His Perfect Love

Host (Male): Pastor Matt with a good way to start the day.

Matt VanderVen: Jesus, what His life, what He lived like when He was on this earth, He began the morning, His very first thing, hearing from God the Father. That's the example for you and I.

Jesus Christ, the God Almighty came in the flesh, lived a perfect holy life. Every morning He would hear God the Father. He would open His eyes, He would tune His ears, and He would listen. He was quiet. He had time with God the Father, time with the Lord. Time with God prepares and sanctifies all of your actions. Before Jesus would even move, He listened to God the Father.

Host (Male): What a privilege it is for us as Christians to have God as our Father and be able to communicate with Him any time we want. But we can so easily lose sight of this great privilege. That's evidenced by how little we talk with our Father in heaven.

Well, today on His Perfect Love, I think you'll walk away with a greater appreciation of this relationship with God and why we should not only talk to Him, but listen and obey as well. Here is Pastor Matt VanderVen with "The Way to Victorious Living" from Isaiah chapter 50.

Matt VanderVen: As we look at chapter 50 here, it's beautiful. It's going to start off with a little bit of language that we would think of when we think of divorce or certificate of divorce. That's not maybe the way we would use terminology today. What Isaiah was given by the Holy Spirit here is something that's incredibly powerful to every human being, and that is God is going to communicate to you and I tonight, as He has for thousands of years, that God never, ever leaves humanity.

He never turns His back on humanity. He never came to Israel and said to them, "I'm separating from you." What God reveals to us in this chapter—and if we look at our lives and we're being honest, we realize that so often it's we who run from God and run to something else. It's not God running from us or turning His back on us. And that's a very powerful ideology to understand in this chapter because that just takes off so much of modern humanism and excuses and all the philosophies and ideologies of man of, "Well, I've blown it," or, "God doesn't love me," or, "I'm not good enough for God."

Those could be sincerely thought by an individual that might be in a broken place. And what God is communicating to Israel, who is practicing idolatry, who is about to go into judgment, worshipping false gods—the worst thing you could do—is He's going to look and say, "I'm not abandoning you. I'm not leaving you. I'm not going anywhere. I want you to come home. I want you to come back to Me. I love you. My love doesn't stop because of your disobedience."

I don't withhold My love as though it's something I dangle in front of your eyes. How many people know a little bit about that? Maybe you had a loved one or somebody that withheld love from you and used it almost as a bartering chip. God never does that. That love that He gives is unconditional and it's always available if we'll turn to Him and call upon His name.

Again, I think this is incredibly powerful to understand that that is who God really is, because it takes all of Satan's lies, all the promises of the world and the flesh, and it casts it all aside and reminds us that at any moment, we can always be in right relationship with God because we have a God that wants to be in right relationship with us. It's powerful.

Chapter 50, verse one: "Thus says the Lord: 'Where is the certificate of your mother’s divorce, whom I have put away? Or which of My creditors is it to whom I have sold you? For your iniquities you have sold yourselves, and for your transgressions your mother has been put away.'" So He looks at Israel and He says, "Israel, I have a very important question for you. Where is the certificate of divorce that you are acting as though we are separated, that we are no longer married, that we are no longer wed to each other?"

You understand the spiritual application of what He's saying here. Where is it? Show Me the proof of where I have issued your mother—God being the Father, the bride is the mother, the body of Christ we would say is the bride, and God calls Israel the bride in that time—where is the certificate of divorce that you are literally turning your back on Me? I have not issued you a certificate of divorce. I've not turned My back on you. Where did I ever put your mother away? Where did I ever put you away? I didn't do that.

Then He goes into something which, again, we don't find much today. Certainly in other nations it's terrible, it's evil, it's wicked: the idea of slavery or human trafficking. He starts to bring this up, and this is foreign to us in our time. I was just talking with a sister about this last week. When somebody should run up debt today, there's mechanisms like bankruptcy or different things like that. We should be good stewards with what we're entrusted with; we shouldn't try to live beyond our means.

But sometimes there's a loss of a job or health-related things that happen. Somebody might find themselves out of work and unable to pay a bill. At this time, when that happened in the agrarian society that you're living in, the farmer or the master that owned that land would come up and knock. You knew the knock was coming because you owned a portion and parcel of that land. He would come up and say, "I lent you money, or I've given you grain, or I've given you seed to have a harvest, and that money's due."

If you said, "But I'm out of work, I hurt myself, or my crop didn't come in the way I thought it was going to. Everybody was affected; we didn't get the rain we were supposed to get." There was no social umbrella. There was no social net at the time. So what in effect would happen is that person would come and with that knock, he would either come the first time and say, "Okay, you have seven days." Customary of seven. "You have seven days to come up with the money for the grain or for what you have indebted yourself." That's exactly where the term guarantor comes from.

If in seven days he would return, if needed he would come with a magistrate or with an officer, and they would serve a paper that basically says at this point you are now indebted to such and such. If you were a Jewish individual, it was up to seven years. It could be no more than seven years. God limited it. You know why? First of all, God is not honoring slavery in any capacity. He knew the wickedness of man's heart that if He didn't come in and say we're limiting this to seven years, man would enslave someone for 30 or 50 years because he would profit off it.

God says no, that's not what I have for the children of Israel. You're not to be that way. You're not to treat each other that way. Even for foreigners that come in, He had principles around that as well. So they would come and they would say, "The payment's due." What would happen is often the individual would say, "Okay." He would look at his wife or children and say, "I'm going to go. I have to work now, but by doing this, I'm going to be working off this debt for the next seven years. By working off this debt, you're going to get to keep the farm. You'll be able to keep the land. You won't lose the home."

The man willingly indebted himself, in other words, put himself into slavery to pay off a debt. We don't see that in our country. It's not that it doesn't happen around the world—it still does today—but we don't see that in our country. It's unfamiliar to us. But what happens if that man also acquired another parcel of land and he said, "I want to farm that land as well because I want to get a little bit ahead and make more of a yield so I could sell some of this and set up our family so we won't be living paycheck to paycheck"?

Sometimes he would turn around and he would say, "Okay, well then you're taking a double guarantee." When you do a double guarantee, it means I need to have two people or more to guarantee this because one person can't work through seven years of labor to pay off what the debt would be. So I need to take another human and put that person's name on the line there. Remember, no social nets. If that master wanted to come, he would come to the house and say, "Both of you, husband and wife."

At that time, the wife many times didn't even know that the husband had gone out and used his wife as a guarantor on that. All of a sudden she would look at her children, and somebody else, a relative or even sometimes a neighbor, would come and help raise the family. That's why when you think about the idea of Jesus, when He spoke, He said two things He really is very concerned about: orphans and widows.

Why did He call out orphans and widows specifically? Because they are the most vulnerable in that society. Again, there was no net. There was no security. There was nothing to help. It meant you lost everything, including your family and your life, and they were ruthless about it. It wasn't about knowing each other or knowing each other's parents. That didn't matter. So when He's saying this, He's speaking to the Jewish mind here. They would have understood exactly.

He says, "Or which of My creditors is it to whom I have sold you?" He's going, "Did I sell you into debt even though there was a price to be paid? Did I collect on you that way? Did I do that to you? Did I enslave you?" What He's communicating is no. You know what puts every one of us, including Israel, in debt? Our sin. Our sin. He goes on and says, "For your iniquities you have sold yourselves, and for your transgressions your mother has been put away."

In the Hebrew, transgression means premeditated willingness to sin. This is not an iniquity. Iniquity can be an accidental sin or something you didn't know about. Oops, I had the pencil in my ear and I left the office with it. I stole from my employer a pencil. That would be an iniquity. Is it still stealing? Yes, it is. There is no excuse, it is still stealing. But I didn't mean to take it home; it was there while I was taking notes and it was accidental. It's still sin, it's iniquity, but it's not premeditated.

There's another sin that He uses which is just called "sin" in Hebrew. That's the idea of something that happens, you acknowledge it, but it's after the fact. But the word He uses here is transgression. This word tells us that this is someone who contemplated right and wrong and still chose to do the immoral or sinful act ahead of time. He says, "And for your transgressions your mother has been put away."

Because Israel, you have premeditated to sell yourself to Egypt initially. You were willing to do that under the Assyrian. When they needed help, they were willing to go to the Egyptian. They wouldn't come directly to God and ask for help. They would instead go to the Egyptian Pharaoh to take matters in their own hands. Instead of turning around and coming to the one true God, you have gone to these idols that are made with human hands and you've begun worshipping them.

Because you've done that and not trusted in the one true God, your premeditated sin has found you out and you're found wanting. Essentially, it's put you away. It's actually what's going to enslave you. You're calling on an inanimate object that you made with your hands and you're placing all your faith and trust in your materialism, in your ability to carve, in your problem solving. He's saying you can't save yourself.

Because you've trusted in self instead of God, because you've trusted in these idols instead of God, that is why you're being brought into captivity. You've committed the sin of idolatry and you'll be put away. But please do not blame Me, God would say, because I did not sell you into slavery; you sold yourself.

Verse two: "Why, when I came, there was no man? Why, when I called, was there none to answer? Is My hand shortened at all that I cannot redeem? Or have I no power to deliver?" What is He saying? God is saying, "I'm not weakened by your lack of faith. I'm not weakened by your idol making or your sin." Our choices hurt ourselves. God is able and always willing to deliver us from all unrighteousness and sin, but He says you don't even turn to Me. "Did I do something to make you think My hand was shortened, that I cannot redeem you, that I cannot pay the purchase price for what you've done wrong? Or do you think I don't have the power to deliver?"

He's rebuking. "Indeed with My rebuke I dry up the sea, I make the rivers a wilderness; their fish stink because there is no water and die of thirst. I clothe the heavens with blackness, and I make sackcloth their covering." Essentially what He's saying here is you have made your own bed, and you will now lie in it. That's a pretty heavy thing when God gets to the point—as long-suffering as He is, as patient and loving as He is—we all have to acknowledge there comes a point where God no longer will turn and say, "Keep going." He will come to the point and say, "No more."

Judgment happens. Really, that's real love. Because if He just left us, we would keep downward spiraling to the point of where we just would destroy our own souls. But God doesn't want that and He will even intercede that way and stop it. But the way He stops it is actually delivering us over to our own will because we're sometimes our own worst enemy.

Verse four: "The Lord God has given Me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak..." This is interesting. In verse four He transitions to where He's starting to talk about Messiah. They have gotten to a place where they have been judged and found wanting. They're in their own sin and they can do nothing about it. They can't get themselves out of it. They cannot redeem themselves with a purchase price. They don't have the ability to pay that debt. No human does. No human being can pay the sin debt that's due. Only God could pay that through Jesus Christ. His blood cleansed us and washed us.

He comes back and He begins to introduce the One who can, and that's Jesus Christ. Please remember, this was written 740 years before Jesus Christ even came into creation. We look back upon this and go, "Of course Messiah Jesus is coming." They didn't understand all of that. This is the prophet Isaiah speaking to the people who are in sin, saying, "You're going into captivity, but even still, I'm going to send My Son. I'm going to send Messiah Jesus to save."

"The Lord God has given Me," speaking of God the Father to Jesus, "the tongue of the learned." This speaks of the devotional life that Jesus had. We read about it all throughout the Gospels. Jesus had sanctified speech. I never read in one area of the Bible where Jesus cussed or said something that was inappropriate. He had pure, holy, sanctified speech. Every word that came out of His mouth was sanctified.

"That I should know how to speak a word in season to him who is weary." To the one that is downtrodden, the one that is broken, the one that needs help. God says, "I know how to speak to you." "He awakens Me," God the Father to Jesus, "morning by morning. He awakens My ear to hear as the learned. The Lord God has opened My ear; and I was not rebellious."

I mean, what detail! This is what it was like when He was on earth because He took on human flesh. He says, "He awakens Me morning by morning." We're getting the behind-the-scenes here of what would be like for Jesus when He's physically on this earth, that He will be awoken by the Father directly. God the Father awakens Jesus. He didn't need an alarm clock. God the Father said, "It's time," and Jesus' eyes would open. Isn't that amazing?

Right, sanctified. So what He teaches us here is that Jesus began the morning, His very first thing, hearing from God the Father. That's the example for you and I. Jesus Christ, the God Almighty came in the flesh, lived a perfect holy life. Every morning He would hear God the Father. He would open His eyes, He would tune His ears, and He would listen. He was quiet. He had time with God the Father.

Time with God prepares and sanctifies all of your actions. Before Jesus would even move, He listened to God the Father. You think that's a good idea for us? Knowing what's coming, He fully surrendered His life to God the Father. This is the only way to be victorious in the Christian life. If you've been wondering how to become victorious, pay attention right here because Jesus Christ is telling you what He did.

It began with the focus on the Father exclusively. He didn't begin speaking up and going, "God, I need to tell you Father"—no, He began with listening. "Father, I know You wake me up. My life morning to morning revolves around You. I know it's a new morning because You've given me another day of life." That's how I live life, moment by moment, because it's a gift from You. "So if I'm still here, God the Father, You have a reason." Jesus thought that way. That's what He's teaching us.

Host (Male): This is His Perfect Love. Pastor Matt VanderVen is leading a study of Isaiah right now, and if you enjoyed today's message, we'd like to know. Email us at our website, HisPerfectLove.org. Be sure to include your prayer requests. While you're there, you'll notice a place to listen to Pastor Matt's sermons, including all of Isaiah. That's HisPerfectLove.org.

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There's much more to come in Isaiah. This has been His Perfect Love with Pastor Matt VanderVen.