65, and it is at the heart of every form of forsaking God. In studying for this message, my mind continually returned to Deuteronomy 30. In Deuteronomy 30, we really find a summary form of what God had called His people, Israel, to.

Deuteronomy 30:15–16 ESV

“See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it.

And again,

Deuteronomy 30:19–20 ESV

I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.”

The parameters were laid out long before the time of Isaiah. The implications were either blessing or cursing. And what were the elements of choosing blessing?

What were the elements of choosing blessing?

It was synonymous with “choosing life.”

It involved keeping the commandments.

While it involved keeping commandments, it had to include:

loving the lord.

holding fast to Him.

This idea of being blessed by holding fast to God, being obedient to Him, was a familiar and foundational concept to Israel. So when we see such a deviation from that in Isaiah, we shouldn’t be surprised at the consequences.

As Scott pointed out last week, there was a remnant that remained faithful to God. But, as we have seen and will see in this passage, a large portion of Israel had disregarded these injunctions and turned away from the Lord, away from His truth, and to idolatry in one form or another. Rather than blessing themselves with the God of Truth, the God of the Amen, they were running toward their own devices.

And that is at the heart of Idolatry - it is not merely worshiping false Gods, it can be as simple as hedging your future and your blessings on anything less than God and his faithfulness. Isaiah 65 points to the futility, the emptiness of idolatry in all its forms. It points to the hopelessness of placing stock in anything less than the God of truth. While it was directed mainly at Israel, the implications are far-reaching, and come to us as well.

The simple question laid out for Israel in Isaiah 65 is this:

The God of Truth has revealed Himself. Will we follow His ways, or run to our own devices?

Isaiah has had much to say about Israel’s idolatry - about their running to their own devices. We saw last week that Isaiah was pleading with God on behalf of the people, asking, basically if he had forgotten them. Where are you, Lord? And we found that Isaiah 65 is really the answer to that question. The answer is multi-faceted. In one sense, God would persist in His judgment upon those who rejected Him. However, there would be a faithful remnant, and ultimate blessing and remembrance of the faithful ones would be in the New Heaven and the New Earth.

I want to spend the majority of our time today looking at what this passage teaches about the nature of idolatry. Its not an exhaustive or all-encompassing treatise on idolatry, but there are a few principles that get at the heart of the issue that I believe will be helpful for us in our day as well.

I. Simple Idolatry is Characterized by Seeking Good Through Your Own Devices - 1-7

As we read this section, this is the immediate answer to Isaiah’s plea with God, asking, “Where are you, Lord?” As was pointed out last week, God reveals that he was there all along!

Verse 1-2 show this picture of the Lord acting very graciously. Sometimes we mistakenly get the picture that the Grace of God is only really clear in Jesus Christ in the New Testament, but listen to the way that the Lord speaks about his grace here.

ready to be sought by those who did not ask for me.

ready to be found by those who did not seek me.

saying “here I Am” to a nation that was not called by my name.”

To answer the question, “where are you?” God says, I have been here all along.

“a nation not called by my name.”

That phrase can either be translated as “a nation that was not called by my name” or “A nation that didn’t call upon my name.” So he could technically be talking about Israel, or he could be referring to His grace in a general way, as he “spreads out his hands” to all people, rebellious people. Its really not clear if the Lord is referring to the general call of his grace here, but we obviously can infer that in the rest of scripture.

But perhaps what is more striking, is that if God is referring to Israel here, the way he speaks of Israel reveals the depth of their idolatry.

They didn’t seek God

They didn’t ask for Him

They were a rebellious, stubborn people

They were not called by His name.

Also, the fact that he calls them “a nation” and not “a people,” shows that they had strayed severely and for a long period of time.

Regardless, God is showing how he has been gracious and merciful to a people who were rebellious.

In the end of verse 2, we get a glimpse into what the heart of their sin was - and i firmly believe we get a glimpse into what the heart of all sin is.

Walk in a way that is not good

following their own devices, or their own design.

When something is not good, it is something that is not according to God’s design. What did God say, over and over again in the creation of the universe? He saw that it was good. The only thing he said was not good was that Adam was alone, and he remedied that issue by creating Eve. God is the master designer, builder, and inspector. He gets to put the rubber stamp of “good” where he sees fit. We use the term good more loosely as language has evolved, but it has much meaning in the Lord’s usage.

So this is the heart of their sin, and the details given in the verses that follow are really the specific instances of “walking in ways that are not good, following their own devices.”

Verses 3-5 give specific examples of idolatry, false worship, and false holiness.

they provoke God to his face by their idolatry.

garden sacrifices were sacrifices to gods of fertility - they had either turned entirely to baal-like worship, or they had started to ascribe baal’s characteristics to God.

Offerings on bricks was a direct disobedience to God’s command to make their altars out of uncut stone.

They provoke God by their false worship

Sitting in tombs, most likely is referring to necromancy - seeking the blessing of dead relatives.

They disobeyed the dietary laws, eating what God had called unclean. This, of course, made them ceremonially unclean.

They provoked God by their false holiness

Though they clearly were not holy, they put up an air of holiness on the outside, even going so far as to separate themselves from those they deemed “less than.” The holier-than-thou mentality typically comes only from false holiness.

All of this idolatry and false worship and false holiness was an annoyance to God - smoke in his nostrils. Just as God had held out his hands “all the day” in verse 2, the annoyance of their idolatry was like a smoke that burned “all the day.”

This, of course, was not an exhaustive list of their sins. And we could not have an exhaustive list of our sins, either. Time and ink would not permit - but that would be beside the point. Our individual sins are of less concern than what is at the heart, and as we see here, what is at the heart of all these things is that they were walking in their own devices. Seeking what was good, yet God said it was “not good.” Rather than following God’s design, they turned to their own design.

There is a parallel passage in Jeremiah 16 that really speaks for itself.

Jeremiah 16:18–20 ESV

But first I will doubly repay their iniquity and their sin, because they have polluted my land with the carcasses of their detestable idols, and have filled my inheritance with their abominations.” O Lord, my strength and my stronghold, my refuge in the day of trouble, to you shall the nations come from the ends of the earth and say: “Our fathers have inherited nothing but lies, worthless things in which there is no profit. Can man make for himself gods? Such are not gods!”

There is the pointed question, “Can man make for himself gods?”

Can man make for himself gods?

And that is what I would call “simple idolatry.” Idolatry is “Idol Latria” or Idol Worship. So we ask, then, what is an idol and what is worship? An Idol is a representation of a false deity, or something that is supremely adored, something given high regard of importance and power over your life. For Israel, it was baal-worship. We don’t make carved idols of false Gods, every culture is guilty of idol worship in the sense that we have things that are supremely adored, things that influence our decision-making, our planning, our attitude, our ethics. If these things that effect us so are not the Lord God, then they are no less idols than statues of baal, dear ones.

And this had been going on for generations - verse 7, “both your iniquities and your fathers’ iniquities...” They had many years to turn from this, yet they persisted in their own ways. Of course, God’s answer to these who continually reject Him is judgment. Which leads us to our next section.

II. Idolatry and Godly Servanthood are Exclusive, and Carry Different Destinies - 8-16

We come to a contrast in verses 8-16, a contrast between the remnant and the idolatrous. We really see in these scriptures that there is no middle ground. Now, that is not to say that the remnant never had a moment of faltering, and the idolatrous never had a moment of virtue. But there is no “halfway point” between following your own devices and following the Lord. Remember the call to choose blessing in Deuteronomy? It involved loving God supremely and holding fast to Him, and those who worship lesser things simply cannot do that.

The Lord gives a picture of a cluster of grapes. Perhaps some of the grapes in the cluster had gone past. They had molded, over-ripened. And the vineyard-workers say, “that’s a bad bunch, just toss it out.” But the vinedresser, being keenly aware and insigntful, says, “no, don’t toss out the whole bunch. There are some good grapes with wonderful wine within them.” You remember chapter 63, where the very vivid picture of Christ’s judgment was given of Him having his garments stained by the blood of his enemies, as grapes crushed in a winepress? Well here, we see that while that picture is true, it is not the only picture. As God displayed in verses 1-2, he is very gracious. And he saves his chosen remnant.

“I will do this for my servant’s sake, and not destroy them all.”

Verse 9-10There will be a remnant who will experience the promised blessings of the covenant. Land is of utmost importance in the covenant God made with Israel. He took Abraham from his home and made him sojourn to a place he didn’t know. He later took Israel out of the land and made them sojourn in Egypt for 400 years, followed by 40 years of wilderness wanderings. In Isaiah’s case, he has taken the people from the land again and sent them into captivity. Even now, while there is a Jewish nation of Israel in Palestine, God’s true followers are not all gathered in a place, we are wanderers and sojourners, strangers and aliens.

The destiny for God’s Servants is that His land-promises, his inheritance promises will ultimately come true. There is great hope for God’s servants. While we wander now as strangers and foreigners, we will not always be so. Sharon and Achor represent transformation, and they will ultimately be transformed to fruitful pastures.

But there is a different destiny for the idolatrous, the ones who run to their own devices.

They are seen “setting a table” for Fortune, and filling cups for “Destiny.” Now, we read those words and have our english meanings, and they are accurate translations, but these were also the actual names of Syrian gods, false gods. Gods who were worshipped for good fortune, gods who were worshipped when the worshiper was uncertain of his future.

Do you see the problem here? God’s covenant people, who know and were called by the creator of heaven and earth, were making sacrifices to false gods in hopes that they would help their future. What a sad place to be. And what a sad place we find ourselves in, when we look to lesser things, earthly things, as securing our fortune and our future.

In a play on words, God says “i will destine you to the sword.” Those who looked to “destiny” for their future hope would be destined to future destruction, and those who “bowed down” to fortune would rather bow down to the sword. And what was the problem, the outworking of the idolatry?

God called but they didn’t answer. God spoke but they didn’t listen. Rather than trusting their fortune and future to the God of Truth, they went after their own devices.

Read verse 13-15, self-explanatory comparison between the servants and the idolatrous.

Verse 16 really strikes at the heart of the foolishness of idolatry. God says, “those who are going to bless themselves in the land (referring back to that covenant promise) are going to do so only by the God of Truth.” And this is where our sermon title comes in - for this is literally the “God of the Amen.” Firmness, fidelity, faithfulness, truthfulness - this is our God. There is not another means of blessing. You cannot find firmness, fidelity, faithfulness, and truthfulness in lesser things, be it idol-worship, money-worship, family-worship, good-works worship, politician-worship, health-worship, or anything. These things are futile. Now, they are not inherently evil, but the elevating of them in your mind, giving them a status and place of importance that is higher than the God of Truth, that is worship, and that is what our culture is guilty of today. Worship at the feet of the god of knowledge, the god of the academy, the god of social good, the god of safety, the god of good fortune.

But dear ones, there is a remnant. Are you part of the remnant? Do you cling to the Lord, love him supremely? There is great blessing in the God of the Amen, the god of firmness, fidelity, faithfulness, and truthfulness.

And what is at the heart of that blessing? The former troubles are hidden. That remnant, although experiencing the pain and suffering that comes from being in a world of sin, will not be ultimately overcome by that sin. Rather, it will be eradicated.

III. The Good Sought is Only Truly Realized in God’s New Creation – 15-25

When God says that something is forgotten, then it is as good as if it never happened. That seems to be the nature of the new heaven and the new earth, that blissful experience to be enjoyed by all of God’s true servants. Scott did a great job pointing out that God’s remnant includes both jews and gentiles, so I don’t need to rehash that except to say, that while the world at large is guilty of the idolatry in Isaiah 65, in the same sense all of God’s people, both Jews and Gentiles, will experience the blessings of the New Heaven and the New Earth.

We have taken time in past sermons to read cross references from other prophets, and the book of revelation, and see the beauty of this promise. But I just want to read these words without much explanation. And as I read them, Imaging the Lord who was holding out his hands, who is holding out his hands to wicked and stubborn people, saying, “here I am.” And as he is holding out his hands, he is holding out this promise of existential, eternal bliss.

Read 17-25

What are some highlights?

No more weeping or distress

No premature death

No loss of home and crops

No more hard, fruitless labor

No more children being born into a world of destruction and hopelessness

The Wold and the Lamb will graze side-by-side. What does all this picture? Well, it pictures peace. But really, it pictures the blessing of life.

That simply covenant promise we read in Deuteronomy 30 - the blessing of life in the land. The earthly experience of that for Israel was up and down, but the eternal experience of that for God’s people will not fade. This is the Lord’s Promise.

We look at this great promise, this promise of new heavens and new earth. We look at the warnings of rejecting the lord, of being idolatrous and following our own devices. And we ask, is there any hope in this promise for us? For us, so farm removed from the time of Isaiah, so far removed from the time of Christ? As I think of these verses, I think of Jesus promise in the upper room in John 14.

John 14:1–6 ESV

“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Who will bless themselves in this land? Who can experience this great life? How can we know the way? Jesus said, I am the Way, the Truth, and The Life. In this sense, Jesus is holding out his hands as the Lord has done for many years, and he says “I am the way. I am the God of Truth. It is my ways that you must follow, It is I that you must cling to.” Idolatry, false worship, and false holiness will not bring in into God’s presence or God’s favor, but Jesus Christ, the Son of God, God in flesh, can and will.

I want to reiterate what Scott presented last week. You say, “so what if I have been following my own devices? What if I have been trusting my future and fortune to the god of the academy, the god of science, the god of safety, the god of government, etc?”

In the end of Romans 10, Paul is quoting from Isaiah 65. He is pouring out his heart that his family according to the flesh will be saved, but he is using that as an opportunity to teach that everyone - whether jew or gentile, is saved in the same manner. That Old Covenant principle from Deuteronomy 30 of loving God supremely, clinging fast to Him, and obeying Him is, in a sense, applied to all people. Now, we are not called to obey the ceremonial and sacrificial and dietary practices of the Old Covenant for our salvation, but we are called to obey the Gospel. And what is obedience to the Gospel? It is faith in Christ.

Romans 10:16–17 ESV

But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

Christ calls out today, to the sinful, the idolatrous, to the rebellious, the stubborn, and says “I am the way, the truth, the life.” Jesus Christ is the root of blessing, the Gospel of Christ is the way to His blessing, and Jesus Christ is the God of the Amen.