Sermon Tone Analysis

!! Trembling Before God’s Word – Isaiah 66:2

!!!! Preached by Pastor Phil Layton on 11~/26~/2006 at Gold Country Baptist Church

www.goldcountrybaptist.org

There was a famous man by the name of Junius who lived many centuries ago, and was an atheist.

He wrote of his experiences one rainy day: “I came home to my house and saw a New Testament lying before me.

I took it up, and there I met with that first chapter in John (which is a chapter that is as full of majesty as any), and I took the book and fell a reading: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’ Upon reading this, my body *trembled*, my soul presently was amazed, and for all the day I did not know where I was.

I was struck with such horror and amazement that it shook every joint of me and my heart *trembled* within me, and I knew not where I was all the day long.”

(Jeremiah Burroughs, /Gospel Fear, /14)

 

Ruth Bell Graham, wife of Billy Graham, relates the story of a Russian prostitute named Sonia and a man named Raskolnikoff, a conscience-stricken and self-tormented murderer:   On a rickety little table in Sonia’s room stands a tallow candle fixed in an improved candlestick of twisted metal.

In the course of earnest conversation, Sonia glances at a book lying on a chest of drawers.

Raskolnikoff takes it down.

It is a New Testament.

He hands it to Sonia and begs her to read it to him.“Sonia

opens the book: her hands *tremble*: the words stick in her throat.

Twice she tries without being able to utter a syllable.”

At length she succeeds.

And then —“She closes the book: she seems afraid to raise her eyes on Raskolnikoff: her feverish *trembling* continues.

The dying piece of candle dimly lights up this low-ceilinged room in which an assassin and a harlot have just read the Book of Books.”

… There is Raskolnikoff—most prodigal of prodigal sons— and there is Sonia—most prodigal of prodigal daughters—bending together over the living page that points all prodigals to the Father’s house.

Quoted in “Prodigals and Those Who Love Them,” Ruth Bell Graham, 1991, Focus on the Family Publishing, pp.

117-126

 

On June 27, 1819, Adoniram Judson baptized his first convert in Burma.

His wife, Ann Hasseltine, described how Moung Nau had responded to the Scripture: "A few days ago I was reading with him Christ's Sermon on the Mount.

He was deeply impressed and unusually solemn.

'These words,' said he, 'take hold on my liver; they make me *tremble*."'

God spoke through Isaiah the prophet 2700 years ago and said, "This is the man to whom I will look, he that is humble and contrite in spirit, and *trembles* at my word … Hear the word of the Lord, you who *tremble* at his word" (Isaiah 66:2,5).

For two thousand years the Bible has been taking hold of people's livers and making them tremble—[as John Piper says, we tremble] first with fear because it reveals our sin, then with faith because it reveals God's grace.

A single verse, Romans 13:13, convicted and converted the immoral Augustine [he also noticed a New Testament and just happened to turn to that verse].

For Martin Luther, a miserable monk, the light broke in through Romans 1:17.

-          John Piper, "The Holy Spirit: Author of Scripture" (preached 2~/26~/84)

REVIEW: /The great and pressing need of the hour is to have a high view of God and a high view of God’s Word, that we would tremble at it./

/And we discussed last week that this will result in a low view of yourself, that you will be humble and contrite./

/ /

Today, I want to look with you at the biblical context of this passage, then some biblical examples of trembling, and lastly, biblical reasons for trembling

 

!!!!! I. BIBLICAL CONTEXT

!!!  

The Israelites of that time had a lot going for them - Torah, chosen people, Moses and lineage, promises, temple, unique system of worship that set them apart from all other nations.

Isaiah 66 comes at the end of a prophecy of judgment and future comfort, the Jews still in the land were told they would go into exile, and later return to the land and in the end there would be a Messianic kingdom and then new heavens and new earth.

Both before and after captivity, the Jews put too much stress on the outward, the external, the building.

But in light of who God is and His grandiose purposes, no house or temple could ever be built or rebuilt after the exile that would be worthy of God or that could contain God.

The temple and whole priestly system was just a symbol and picture of God’s character, not the fullness of it.

-          Verse 1 says that the earth, this massive colossal planet that we focus so much on what happens here, compared to God is just like a stool to put his foot on.

The whole world is nothing to him and subordinate to God and those on the earth must bow before God’s feet

-          But that's not all, look back at the text "the heavens" the whole universe itself is God's throne.

However big this seemingly infinite and endless and immeasurable universe is, God is bigger, and more infinite and truly endless and immeasurable.

He rules over all, through all, and in all.

When Solomon built the temple, he recognized this:

“/But will God indeed dwell on the earth?

Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built!/"

(I Kings 8:27)

 

The Lord asks in our text “/where is the house you will build for me?”/

As I said last week, what impresses God and catches His notice, is not the most beautiful temple (in our day, Mormon temple or Vatican, etc.).

It’s not even the earth itself, or the heavens, and the dazzling suns and stars God made that attract His notice.

God is not looking for a very big place, he’s looking for a small place, a human heart.

What God looks for is the humble repentant reverent heart of the individual believer.

But the Jews for the most part did not get this message, and in N.T. times they continued their undue emphasis on the externals and the temple.

TURN TO ACTS 6

 

In Acts 6, when they persecuted Stephen, they said in v. 13

/“This man never ceases to speak words against this holy place and the law, *14 *for we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses delivered to us/.”

Notice how their first concern was "this place" and then the law and customs.

To speak against the building was a capital crime and one of the chief accusations brought against Jesus (ironically by those who had truly desecrated the place by turning it into a den of thieves).

They would probably never say it out loud, but the temple was more of their focus than the Torah, the building was reverenced rather than the Bible, their eyes were on the rocks of the walls rather than the Rock of Ages Himself who transcends all things.

Even today in Jerusalem, you see great reverence and prayers at the Wailing Wall, a remnant of stones from centuries past, which is almost worshipped in the way some worship relics or locations in Rome or Israel.

God never wanted these types of things to be the focus, He is so infinitely above and beyond everything visible and created, and it is ridiculous to limit Him to some man-made structure - it's not just ridiculous, it's an insult to the God who is transcendent and infinite and omnipresent and who fills the universe.

Notice Stephen's speech in Acts 7:

47 ... /it was Solomon who built a house for him.

48 Yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made by hands, as the prophet says,/

49 “ ‘/Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool.

/

/What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord, or what is the place of my rest?

/

/50 Did not my hand make all these things?/’

51 “/You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit.

As your fathers did, so do you /

/... 54 Now when they heard these things they were enraged, and they ground their teeth at him /

/,,, 58 Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him.

And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul.

/

 

That young man named Saul followed the OT system as best as any man could externally, but one day he was converted to a humble and contrite spirit by the Supreme God who Stephen spoke about, the outward became inward, the rituals were replaced with a relationship.

I suspect those words from Stephen on that day reverberated often in Paul’s soul, because when Paul had a chance to give an apologetic to the Greeks in Acts 17, his words were very much along the lines of Acts 7 and Isaiah 66.

 

/22 So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious.

23 For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, ‘To the unknown god.’

What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.

/

/24 The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.

/

/... /[v.

29]/ we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.

30 The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent"/

 

Repentance is commanded of all people everywhere, this is not an optional thing or something we should take out of the Christian gospel, as some Christians have done.

!

What does God mean in Isaiah 66:2 when he says He “who trembles at my Word”?

II.

BIBLICAL EXAMPLES OF TREMBLING

You’ll notice it is also in verse 5, calling on those who take God’s Word seriously.

It verse 5 it is combined with the idea of “hear” = TO OBEY WITH REVERENCE

 

The phrase “tremble at the Word” only elsewhere occurs in Ezra 9 and 10 of those who trembled in reverence and repentance for their sins, such as taking foreign wives.

To tremble here certainly contains the idea of having a high view of God and His Word and responding accordingly:

 

"Then everyone who trembled at the words of the God of Israel on account of the unfaithfulness of the exiles gathered to me, and I sat appalled until the evening offering."

(Ezra 9:4, NASB95)

"“So now let us make a covenant with our God to put away all the wives and their children, according to the counsel of my lord and of those who tremble at the commandment of our God; and let it be done according to the law."

(Ezra 10:3, NASB95)

 

It includes the idea of physical trembling.

When Daniel heard the Word of God through a messenger in Dan. 10, he says in verse 11 “while he was speaking this word to me, I stood trembling” – this is a far cry from reading your Bible, yawning, then dozing off

 

When Jeremiah received the Lord’s word to preach judgment, his whole body shook inside and outside at the enormity and implications of the task for that generation:

My heart is broken within me, All my bones tremble; I have become like a drunken man, Even like a man overcome with wine, Because of the Lord And because of His holy words."

(Jeremiah 23:9, NASB95)

 

When the prophet Habbakuk received the Word in vision about coming judgment:

"I heard and my inward parts trembled, At the sound my lips quivered.