A God Worth Shouting About - Isaiah 12
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©Copyright March 6, 2022 by Rev. Bruce Goettsche
When we began this series in Isaiah, I told you that Isaiah is often call the “Fifth Gospel” because of the way it looks toward Christ. We are going to see a great example of that in our text in Isaiah 12 today.
In Isaiah 12 we read a song of praise for the Lord’s salvation on the day when it reaches its fulfillment (which is the picture in chapter 11). In other words, this is what we will likely say as we look back on our lives in light of our eternity in God’s presence. This text is, if you will, a picture of the way we will have wished we had lived as we look back. It is a day that should change our perspective and inspire our worship today.
1 In that day you will sing:
“I will praise you, O Lord!
You were angry with me, but not any more.
Now you comfort me.
2 See, God has come to save me.
I will trust in him and not be afraid.
The Lord God is my strength and my song;
he has given me victory.”
There is nothing that expresses emotion more effectively than music. Singing is a way to exalt and praise God because it can speak words that express the depth of our heart. It may be a song that is popular on the radio, an old time-tested and theologically rich hymn, a simple and profound thought with a captivating melody or something you have written yourself.
However, it is not the act of singing that is worship, it is the attitude of the heart. This is a distinction I think it is important to make. Every aspect of worship is not about a task that is performed, it is the attitude of the heart as we come before the Lord in various ways. Often people say, we need more “worship time” or “we love the praise and worship time.” What they are referring to is the time of singing. Singing is wonderful, but it is only worship when our hearts are bending in worship before the Father. Merely enjoying a song does not make it worship. EVERY element of a worship time should be “praise and worship.” Times of prayer, listening to the Word of God read, and hearing the preaching of the Word should all be done with a worshipful attitude. Let’s look at the reason why this is so.
Our Condition
You were angry with me, but not any more.
Now you comfort me.
Paul underscored this same truth in Romans 5:10-11
10 For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his Son. 11 So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God. (italics mine)
We don’t like to think of our relationship with God as adversarial. In fact, we think we are pretty good. We do believe there are some bad people in the world. They abuse children, commit acts of terror, commit genocide (like Adolf Hitler). We believe these are the kinds of people that will go to Hell. We do not picture ourselves like that.
Listen to the way many people speak about those who die. They talk about what a good person they were and how well liked they were. They talk about a new angel in Heaven or perhaps how much richer Heaven now is because of this person. To hear them speak the only thing you need to do to go to Heaven is to die! Why wouldn’t God let good people into Heaven?
If you point out to these people that you must believe and trust Jesus to be saved, they will inevitably tell you that they/ or their friend “believed in God.” They may not have been involved with a church or embraced the Bible as God’s Word, but they believed in God. When you ask them what God they believed in they often say, “They believed in the God who loves everyone.”
That sounds nice but what they are really saying is they believe in the God who loves people more than holiness. Their God is willing to negotiate His standards in order to bring people to Himself. A God who negotiates His character is no longer a good God. He is no longer righteous or perfect. He is not really God at all. He is someone who looks a great deal like us.
The Bible says repeatedly that we are sinful people. We are enemies of God. Think about it.
· We take vengeance into our own hands; He tells us to leave it to Him
· Our hearts are divided in allegiance; He wants us to follow Him over and above all others
· He wants us to love: we compete with each other
· He calls us to unity; we are endlessly dividing
· He wants us to be holy; we want to have fun, feel good, and indulge our appetites
· He tells us to be content; we always want something more
· He tells us to love each other; we use each other to get what we want.
· He instructs us to remember the Sabbath; we BRAG about being too busy to worship.
· He tells us to seek first His Kingdom; but we try all kinds of other things before seeking Him.
If someone opposes you in almost everything you say and do, would you think of them as a friend or an enemy? In our natural (pre-Christian) state, we are people who are in a bad relationship with God. We deserve His wrath, not His mercy.
The Remedy
2 See, God has come to save me.
I will trust in him and not be afraid.
The Lord God is my strength and my song;
he has given me victory.”
Israel did nothing to earn their salvation. They were rebelling when God pursued them. He is still pursuing them. He is also pursuing us! God came to save US!
Remember, Isaiah is saying this is what WE will sing. It is not just the rebellious Israelites that will sing of God’s grace. Everyone who is in Heaven will sing that God has come to save us. He pursued us! Stop for a beat or two and think about this: The Creator of all that has been, is, and will ever be, pursued you and me! He pursued us because He loves us . . . and this is despite our rebellion against Him! In Romans 5 we read these words,
6 When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. 7 Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. 8 But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. 9 And since we have been made right in God’s sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God’s condemnation. 10 For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his Son. 11 So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God.
As sinful people, we deserve God’s wrath. God HAS TO punish sin because He is holy and cannot compromise with sin. God’s solution was for the Son of God to take the form of man, live a righteous life, and then die in our place. The value of the life of Jesus is so much greater than ours that He could offer his life for any and all who would embrace this gift. In theological terms this is called “substitutionary atonement.”
Paul said there are some benefits to this atonement. Not only are we saved from condemnation and made a friend of God, but we will also have absolute confidence that we will be saved because of HIS goodness, rather than our own. God did not invest in us to lose us. He will finish the work He begins as we come to faith in Christ (Philippians 1:6). As Paul writes, if we were saved through the death of Christ . . . how much more are we enriched by following His example. We are not only saved for Heaven – We are saved to live life with Him here on earth. I think it is fair to say we have been saved to walk with Him, to escape the meaninglessness and lostness of this life.
People sometimes put off coming to Christ because they “want to have some fun first.” Perhaps you used to say this. The implication is, they believe Jesus has saved us so we would have less joy than we do now? Does that make any sense to you at all? Jesus said, “I have come so you would have life and have it abundantly.”
We have it backwards, we are NOT living the most fulfilling life we can live right now. There is a sense in which Jesus was saying, “You think you are living a pretty good life right now? What you don’t know is not only are you not living up to what YOU wish you could be, you aren’t anywhere close to living up to what I created you to be. You cannot be what you were created to be apart from me. Any life apart from walking with me is to settle for something less than the best. And you cannot walk with me apart from faith in Christ.” God’s goal is to move us from futility to fulfillment; from trying to survival to thriving. He does this not through a positive mental attitude but through showing us how to walk with Him according to the Word of God.
How do we gain this quality and depth of living? We “trust Him and are not afraid.” This sounds so simple, but it is not, because we tend to trust almost anything else before we trust the Lord. Author Ray Ortlund wrote,
We complicate our trust in God. We mix in other things. We trust in our trust in God. We trust in our theology of God. We trust in our worship of God. We cling to God plus whatever makes us feel comfortable and superior. And the more props we need, the more insecure we become. But when the grace of God overrules our folly, real faith comes alive, and our outlook is simplified so that we say, “Behold, God is my salvation. He is enough. Period.” We then discover that we have been safe all along.[1]
The trust that is required means looking at Him rather than the obstacles before us. It means relying on His truthfulness, embracing the work of Christ on the cross, trusting His expression of grace and love to you, and it means being willing to follow Him wherever He leads, instead of following our own schemes.
Our Response
In verses 3-6 Isaiah changes the word we translate as “you” differently. It moves from the singular in verses 1 & 2 to plural in 3-6. It reminds that becoming a Christian has an individual side and a corporate (or group) side. With other believers, here is what we will do:
3 With joy you will drink deeply
from the fountain of salvation!
4 In that wonderful day you will sing:
“Thank the Lord! Praise his name!
Tell the nations what he has done.
Let them know how mighty he is!
5 Sing to the Lord, for he has done wonderful things.
Make known his praise around the world.
6 Let all the people of Jerusalem shout his praise with joy!
For great is the Holy One of Israel who lives among you.”
We will drink deeply from the fountain of salvation. With the onset of television programs “on demand” you can “binge watch” an entire season of a show. The Chosen sells shirts that say, “Binge Jesus.” Isaiah tells us when that final day comes, we will binge on the magnificence of our salvation. We will drink deeply like a parched and hot person drinking a thermos full of cold water. We will no longer be content with a superficial knowledge of God. We won’t be able to get enough of the salvation that has been given to us by the Lord. We will find the more deeply we delve into the richness of our salvation, the more wonderfully rich it becomes. Too many people profess faith in Christ but never dig in. They are like the people who sign up to run a Marathon so they can get the “I ran in the Marathon” t-shirt. They leave the race after the first two blocks and have fun at Starbucks while others run. There are too many professing believers like this! Paul tells us to run like those who want to win . . . that means drinking deeply from the fountain of salvation.
We will sing songs of thanksgiving. Sometimes I find musicals to be just a little on the
corny side. People are doing something and just spontaneously break into song. Lovers start singing songs to each other and there is a part of us which scorns the idea and say, “Come on, no one does things like this!” But on the other side we are thinking . . . but wouldn’t it be nice if we could feel this free? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could let our joy and thanksgiving out with a song?
When the Kingdom of God comes in all its glory, we will want to sing for joy out of a deep sense of gratitude and worship. Even people who don’t like to sing will sing (I suspect in that day everyone will be able to carry a tune). We will be so overwhelmed and thrilled by the work of God we see in and around us, that we will have to sing. There will be no more sour-looking believers who look like the the Christian life is akin to having painful and inflamed hemorrhoids rather than the joyful exuberance of a restored relationshjp with God. On that day we will want to let the world around us know of the joy that is ours because of what Jesus has done for us.
We will tell the world. When you have good news, you want to share it. Can you imagine the joy of sitting with others in Heaven as we share our stories of how God awakened us to faith? We will want to tell our stories but also be thrilled to hear the stories of others.
From my observations, it seems to me that as people grow in the faith some become a little arrogant. They are like the Pharisees. They have a lot of knowledge and feel that somehow makes them superior to everyone else. They spend a great deal of time trying to show how much they know. It comes across as “holier than thou.” This alienates others.
Others seem to grow sluggish. They are happy, content, and everything seems just fine to them. They are so content they have fallen asleep. They haven’t seen God truly working in their lives in years and unless someone asks them directly about the gospel, they will avoid the subject to spare everyone any “awkwardness.” Satan has put them to sleep.
A third group continues to learn and grow. The more they learn, the more humble and excited they become. They speak of Christ with the excitement of a little child who has discovered how to make chocolate on their own. Growing Christians will share their faith. John Oswalt recounts this story,
The story is told that in the late 1940s when the Indian constitution was being debated, an article prohibiting proselytization was proposed. But one legislator, who was not a Christian, rose and said that would involve them in self-contradiction. When asked why, he pointed out that they had already adopted an article guaranteeing freedom of religion and said that Christians had to seek converts; it was a part of their religion! The article prohibiting proselytization failed.
If we understand the gospel story, if we have listened to the words of Jesus, we know we should be sharing our faith at every opportunity. As we learn about God’s grace and mercy, we increasingly see how UN-worthy we are to be saved and it humbles us. It overwhelms us to think that God would save someone like us. That in turn should awaken us to the fact that God can save anyone. Consequently, we don’t conclude anyone is too far from God’s grace. We want to tell people good news that despite their scars, failures, and sinful nature, God want to make them new! The more we grow, the harder it is NOT to speak up for Jesus. How do you keep such good news to yourself?
In fact, if you have not entered into this grace of God, confessing your broken nature, please talk to us today.
We will shout His praise. I am sure you may step back from this one for a bit. Many of us like our religion dignified. We were raised to be reverently silent in the things of God. Can you imagine a crucial game-winning play in a football game, or a go-ahead basket is made, or there is a 3-run homer with 2 outs in the ninth, and no one cheers? That would just be wrong, wouldn’t it? What kind of fan does not cheer when their teams does well? Most of us scream and shout at the games our children play in (sometimes to our embarrassment)! How many of us shout at the TV during a game?
If we will shout at these lesser things, why not shout the praises of the One who saved us by His mercy and grace? Why wouldn’t we dance and sing about the privilege we possess as followers of Christ? Why not celebrate eternal life, the fact the grave no longer has any sting over us? Why not shout and sing because there is now “No Condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus?” Why do we shout over things that are less magnificent? Why do we sing silly jingles and nonsense songs with enthusiasm, but sing of the Lord with an unmoved Spirit? Why are we moved to tears by YouTube videos but not the power of God for salvation to all who believe?”
Someday we will be so moved and we won’t be able to keep our enthusiasm in. Perhaps it would wise to start practicing now.
[1]Raymond C. Ortlund Jr. and R. Kent Hughes, Isaiah: God Saves Sinners, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2005), 121.