Series:  The Way to Godliness

The 3rd  Step toward Godliness - Redemption

February 1, 2009

Isaiah 1:21-31

Introduction – [1st slide – 2Peter 3:11-12]

We began a journey 4 weeks back to look at the response to the Apostle Peter’s question from 2 Peter 3:

2 Peter 3:11-12

11 Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, 12 waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn!

So….here’s his question – How are we to live as God’s People? 

We’ve gone to the Prophet Isaiah for answers…specifically Isaiah 1 in hearing God’s prophetic word to Jerusalem 2500 years ago.  In this chapter, we found God’s Gracious Plan – Redemption (slide)

Ø    Conviction – God’s gracious gift whereby we come to realize God’s grace and steadfast love that shines most clearly through our weaknesses!  Conviction comes through the Holy Spirit as He shows us our sin and leads us to……

Ø    Repentance – God’s grace seen in our transforming life lived in pursuit of holiness!  This life of repentance is marked by a growing hatred of sIn!  It is a pilgrimage of fleeing from sin in our life and running to our Savior - it is marked by life lived in the shadow of the Cross of Christ!

Ø    Redemption – Our final step, explains how God saves us!  It is God’s setting us free at His Expense!

We started our look at the final step of Redemption last week, and so we conclude this morning with God’s beautiful plan ……gift….of redemption!  This is all God’s…..redemption is His gracious work – not ours!    

So, what is Redemption?  Simply, Redemption explains how God saves us!  So how does He?  By paying a personal price!  We are born into sin….enslaved to it….inclined to rebellion against our Creator in every way…..and Redemption is God shattering those chains of slavery to sin at his own expense….Our redemption is Christ’s saving work on the cross….viewed as an act of His “buying us back” from bondage to sin.  This is what Jesus has in mind in Mark 10:45 - 45 For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

This morning…..I can stand assure you that….not only is God willing to pay the price for your sins, He already has paid for them at the cross of Christ.  And you can enter into redemption freely….…..in fact the only way to redemption is by God’s free grace! 

Review – Isaiah shows us God’s Redemptive grace in Is. 1:21-31.  This passage is split by Isaiah into 2 halves - the first is a lament over our corruption – and the prophet asks the question – What…what have we become and what does God do with people like us?(vv 21-26).  The second part asks the question;  How does God lead us into redemption?

Last week, we looked at vv. 21-24. Let’s briefly review:

What – Our Corruption

     How the faithful city

 has become a whore,

          she who was full of justice!

      Righteousness lodged in her,

 but now murderers.

Isaiah opens the eyes of Jerusalem to the beauty it once was….and the corruption that has taken place!  Just as Jerusalem was God’s dwelling place…..so now is the church!  God dwells within Born-again Believers…and we are pledged to Christ as His Bride! 

  2 For I feel a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. (2 Cor. 11.2)

As the church, we must be faithful to the One who called us!  We saw last week, that this happens…we are faithful to God when we love God completely and totally – and when we love each other genuinely!  That is the community God calls his Bride…..that is His church!

Is 1:22

     22     Your silver has become dross,

your best wine mixed with water.

Sin promises so much…..and it delivers nothing of value!  When we allow to remain….when we settle for remaining in bondage to sin – our best becomes diluted and a sham!  Sin turns the beauty of the Bride into the ugliness of the prostitute!

We saw in Is. 1.23 that the corruption in Jerusalem was being led by the ones called of God to lead in righteousness!  The princes themselves are leading the sinful rebellion against God’s holiness!  We saw what happens when faithfulness flees – justice goes with it – and the first and most tragic result is that the innocent and weakest are the first to be trampled under foot!  This is a warning to all of us in God’s church – but especially to leaders and pastors!  Prideful leadership lends itself to a whole host of Body – killing sins!  We are called to be humble toward one another (1 Peter 5)….and this must begin with and be modeled by leaders!

We ended at v.24….seeing the grace of God in His declaration that the wicked and unjust will not endure…for there is a “Mighty One of Israel.”  If Isaiah ended here…well we could expect nothing less than annihilation!  But our glorious God has much more to say….and we pick up there this morning….Look at the vv. 25-26 - READ

Our Redemption

Isaiah 1:25-26

     25     I will turn my hand against you

and will smelt away your dross as with lye

and remove all your alloy.

     26     And I will restore your judges as at the first,

and your counselors as at the beginning.

          Afterward you shall be called the city of righteousness,

the faithful city.”

The grace of God’s redemption breaks forth in these two verses!  Do you see it?  Maybe you see it more in v.26…..but we’re going to discover something amazing about v.25….something that’s difficult to see in English!  Both v.25 & 26 begin with the same Hebrew verb, asibah (hashva), but in most translations begin:  “I will turn…”  and “I will restore….” v.26 = but it’s the same verb used in both…so how can one seem to point toward discipline and the other restoration? 

Because Isaiah is showing us that the Lord God…the Mighty One of Israel can act in ONE WAY….Yet He accomplishes two acts at once!  When God turns his hand in discipline against us….it isn’t disaster but restoration!  God’s discipline is with a purpose….it has a goal…and that is to bring us to purity and righteousness while at the same time restoring us to fellowship and peace with Him.   We see this promise from God to refine His people in the OT: The prophet Zechariah said this:  Zec 13:9

     9     And I will put this third into the fire,

and refine them as one refines silver,

and test them as gold is tested.

          They will call upon my name,

and I will answer them.

          I will say, ‘They are my people’;

and they will say, ‘The Lord is my God.’ ”

The writer of Hebrews echoes and expands upon the Proverb that the Lord disciplines whom He loves (Prov. 3.12) and the Psalmist -  Blessed is the man whom you discipline, O Lord,  and whom you teach out of your law, (Ps. 94.12) – and so we see this discipline from the Lord in the church:

Heb 12:7, 11

7 It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? ……

11 For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

So, here is the promise…God will not abandon His people…He will not leave His church to fend off the wolves and thieves alone…..He will not leave His Bride sullied and marred in sin!  He will redeem His own!  And in this redemption, He will purify us from sinfulness to holiness! 

The church’s glory is NOT fading away….it’s her corruption and impurity that is being refined away! And this is the beauty of God’s grace in discipline is that, as he turns his hand against us in discipline…..he is also bringing restoration! 

The Decision Before Us All

So for us…..for our generation….for the church ///  how are we redeemed out of our failures?  Listen as Isaiah places the full weight of our decision before our faces!

Is 1:27-28

     27     Zion shall be redeemed by justice,

and those in her who repent, by righteousness.

     28     But rebels and sinners shall be broken together,

and those who forsake the Lord shall be consumed.

There are so many Christians who misunderstand God’s forgiveness.  We sit with a pastor or friend and say a prayer and God wipes the slate of our rebellion and sins clean!  And in a sense…when we look at only our side of the equation – it is very simple.  We repent of our sins and trust Christ of our eternity….we surrender our lives to Him.  In doing this, we are forgiven and set free.  But so often, we don’t see or understand that our forgiveness comes at the highest of all prices to God.  We seem to think that God simply sweeps our sins under the rug, so to speak, and because  - “God is love” – He can forgive and forget!  But why, if this is so, does Jesus claim his mission was to come and “give his life as a ransom for many”?  We need to realize and get in both our heads and hearts….just the GREAT PRICE our salvation costs God!  God does not redeem us by casually sweeping aside His standards.  This is a part of the sweetness of our redemption….and the love of God magnified in our salvation.  God paid the greatest of price for your soul!  For God cannot….and did not set aside His holiness, His justice, or His righteousness for our sins!  Our Redemption came not by convenience, but by blood!  This is the magnitude and completeness of the cross of Christ!  Our Redemption comes not by God setting aside His justice and righteousness – But by their full satisfaction in the shedding of the blood of Jesus Christ – Our Father’s precious, lovely Son!  The Bible says: “…….our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.”  (Titus 2:13-14)

Jesus paid (He was the ransom) the full cost of our freedom – bearing every one of my sins….every wicked deed or thought….every selfish act or attitude!  God honored His own moral perfection and laid the guilt and the punishment upon the only perfect substitute – His Son – and He did it at Calvary!  Our part in this work of Redemption….this act of Grace ……says Isaiah – is to repent! (…and those in her who repent)  There is nothing we can offer God to pay for our sins…..But in His great love, He paid it all!  So what does it cost us to be redeemed – it cost us nothing….and it costs us everything!  We cannot DO anything to earn it!  But it costs us our life to lay hold of it!  Scripture declares, “… You are not your own, 20 for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” (1Cor. 6.19b,20a)  How else can we live but in repentance…..longing to love this Great God who gave all so that we might know Him!  To live for Christ is to live a life of constant turning – from our selfish flesh to our beautiful Savior!  From our stubbornness to His mercy!  This is living in the shadow of the cross!  This is living in godliness!  

Isaiah, in prophetic fashion, pulls no punches!  This is our decision – Will we repent and be redeemed….or continue in rebellion and be consumed?

Here and Now….or Forever!

Isaiah has one more stab at convincing us!  One more warning for our training in godliness.  READ AT VV.29-31.

Why is Isaiah so…..well….harsh here?  Because the same great temptation now existed even more than 2500 years ago!  The convenience of living for and believing in what we see and touch – what we can hold or sit in or count!  It’s so easy to chart our life’s course by earthly things…..to allow this present life to capture our hearts!  But our strength and the allure of the world is passing…even now!  And Isaiah says the strenght of humanity (the oak) will wither; and the decades of hard work and planning (the gardens) will dry up and die….BUT the cross of Christ remains!!

 Our strength leads to death…but repentance opens life to us!  We must claim the Apostle Paul’s wisdom for our own: “But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”  Gal. 6.14

Our training in godliness….is really only two steps:  conviction of sin (1st step) and repentance (2nd step)…..and then God carries us all the way through His gracious Redemption! 

There is no greater word or more precious possesson than Redeemer!  Even more than Savior, it reminds us….as children of God….that our salvation….our adoption by our Heavenly Father…came at a great, great price to Him – for the Lord has given Himself to deliver us from sin and death…..to set us free….and to make us His own!

Let’s Pray