His Perfect Love

Guest (Male): Good news for sinners like you and me. Next on His Perfect Love.

Matt VanderVen: We're still God's kids. We blow it. God gets mad—you know, God has wrath. I don't want to use the word mad at us, but certainly disappointed, I think we could all agree. And he brings judgment to our hearts because of our sin and we correct our behavior, we turn away, we ask for repentance, but we're still his kids. He doesn't throw us out and get rid of us and destroy us because his goal isn't destruction. That's Satan's goal. Jesus's goal is reconciliation. It's relationship.

Guest (Male): Many times the military will conduct a secret rescue operation and often we never hear about it or hear of it after all is said and done. Today on His Perfect Love, hear about the greatest rescue operation of all time. We open our Bibles to Isaiah chapters 9 and 10, which contain some fascinating messianic prophecy.

As we look all around us and even in our own lives, we can see there is something wrong. What will fix this mess? Have you ever wondered that? Pastor Matt VanderVen shows us now, the answer is found in Christ, our great deliverer.

Matt VanderVen: "Therefore the Lord will have no joy in their young men, nor have mercy on their fatherless and widows; for everyone is a hypocrite and an evildoer, and every mouth speaks folly. For all this his anger is not turned away." Because they haven't been humbled or turned from their sin. So he's going to do what as any good father should: keep chastening them until they turn from their sin.

He's not going to quit on them. Just like a good father or mother doesn't quit on their children. No matter how much their children are walking in sin, no matter how they're in cahoots or whatever, you don't give up. You keep fighting. And then finally you get to the place and you do it like the Lord does: You want to do it your way? Have at it. And you have to give them over to be buffeted by Satan until they're humbled and then they return.

And that's exactly how it's always been done. "For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still. For wickedness burns as the fire; it shall devour the briers and the thorns." Did you notice that this source of fire, when it says "for the wickedness burns as the fire," the source of fire here that destroys everything around it is the very sin of the individual that, when left unchecked, begins to even consume the individual themselves?

Have you ever heard sin's good or pleasurable for a time or a moment? But then ultimately it destroys. It destroys. Verse 18: "For the wickedness burns as the fire and it shall devour the briers and thorns and kindle the thickets and of the forest. They shall mount up like a ring of smoke. Through the wrath or anger of the Lord of hosts, the land is burned up and the people shall be as a fuel for the fire. No man shall spare his brother."

"He shall snatch on the right hand and be hungry, he shall devour on the left hand and not be satisfied. Every man shall eat the flesh of his own arm." It's got to get pretty bad, yeah? To start gnawing on your own arm? I mean, that's what we're talking about here. It's got to get really bad, and that's exactly what's coming to you, that kind of judgment. And oh, by the way, it's going to be just like that in the great tribulation. It's going to be just like this.

If you're here and you don't know Jesus, pay attention. Pay attention. You know, if you're hearing this on the radio and you don't know Jesus, pay attention here. This isn't a game. Jesus is a promise keeper. Everything we're reading in the book of Isaiah, here we are thousands of years later, these things have come true. These things happened. There was a Babylonian invasion, there was an Assyrian invasion, and it happened just—and we even have the historical records. It happened just as he said it would. We have the historical records of it.

And now he's telling us there's another judgment that's coming because he's going to come back. He's going to come back for the great tribulation saints. He's going to bring us back with him. He's going to rapture the church because the church isn't given to wrath. But judgment's coming. Does anybody think here that God is—and forgive me for being so vulgar about this—does anybody think that the stench of the sin of this nation and the world right now is pleasing to God?

As it raises up and it's such a stench to him that people all around the world when they're selling and trafficking children for nickels and dimes in other countries, we think that pleases the Lord? And that stench, that he doesn't see everything? And the sin and the homosexuality and all the things that are going on and the perversion that we have made? I say we, I don't mean literally you or I may be, I don't know anybody's life here that way, but what I'm saying is: does anybody think that pleases God? No. His wrath is coming.

And I know again, we all love the nice messages, but sometimes I believe, and my pastor taught me this: this is real love. Real love is not lying to somebody and stringing them along and telling them everything is okay, and then at the very last minute pulling the carpet out under them and they had no moment or no opportunity to react. That's cruel.

If you were a child and somebody told you you were doing fine all through school, high school, and "you're okay, you're getting D's, F's, that's all—that's okay, we're a D-F family, it's okay," and then all of a sudden you get to the end and you're about to graduate and then somebody comes up to you and says, "Uh, you're not graduating," wouldn't you say, "Well, that's a little unfair. You told me I was doing fine and everything was okay"?

No, real love is to go to someone and say, "You know what? I know you can do better. And by the way, you're missing the mark." And that by the way, that's the definition of sin: missing the mark. That's real love. Don't you—aren't you glad that we still have Bibles in front of us, that we still can be a part of a church that actually teaches the word of God and doesn't shy away from the truth because we're not more worried about filling seats or paying off the building so we want to do everything we can to tickle people's ears?

No, we're not interested in that. We're interested in teaching truth so that hearts and minds, souls can be set free. That's the good news. If we forget why Jesus needed to save us, then we get coddled into a false deception, a self-deception, and we forget why we need a savior because we start convincing ourselves that we're good enough. And we forget Romans 3:23: "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." We forget Romans 6:23: "The wages of sin is death."

He was warning them because he loves Israel. He loves his people. There's nobody in here that can say that God doesn't love Israel. They're his chosen people. But whom he loves he's going to chasten. And he's going to do that and not relent until they do what: turn from their sin. He's going to do it again and it's coming. He's going to do it again and it's coming.

Verse 21: "Manasseh shall devour Ephraim," again the tribes in the north, "and Ephraim and Manasseh; together they shall be against Judah." Now we're going to learn that during the millennial reign, we're going actually read a passage that says no longer will the tribes fight, that all twelve tribes will now get along together in the millennial reign and there'll be no more fighting. He'll actually bring them together, which is wonderful.

"For all this his anger is not turned away." Why? Because they haven't repented. "But his hand is stretched out still." Chapter 10: "Woe to those who decree unrighteous decrees," right? So things that are not right, again coddling and all of that. "Who write misfortune, which they have prescribed to rob the needy of justice, to take advantage of the most vulnerable and to take what is right from the poor of my people, that widows may be their prey." That's how he's writing it, it's basically it's like a predator and prey. "And that they may rob the fatherless. What will you do in the day of punishment and in the desolation which will come from afar? To whom will you flee for help? And where will you leave your glory? Without me they shall bow down among the prisoners and they shall fall among the slain."

He says this is what's coming to you. You enslaved so many because of all of the things that you were doing, whether it was your pride, your finances, you were doing all of these things, and now what you measured out is going to be measured right back to you. That's scary. That scares me. I mean, it's a righteous judgment; it scares me though. It makes me not want to put my—all my security in anything temporal. It certainly makes me want to turn to an eternal God and trust him with my soul and my future because I know I'll get it wrong.

"For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still." Again, hand is stretched out still. They're still not—I mean, he's telling them, look, this is what's going—and they're still going, "We're good. We're good." Isn't it—I don't know, do you—isn't it difficult to reconcile that in your mind logically? That this kind of severity of punishment can be coming, you know it's on the scene, and yet people still harden their hearts and will turn from God when he's offering them a lifeboat, a raft in the name of his son, Jesus Christ.

"Woe to Assyria!" Now in this area he's going to go because what's going to happen is remember how he just talked about in verses eight and on how Assyria is going to be part of the instrument that God uses? Because God will use any nation. Don't forget God is sovereign. There is no such thing that we need to worry about China. We don't need to be worried about Iran. I know we don't want to have a nuclear weapons, all right, let's not be silly here. But we don't need to be worried about China, we don't need to be worried about Iran because lest we forget that God is sovereign and he's the one that puts these leaders or allows these leaders to be plopped up and put in place.

But that's why we're told: whom shall I fear? I'm a son of the king. You have nothing on me. You could do nothing to harm me unless the Lord allows it. We forget those things sometimes. We're invincible in the will of God and then we go home, and that's the honor and the glory is being with Jesus and worshiping in heaven. It's not building this fiefdom on this earth. It's at best a hundred and something years, right? And eternity is forever and ever.

So Assyria enjoyed a little too much being God's instrument and we've seen that on the scene, haven't we? In some of the current players that appear to be rising up and they seem to be enjoying some of the battling. I see Russia and I see Ukraine and I see some of the fight and we're supposed to have a peace thing that's just—and oops, and then we see more attacks happening.

Sometimes there's some pretty wicked leaders that seem to be enjoying the carnage more than the peace. And so God has a message for them as well, even if they're used as an instrument. One day Russia will be used as Magog and Gog, you know the prophecy of Ezekiel, or maybe some of you don't. We'll go into it when we get to the book. There's a prophecy coming that I truly believe we'll see in our lifetime and he talks about how Russia will be used as an instrument: a hook will actually be put in the mouth of Russia to draw them in and I believe it's speaking to the natural resources, the oil, the different gas, natural gas in that area. They'll be drawn down into that portion of the Middle East and then God will deal with them and judge them, but God is allowing it to happen as they're all fighting for resources there, natural resources.

So God is going to deal with Assyria because of their wicked heart, even as an instrument of judgment. "Woe to Assyria, the rod of my anger and the staff in those whose hand is my indignation. I will send him against an ungodly nation," speaking of Israel, right? "And against the people of my wrath I will give him charge to seize the spoil, to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets. Yet he does not mean so."

What's verse seven saying? Assyria doesn't even know. Assyria actually thinks it's Assyria. They think they're the ones that are doing this in their strength and might. They have no idea that God is the one that is utilizing them as an instrument. It says, "Yet he does not mean so, nor does his heart think so; but it is in his heart to destroy and cut off a few nations. For he says, 'Are not my princes altogether kings? Is not Calno like Carchemish?'"

So what he's talking about is all the way from Nineveh to Judah. So he's going to lay out these areas from Nineveh to Judah. That's what this list is. "Is not Hamath like Arpad? Is not Samaria like Damascus?" See how he keeps moving down again from Nineveh all the way over towards Judah. "As my hand has found the kingdoms of the idols, whose carved images excels those of Jerusalem and Samaria; as I have done to Samaria and her idols," the destruction, right? "Shall I not do also to Jerusalem and her idols?" Assyria thinks it's them, but it's not.

"Therefore it shall come to pass, when the Lord has performed all his work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, that he will say, 'I will punish the fruit of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his haughty looks.'" So again, the king thought it was his strength and power. "For he says, 'By the strength of my hand...'"

Now I want you to look at the "I's" here, because we're going to read more about the "I's" in Isaiah 14 if the Lord tarries. But we see four "I's" here. In Satan, obviously Lucifer, he'll speak five "I's" in Isaiah 14, but look at how this king of Assyria, once again full of pride and arrogance: "I, I, I, I." "By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom, for I am prudent; I have removed the boundaries of the people, and I have robbed their treasuries; so I have put down the inhabitants like a valiant man. My hand has found like a nest the riches of the people, and as one gathers eggs..."

So the nest, what do you—what's he saying? That's as simple as going out to the chicken coop, opening the coop and grabbing an egg out and taking and eating it for breakfast. That's how simple it is. That's what the king of Assyria's saying: "Yeah, it's just easy for me. I just go down there and I conquer the nation. Super simple for me. Like as if I was going to go out and just get an egg from a chicken." That's what he's trying to say here, not realizing that it's because God allowed him to be an instrument of the correction, chastisement, discipline; that that is why it was easy for him. Nothing that he possessed in himself, that king.

"I have gathered all the earth, and there was no one who moved his wing, nor opened his mouth with even a peep. Shall the ax boast itself against him who chops with it?" I love how God just lays it out. He's saying: should the instrument be the thing that begins to boast of itself? "Or shall the saw exalt itself against him who saws with it?" I mean wouldn't that freak you out if we're sawing and all of a sudden the saw says, "I'm good," right? Like we'd be like, "Oh man, right?" We'd be like, "Wait a minute. Deuteronomy 18, what's happening here?"

"As if a rod could wield itself against those who lift it up, or as if a staff could lift up as if it were not wood! Therefore the Lord, the Lord of hosts, will send leanness among his fat ones; and under his glory he will kindle a burning like the burning of a fire. So the light of Israel..." and again, this is the idea, the name of God, right? "...will be for a fire, and his holy one for a flame."

You see this is beautiful. He says, even though they're my chosen people and even though I'm disciplining them, they're still my kids. They're still my kids. And I love that about the Lord because that's his heart for every one of us even today. Not only the Jews and the Gentiles. We're still God's kids. We blow it. God has wrath—I don't want to use the word mad at us, but certainly disappointed, I think we could all agree. And he brings judgment to our hearts because of our sin and we correct our behavior, we turn away, we ask for repentance, but we're still his kids.

He doesn't throw us out and get rid of us and destroy us because his goal isn't destruction. That's Satan's goal. Jesus's goal is reconciliation. It's relationship. So as the holy one for a flame it will burn and devour his horns and his briers in one day, and it will consume the glory of his forest and his fruitful field, both soul and body; and they will be as when a sick man wastes away. And the rest of the trees of his forest will be so few in number that a child may write them.

So he's going to bring a judgment upon Assyria so great that even a child, a little child who can barely count, can be able to go one, two, three, done. That's what God just said. It's going to be that simple, that a little child can just go one, two, three and Assyria's wiped out. And that's how easy it is for God. That's how easy it is God.

We're going to close with the rest of this here. In verse 20: "And it shall come to pass in that day that the remnant of Israel, and such as have escaped the house of Jacob, will never again depend on him who defeated them." You know what it did? This discipline? It cured them from doing this. You understand what I mean by that? When we turn our head and we look elsewhere for the solution to our problems instead of looking directly to God. It's going to cure that problem. That's ultimately how he's going to do it.

It says, and again he's talking about the fact that when they return and he's talking about the future here, "will never again depend on him who defeated them, but will depend on the Lord, the holy one of Israel, in truth. The remnant will return, the remnant of Jacob, to the mighty God. For though your people, O Israel, be as the sand of the sea," that was part of the Abrahamic promise covenant, "and a remnant of them will return; the destruction decreed shall overflow with righteousness. For the Lord God of hosts will make a determined end in the midst of all the land."

"Therefore thus says the Lord God of hosts: 'O my people...'" Now he starts to tell them, and I always thought this was something special, I kind of made an asterisk in my Bible. God is literally telling them ahead of time what's going to happen. So often God will do that for each and every one of us that is part of the correction that he brings us. It should never be a situation where we don't know why. When we're really seeking after God or we're going to him, he'll make it very clear what the reason is. He'll tell us, he'll show us.

And he's telling them ahead of time: "Therefore thus says the Lord God of hosts: 'O my people, who dwell in Zion, do not be afraid of the Assyrian. He shall strike you with a rod and lift up his staff against you in the very manner of Egypt.'" What's he saying? They're going to invade you and enslave you, right?

But he's also saying, remember what I did for Egypt. Specifically what I did for the Jews in Egypt. I delivered you. Remember your forefathers. And that's something again, 1 Corinthians 10 tells us all to do. Remember that we have been grafted in, Jew and Gentile, male and female. He says we're all one now in Christ.

What he's saying, God is telling us, is he's grafted us in as one. We're his, we're his children, we're part of his family, we're part of the family of God, and he is our great deliverer. And he will continue to deliver. This isn't just like one time. When Israel was escaping Egypt, how many times did he actually deliver them? I mean we call it a delivery account. But think about how many times did not the Egyptians follow after the Israelites? And did God not even part the Red Sea? And then after that, close it down on top of them? But even before that, there were plagues, things that were brought upon them to get Egypt to humble themselves. God was continuing to deliver.

So he says just as in the manner of Egypt, yes there's going to be damage, he's telling them. He's not lying to them. He's saying: no, this is going to be heavy, man. But in the end, I will deliver a remnant. I will deliver you. You're not done yet, Israel.

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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We want to invite you to join us for a service at Calvary Chapel Harrisburg West Shore. Sunday morning services begin at 8:30 and 10:30. We have a midweek service too: Wednesdays at 7:00 p.m. We're located at 28 North Locust Point Road in Mechanicsburg, PA. Go to ccharrisburg.org for more information.

Are you looking for a Christian school that offers a quality education and a nurturing environment for your children? If so, you might be interested in Calvary Chapel Christian Academy, a ministry of Calvary Chapel Harrisburg West Shore. Calvary Chapel Christian Academy is a non-denominational Christian school that serves students from kindergarten to 12th grade. The Academy's mission is to provide a Christ-centered education that equips students to love God, love others, and serve the world.

The academy offers a rigorous academic curriculum, a variety of extracurricular activities, and a caring and supportive staff. The academy is located at 28 North Locust Point Road in Mechanicsburg, PA. For more information, please visit our website at ccharrisburg.org/academy. We'll put a bookmark here in Isaiah and join us next time for His Perfect Love with Pastor Matt VanderVen. God bless.