His Perfect Love

Guest (Male): Today on His Perfect Love, a call to turn back to the Lord.

Matt VanderVen: Through every book of the Bible that we're reading, God wants His people to turn back to Him. Maybe there's somebody here tonight, you're not walking with the Lord like you should. Turn back to your Father, because your Father's sitting there with open arms. And He's saying, "Come home, son. Come home, daughter. I miss you. I love you."

Guest (Male): Thanks for tuning our way and welcome to His Perfect Love. We’ll hand things over to Pastor Matt VanderVen in a minute. We’re just getting our feet wet in the book of Isaiah. As we come back to chapter 1 today, we’re reminded that this book really focuses on the holiness of God, salvation, and contains a warning of judgment and a future hope. Think we need to hear that today? You bet. Here’s Pastor Matt starting us off today at verse 2.

Matt VanderVen: So now turn with me again to chapter 1 verse 2. "Hear, O heavens," this is Isaiah speaking, "give ear, O earth." Why? Because there was no one on the earth at the time that was willing to listen to Isaiah's call, so what does he do? He calls on the universe to testify and listen to him, because they would not hear the word of the Lord. "For the Lord God has spoken." Okay, now, we're going to read this like a courtroom. I'll go through this and try to explain it that way. He's going to bring the first set of charges. Isaiah from God—this is from God using Isaiah as a vessel—he's going to bring the first set of charges right here in verse 2.

Ready? He goes on and says, "I have nourished and brought you up, brought up children, and they have rebelled against Me." So the first charge in how God reflects to the people of Israel is he puts himself in the place of a father or a daddy. He said there's nothing worse than when you invest in your children, you try to raise them, and then they become quasi-adults and what do they do? They begin to rebel against you. They begin to hurt. Not a greater sin to a parent, right?

You've invested, you've loved on them, you've raised them up. You were there when they were sick. You gave them—they had the fevers, you stayed up all night, you watched them breathe to make sure they were still breathing. You went over and put your hand on their chest. "Okay, we're okay, we can go back to bed. It's 2 a.m." It didn't matter. Come on, dads, moms, you were there. You've been through all of that. And then they don't remember any of that, but you remember all of it, don't you? Every single fever, every time you ran to the ER, everything that's ever happened.

Their trade school graduation, their college graduation, all of these moments that are significant in their life. Their kindergarten graduation when they got up there and they were so scared and they're like, "I don't want to go up there." You've got to get up there. "I'm not going up there." And then they finally get up there and they've got half the teeth—remember, because they've got the baby teeth and half of them are missing—and they're up there and you're just like, "Smile, smile." And they're like [unintelligible]. And then that's right when the school takes the picture as they're graduating and you're like, "Remember that?"

God is talking about a people that He has just invested in since they were very little babies. He brought them, He cared for them, and all of a sudden, He finds that now they're growing up and they think they don't need Dad anymore. So they start rebelling against Dad, against God. And so that's what he's calling out: "And they have rebelled against me." And then he describes the stupidity, much like we would say it's the same thing for our youth. Ignorance not to listen to the parents.

He goes on to say, "The ox knows its owner and the donkey its master's crib, but Israel does not know, my people do not consider." You ever heard the idea "dumb as a donkey"? That's what he's talking about here. He is describing what ultimately is going to be their mockery, and that is their shame. They will be brought to shame and there will be nothing that will stop that. And God is sitting back as a father and saying, "If that's what it takes to correct you, to get your attention, then I will allow that shame to happen."

So he's bringing this out to his people and he says, "My people don't even consider it." And I just love that God identifies Himself as a Father here. And He's going to confront their rebellion. Why does He want to confront their rebellion? Because He wants them to turn back to God. Are we starting to get a theme here? Through every book of the Bible that we're reading, God wants His people to turn back to Him. Maybe there's somebody here tonight, you're not walking with the Lord like you should. Turn back to your Father, because your Father's sitting there with open arms. And He's saying, "Come home, son. Come home, daughter. I miss you. I love you."

Look at verse 4. Here in verse 4 is the second charge. This is the second charge, if you're paying attention, He's going to give us. Now he's going to lay out seven things. Please remember in the Hebrew, seven means fullness or completeness. What is he describing? Their complete wickedness. That's why he uses the number seven here. So let's look. "Alas, a sinful nation," the first one. "A people laden with iniquity," sin, the second one. "A brood of evildoers," they're consumed with evil actions, the third one.

Children who are corrupters, not only are they doing evil themselves, but they are corrupting others to do evil, the fourth one. They have forsaken the Lord, they've turned from God, the fifth one. Not only have they turned from God, but they have mocked God and therefore provoked Him to anger, because that's the only time God responds in anger like that—well, not the only time, but most of the time unless there's judgment. The sixth one: the Holy One of Israel. They're not understanding that He is the Holy One of Israel. They're basically committing idolatry. They're making God common or familiar. Familiarity breeds contempt.

And they have turned away and look at the word he uses here in the Hebrew: backward. This is very interesting. He says they don't just do one of these deals where I'm turning away and I'm walking away from you. What he says is they walk backward, which means they literally did this: they about-faced, they put their back—now we know that, don't we? When we put our back to somebody, we say, "I'm so sorry, please forgive me, I'm not trying to be disrespectful." If you ever put your back to somebody, you know that. It's common manners. You don't turn your back to somebody; it's very disrespectful, especially in other cultures.

Well, what they've purposed to do is turn their back right to God and actually just stomping like this, just really very arrogant about it. And they're broadening their shoulders so it makes their back look bigger. That's the idea in the Hebrew of what it's saying here. You know like you'd say you puff out your chest? They're puffing out their back to make them look more broad from back, which is more of an insult to God. That's the idea here. That's what it's trying to tell us here. They have turned away backward.

Now, the third charge. You know what it is? The most common thing parents—what are some of the things we were guilty of ourselves, and some of the things we find our kids guilty of? You can go to them, you can take a horse, you can bring the horse to water, but he may not drink. You can even salt the oats and he may not drink. You with me? You can even salt the oats and he still won't drink. What is he saying here? What are we going to understand? Unteachable. Probably the most difficult thing as a parent to witness is to have a child that will turn a deaf ear and no longer be reachable or teachable.

That's scary, because God has to go to great lengths to get their attention. You have to go to great lengths to get their attention when things like that happen. Can you imagine in your home, if you said, "Come on over here," and you spoke to your child that way lovingly, and they just tuned you out? Oh, that's weird. "Can you please come over here?" You get their attention. "I'm talking to you. Can you please come?" And they just look the other way. I pretty much can almost guarantee everybody in here would say, "This dog don't hunt."

And it wouldn't take very long before you would remind them of the response that would be appropriate: "Please come here. You will come here." And you might do that in maybe different ways, and in everybody's home you'll do that in a different way, but I assure you you would want to make sure that you had their attention. Nobody would disagree with that here. This is what God is ultimately going to do here in love. "Why should you be stricken again?" That's where he starts.

He says, "I have basically beaten you, bruised you"—not literally like slapped you—but, "I have literally corrected you upon correction. Why? Why do you want this to keep happening? I don't enjoy or find pleasure in punishing you or hurting you that way. Why won't you turn and do the right thing?" Parents, remember when you had to spank your child for the first time? Heartbreaking, right? We didn't let them see that, but we were like, "Nope, this is the consequence. You did something wrong. We have a discussion about it. All right, we have to—you have to bend over, we're going to spank you now. Okay."

And you spank them the first time and you're like—you don't know how hard to do it. You don't really want to hurt them, you just want to kind of surprise them or get their attention. Well, you can have a child that—I was that kid, you know. You crack them—my poor mother—and I look back and I'm like, "Is that all you got?" You don't say that to an Italian woman because she'll find something else. And she'll crack you again, and rightfully so. And that second time, you wake up, don't you? You're seeing stars. At that moment, you don't want another spanking, do you?

I don't know of anybody in here who got spanked and said, "Give me another," unless you're trying to be super rebellious at that moment. No. That's what God is saying to Israel, because that's what's right here. Look at verse 5. These aren't my words. He says, "Why should you be stricken again? Spanked over and over again. You will revolt more and more. The whole head is sick." He says you're rotten. You are rotten. There's nothing healthy in there. He says it's a head, the mind, the heart, it's all sick.

"And the whole heart faints. From the sole of the foot even to the head," he says, "look, there's not a single place from the sole of the foot all the way to the head. It's all-encompassing. There's no soundness in it, but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores." You see what he's saying here? That's the state they're in. "They have not been closed up or bound up, or even soothed with ointment." He says He can't even go—God—between giving enough time to heal because you're running right back after wickedness again. And it's time for another spanking again. And by the time you do that, the sore hadn't even healed yet.

So how do you fix that? It's the idea with a child: you sow and then you reap. People today would rather see the country continue to go down rather than, as a country or a people, simply repent. Simply repent. How much more is needed here? He's basically saying, "What's it going to take for this nation, Israel?" And I can't help but thinking about that, look at the times we're living in, our elections. What are elections? How many of you remember growing up where we actually talked about elections that had substance?

Like, "What is your economic policy? What is going to be your policy on X, Y, and Z?" I can remember the debates like that very clearly. My dad or my mom would try to explain it to me when I was little, as I was growing up. This is what they're talking about: foreign policy, economic policy, what values. And I didn't, you know, as a little kid, you don't understand it all. They explain it to you. The TV's on, you're listening, you're kind of, "Whoa, this is really happening. We're going to find who the next president is."

I want to ask you: when was the last election—it's gonna blow you away because the Lord revealed this to me—when is the last election that you can think about where it was truly a debate based on policy and what they were going to do? Our politicians don't even do that anymore. It's a "get up there and I'm going to save the country." How? What are you going to do? What is your policy? And neither one of them bring an argument to say. You know what it has really come down to? And I made a note in my Bible because I'm like, "Okay Lord, this is—we're right back here again. We're right back into that camp of sin again as a nation, as Israel was."

You know what they end up talking about? Morals. It all becomes about the morals. And what do I mean about that? It's who values or who is the one that will vote to approve abortion on the books? Who is the one that will turn around and squash abortion on the books? Who is the one that will propagate the right of sexual identity contrary to your biological birth? Who is the one that will turn around and say, "No, I will go and adhere to a biological birth: a male and female"?

I mean, think about it. Is that not in the last election almost how you voted with the Holy Spirit? Who was the one that closely aligned more to your moral, biblical compass? But it didn't even come into like it used to. A lot of times that was still the case. But before, you had to consider also the policies that they were bringing forward. Now we've fallen so far that everything has become about the moral identity of where that person's going to go. We are so far gone as a society, as a country, we're not even talking about policies anymore.

We're simply talking about sin and who is sinning and who is not sinning. And who we would want to vote for based on their version of a morality, which could be complete sin according to Scripture, or somebody else who's going to claim to be a political savior and going to somehow turn the whole thing around when my Bible tells me it's not going to happen. Apart from a revival and a great awakening, which I do believe could happen—I absolutely, don't misunderstand, I believe that very much could happen at any moment.

Apart from that, there is no country that is going to ultimately be turned around because it's all going to be part of Mystery Babylon. It's going to become a one-world government. I have the Book, you have the Book, it's the Book of Revelation. We know the things that need be. And just as we got there this Sunday, what did Jesus say to them? He said at this point in the sixth trumpet, the second woe, it has gone too far and there is no turning back. He told them that in the Great Tribulation. We still have time now, but we shouldn't take that for granted.

Okay, so look, that's important. "Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire; strangers devour your land in your presence, and it is desolate as overthrown by strangers. So the daughter of Zion is left as a booth in a vineyard." Now, it may sound confusing what he's trying to say. "You're left defenseless." He's saying, "I'm giving you over and I'm letting you be defenseless." What does he mean? You know what a booth is? A booth is a tent, like we would say a modern tent. It actually was a little less than what we would consider a modern tent.

But if you have a high wind, what is a modern tent going to do? It's just going to blow over. It's not going to in any way give you any kind of safety, protection, or anything like that. So he's saying, "Look, the daughters of Zion, they're left in booths. There is nothing." Normally you would put a booth, erect a booth for shade. But these daughters of Zion—he says you've left these ladies defenseless. The whole idea here is the theme is as we're continuing to read: it's about the holiness of God.

And because they choose not to put God in the place of holiness and reverence, God is saying, "Then who's going to protect you? You're going to be left to yourself, and you're going to be like a tent blowing in the wind, defenseless." What's the second thing that is going to be the theme in this book as we keep reading and we'll see? It's going to be salvation. Twenty-six times he's going to talk about salvation. Did you realize that out of—you could put all the other prophets together and only seven times it will be talked about: salvation.

But twenty-six times in this book, because they're in such severe need of judgment. And then the other thing we're going to see in this book—and I'm sorry, I just remembered, that's why I paused here—is God's the Holy One of Israel. It's used thirty times, more than any other. The whole point of what Isaiah is being used to bring here is God's warning of judgment and also, at the same time, a future hope. And that's what he's trying to do. God is holy, He dwells in holiness. Is holiness something you seek after? Is it something I seek after, like a fine jewel?

At this time, they're not seeking after that, are they? They're rebellious children. They're not seeking after a holy God; they're not seeking after any of those things. I just want us to understand. Look at what he says: "As a hut in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city," easily attacked, defenseless before someone. Verse 9: "Unless the Lord of hosts had left us to a very small remnant"—so once again, it says it's God's doing—"unless the Lord of hosts," that's the God of the armies, that's a title used very often to speak of the armies.

And when he says God of the hosts, he's talking about the angelic armies. So "the God of the angel armies" is another translation for you. "He had left us to a very small remnant," and he says if God didn't stop that, there'd be nothing else: "We would have become like Sodom and we would have been made like Gomorrah." In other words, what happened in Sodom and Gomorrah? God wiped out the entire Sodom and Gomorrah because of the depravity of their sin. Do you remember their sin? The sin of homosexuality and idolatry and everything else. Wiped them all out, certainly not without an opportunity to repent, but they would not repent.

Verse 10: "Hear the word of the Lord." So he appeals to them again, right? "You rulers of Sodom." So he's first going to talk to those that are in leadership, those that maybe have a government position, those that have a position of responsibility, whether you lead a ministry in a church, whether you lead—he says, "Listen, you rulers of Sodom, give ear to the law of our God." Now this is a really, really important area because the first thing he tells them in verse 10, it's all in the context of the fact that they're going to temple or they're going to church, if I was to use that term today.

But all they're doing is sitting in the pews and sitting in the seats, but their heart's far from God. It's becoming a religion or becoming a religious activity to them. And he says, "Listen, you need to hear the word of the Lord. You need to hear the word of God." He says, "You rulers of Sodom, give ear to the law of our God." In other words, what is he saying? Hear and obey. "You people of Gomorrah, to what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to me?" So verse 11, please understand: he's talking to what we would call believers today, or the Jews at that time.

This isn't just the pagan surrounding nations. He's particularly talking to Judah as I mentioned. And he's not just talking to Judah, but it would be like me saying to you today: he's talking to the church. He's talking to the church right now. Obviously he's talking to Israel in context, but the teaching is the same for us. The applicability is the same. He says, "To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices?" All these things you're doing that are sacrificial. The multitude—boy, it looks really good, doesn't it?

Says the Lord: "I have enough of the burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed cattle. I do not delight in the blood of bulls or in lambs and goats." He says—what's he say? He says the church is full, but there's not genuine believers. It's become a club, the heart's not there, they're not engaged, it's religion. It's Hebrews 10:4, right? It's not a relationship; it means nothing to God. Just coming to church means nothing to God if the heart is not right. If you don't come to hear the word of God, if you come to be entertained, if you come to fellowship and just be part of a club, you're coming for all the wrong reasons and it means nothing as a sacrifice to God.

And that's what he's saying here. These are not my words. He says, "Look, and the fat of fed cattle, I do not delight in the blood of bulls and the lambs and goats." Hold your finger, turn to Hebrews chapter 10, please. Just look at Hebrews 10 quickly. I'll read it just for our time here. Hebrews 10:4, he's very clear with us. He tells us this is what he says to the church: "For the law having"—I'll start in verse 1—"having a shadow of the good things to come and not the very image of things can never with the same sacrifices which offer continually year by year make those who approach perfect."

The law couldn't do it. For then you would not have ceased to be offered, for the worshippers once purified would have no more consciousness of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. "For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins." At the best it was a covering, it wasn't a removal of sin. He says it hasn't changed. So I just want you to see God's heart has not changed on the matter today.

Thousands of years later we gather, if we don't gather with the right heart of worship, if we don't come here to worship the Lord, if we don't come here to hear His word—look, and that may be an offense to somebody, but I'm not trying to. I'm simply telling you this is God's heart. Please don't be confused. This is real love. If you're coming here for any other reason, you're missing Jesus. And He's not counting that as some kind of Sunday ticket or Wednesday ticket that you're punching that somehow makes you closer to God. It's not an activity that somehow—when you come to church you are being equipped. He is loving you and pouring into you, giving you His word, the primary way He speaks to you, and then you're taking that and bringing that to others as faithful sheep to reproduce. You are a royal priesthood, He tells you. You're a precious people. And this is very, very important here. He's saying exactly what we see today.

Guest (Male): Thanks for joining us today for His Perfect Love. You can hear this study from Pastor Matt VanderVen again when you visit HisPerfectLove.org. Catch up on what you may have missed in Isaiah at HisPerfectLove.org. Look for us on OnePlace.com and most podcast platforms. The Calvary Chapel Harrisburg mobile app is another great way to listen to Pastor Matt’s messages shortly after they’re delivered. We can help you get started when you visit HisPerfectLove.org.

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