Sinners & Saints Saved - Isaiah 56-57

03/20/2016 am Isaiah 56-57 Sinners and Saints Saved

Thoughts on sermons at Andover Baptist

1) warning to the wicked
2) comfort to the contrite

1) There are both religious and secular sexual sins mentioned in this passage. Also mentioned are idolaters and those who do not keep the Sabbath.

And there are also those in the church who have private sins:

“The dogs have a mighty appetite; they never have enough. But they are shepherds who have no understanding; they have all turned to their own way, each to his own gain, one and all.”
‭‭Isaiah‬ ‭56:11‬ ‭ESV‬‬

They were offering infants as human sacrifices to their idols. Much like today in America we kill babies for convenience and we are doing this for our idols of comfort, beauty, and for more money.

“you who burn with lust among the oaks, under every green tree, who slaughter your children in the valleys, under the clefts of the rocks?”
‭‭Isaiah‬ ‭57:5‬ ‭ESV‬‬

The next time you are about to sin ask yourself who you are afraid of? The answer is yourself or the idol in your heart. The idol says, "I want this for me; and I want it now!"

Knowing God - Ch 8

Knowing God

J.I. Packer

IVP 1993 Americanized Version

Ch 8 – The Majesty of God

""Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from the Lord and my judgment is passed away from God?" (Is 40:27 RV). This question rebukes wrong thoughts about ourselves. God has not abandoned us any more than he abandoned Job. He never abandons anyone on whom he has set his love; nor does Christ, the good shepherd, ever lose track of his sheep. It is as false as it is irreverent to accuse God of forgetting, or overlooking, or losing interest in, the state and needs of his own people. If you have been resigning yourself to the thought that God has left you high and dry, seek grace to be ashamed of yourself. Such unbelieving pessimism deeply dishonors our great God and Savior." 

Rich Veins: Isaiah 25

For you have been a stronghold to the poor,
a stronghold to the needy in his distress,
a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat;
for the breath of the ruthless is like a storm against a wall,
like heat in a dry place.
 
You subdue the noise of the foreigners;
as heat by the shade of a cloud,
so the song of the ruthless is put down. 
On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine,
of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.
 
And he will swallow up on this mountain
the covering that is cast over all peoples,
the veil that is spread over all nations.
 
He will swallow up death forever;
and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all faces,
and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth,
for the LORD has spoken.
 
It will be said on that day,
“Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us.
This is the LORD; we have waited for him;
let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”
 

Rich Veins: Isaiah 26

O LORD you will ordain peace for us
for you have indeed done for us all our works

Rich Veins: Isaiah 30

I'm hoping to begin a series of posts on encouraging passages of scripture which are less familiar. I'm calling these posts "rich veins," because I think of stumbling across these encouraging and interesting passages as being analogous to a miner uncovering a rich vein of copper, iron, or gold. 

Please comment with some of your own.

I will just share this encouraging passage of scripture and dispense with further comments:

  "Therefore the LORD waits to be gracious to you,
      and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you.
 For the LORD is a God of justice;
      blessed are all those who wait for him.

  For a people shall dwell in Zion, in Jerusalem; you shall weep no more. He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry. As soon as he hears it, he answers you. And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left. Then you will defile your carved idols overlaid with silver and your gold-plated metal images. You will scatter them as unclean things. You will say to them, “Be gone!”

 And he will give rain for the seed with which you sow the ground, and bread, the produce of the ground, which will be rich and plenteous. In that day your livestock will graze in large pastures, and the oxen and the donkeys that work the ground will eat seasoned fodder, which has been winnowed with shovel and fork. And on every lofty mountain and every high hill there will be brooks running with water, in the day of the great slaughter, when the towers fall. Moreover, the light of the moon will be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day when the LORD binds up the brokenness of his people, and heals the wounds inflicted by his blow."

(Isaiah 30:18-26 ESV)