“You Are Refined for God’s Glory”
[Isaiah
48:1-22]
January
31, 2021 YouTube
This morning, we look at chapter 48
of Isaiah and look at what is happening to Israel during the captivity. God explains what He is doing and why and
what will happen about one hundred and seventy years in the future from the
original hearers of this message.
We see that God refines us for His
Glory.
To think about this, let’s understand
that one way that metal is refined – purified – is through melting it with
extreme heat. When metal is melted –
when it has gone through the furnace – and all the garbage is burnt off, other
substances with different melting points can be removed leaving a pure metal –
a refined metal.
God begins by describing Israel:
“Hear this, O house of Jacob, who are
called by the name of Israel, and who came from the waters of Judah, who swear
by the name of the LORD and confess the God of Israel, but not in truth or
right. For they call themselves after the holy city, and stay themselves on the
God of Israel; the LORD of hosts is his name.”
God calls on Israel and Judah to
listen to Him – to pay attention. God
understands that they call themselves Israel.
God understands that they are part of the landed people of Israel – she
is biologically Israel. And they say the
right things – swearing in the Name of the Lord and confessing the God of
Israel. They call themselves holy.
But it’s like the person with perfect
attendance in worship, who knows all the hymns, and can find all the books of
the Bible, and is gracious and helpful and volunteers, and thanks the pastor,
but doesn’t believe that Jesus is God the Savior. They are doing what the Law requires and
saying all the right things, but there is no heart-belief.
So, God tells them to listen up – to
hear what God is saying to them.
“The former things I declared of old;
they went out from my mouth, and I announced them; then suddenly I did them,
and they came to pass. Because I know that you are obstinate, and your neck is
an iron sinew and your forehead brass, I declared them to you from of old, before
they came to pass I announced them to you, lest you should say, ‘My idol did them,
my carved image and my metal image commanded them.’”
God says, “I am going to remind you –
so, listen up. I know you are obstinate –
stubborn – and your head is like a block of cement, so I want you to listen
carefully: from the beginning of time, I
spoke to you through the prophets and told you what would come to pass – and it
did come to pass. I told you what would
happen so you would have no excuse to say, ‘Oh, my idol told me about this.’
No, I told you, because I am God. I told
you what was going to happen, and it came to pass.”
“You have heard; now see all this; and
will you not declare it? From this time forth I announce to you new things, hidden
things that you have not known. They are created now, not long ago; before
today you have never heard of them, lest you should say, ‘Behold, I knew them.’
You have never heard, you have never known, from of old your ear has not been
opened. For I knew that you would surely deal treacherously, and that from
before birth you were called a rebel.”
“Now I am going to tell you new
things – things that haven’t happened – things that will happen, because I am
God and I say they will happen. Since
you hear Me tell you these things now, you will not later say, ‘Oh, well, I
always knew that would happen.’ I have always known that you would be deaf to
My Word and sin against Me in the most treacherous ways – denying Who I am and
what I have done.”
Therefore:
“For my name’s sake I defer my anger;
for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you, that I may not cut you off. Behold,
I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tried you in the furnace of
affliction. For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name
be profaned? My glory I will not give to another.”
Despite all their sin against God,
God says that for His Name’s sake, He will not bring His anger down on them. For the sake of His praise, He will not cut
them off.
What is God saying?
God is telling them that though they
deserve all the worst that God can bring down on them for their sin, God will
not do that. He will not bring His Wrath
down on them. He will not cut them off
from the Covenant. So, others will look
at God and see what He does for His people – how He forgives them and brings
them back and keeps all of His promises – and they will praise God and even
come to heart-belief in Him as their God and Savior.
And we might say, “Well, that’s
pretty selfish of God, isn’t it? To
forgive His people just for His own sake?”
The truth is that God is never
required to forgive anyone ever. And it
is inexcusable that any of God’s people do not acknowledge the extraordinary
kindness of God.
In God’s mercy, He refines His people
– He puts us through the fiery furnace in many ways to remove sin from us and
to make us into the Image of His Son.
God sets us in the flames – Israel was sent into exile – to burn off the
trash and to have the other metals skimmed off so we would be pure gold at the
Second Coming.
Paul explains the judgment of
believers on the last day with similar imagery:
“For no one can lay a foundation
other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on
the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each one’s
work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be
revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done.
If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a
reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself
will be saved, but only as through fire” (I Corinthians 3:11-15, ESV).
Israel – and we – are told this for
two reasons: so, we understand that as
we go through affliction, God is using it to purify us, and so we will turn to
God in our affliction and seek Him and His forgiveness and His Mercy and His
deliverance.
Peter writes to the Christians
suffering persecution:
“In this you rejoice, though now for
a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that
the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes
though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and
honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (I Peter 1:6-7, ESV).
For example, for whatever other
reasons there may be – and there can be multiple reasons that things happen –
one reason that Covid exists is for our being refined to the Glory of God. One reason – not the only reason – but surely
one reason for Covid – is to refine we who believe – that we would turn from
sin and acknowledge that there is One God and One Savior, and He is Sovereign
over Covid – only He has the wisdom and the ability – which He can bestow on
our scientists – to cure and prevent and do away with this disease. One reason for Covid is to get us to turn
from our sin in blaming others and getting into fights and giving up hope over
all of the deaths – even if we should get sick or die, but rather to turn and
rejoice in the Sovereign God of the Universe and bow before Him, praying for
strength and deliverance through this time and from this disease, that we would
be purified by this time and cause others to look at how we are responding and be
led to glorify God.
Second, God saves His people.
God again tells Israel and Jacob to
listen up:
“Listen to me, O Jacob, and Israel,
whom I called! I am he; I am the first, and I am the last. My hand laid the
foundation of the earth, and my right hand spread out the heavens; when I call
to them, they stand forth together.”
God tells Israel and Judah several
things about Himself – which they should know very well:
God is the God of Moses – “I Am Who I
Am.” He is the Self-Existent One. There is no god but the One God.
He is the God Who is the First and
the Last. Nothing existed before God and
God is Sovereign over everything throughout all time. Before everything was, God is, and God will
forever be.
And He is God Who created everything
in existence. God created the land and
the sky and everything else in all of creation, and God keeps it existing by
His power. This is not a metaphor – God,
literally, created everything that is by Himself out of nothing and it only
continues to exist because God keeps it existing.
The Psalmist writes, “Your
faithfulness endures to all generations; you have established the earth, and it
stands fast. By your appointment they stand this day, for all things are your
servants” (Psalm 119:90-91, ESV).
This is the God of Israel and Judah.
“’Assemble, all of you, and listen! Who among
them has declared these things? The LORD loves him; he shall perform his
purpose on Babylon, and his arm shall be against the Chaldeans. I, even I, have
spoken and called him; I have brought him, and he will prosper in his way. Draw
near to me, hear this: from the beginning I have not spoken in secret, from the
time it came to be I have been there.’ And now the Lord
GOD has sent me, and his Spirit.”
God tells Israel that He is going to
declare something now – something they have never heard before – something no
one else could ever tell them – God loves someone and is sending him to
accomplish God’s purpose for Babylon.
This person will fight against Babylon and Babylon shall fall. God and God alone will call this one – who
comes and does God’s will because God and God alone call him – God speaks of
him and calls him and brings him and prospers his way. This one will become great among humans
because God will empower him and cause him to be great – a victorious conqueror. We have seen him before – God’s servant,
Cyrus, the king of the Medo-Persion empire.
God tells Israel multiple times that
He is sending Cyrus to conquer Babylon – God tells them before Cyrus is even
born! God says to draw near to Him – to
listen to God when He speaks – He is revealing things that were determined
before the Creation took place – things that were always going to take
place. God is revealing them to Israel
so she will be comforted in the years of her captivity. God is going to deliver His people by His
mighty right hand through the person of Cyrus.
Yet,
we must be careful in these latter chapters when we read about the servant of
the Lord. We see that sometimes God is
referring to Cyrus, and sometimes He is referring to the Savior He will send –
the Incarnate Son of God. And we must
distinguish between the two – even when they occur in the same passage.
Certainly, God delivers His people
from Babylon – just as God delivers His people from Egypt, but there is more. “And
now the Lord GOD has sent me, and his Spirit.”
This is not Cyrus in this part of the
text – this is a further, Perfect Savior.
We know this because the text says that He is sent with the Spirit of
God. Hear what Luke records:
“And he came to Nazareth, where he
had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the
Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was
given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,
“’The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because
he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to
proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set
at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’
“And he rolled up the scroll and gave
it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue
were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, ‘Today this Scripture has been
fulfilled in your hearing’” (Luke 4:16-21, ESV).
God gives – through Isaiah, not only
the promise of deliverance from Babylon, but the confirmation of a Savior
beyond all saviors Who will save eternally to the Glory of God.
“Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer,
the Holy One of Israel: ‘I am the LORD your God, who teaches you to profit, who
leads you in the way you should go. Oh that you had paid attention to my
commandments! Then your peace would have been like a river, and your righteousness
like the waves of the sea; your offspring would have been like the sand, and
your descendants like its grains; their name would never be cut off or
destroyed from before me.’”
Despite this great hope of salvation,
God wants them – and us – to understand that when we suffer for our sin, it is
because we have not obeyed what God has clearly told us. Suffering for our sin is our own fault – as
it was the fault of Israel – her sin sent her into captivity.
As Peter writes, “For what credit is
it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good
and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God” (I
Peter 2:20, ESV).
God taught them and He teaches us the
things that we are to do – and if we are obedient, we will be blessed. That does not mean we will never suffer,
because this is a fallen world of sin that causes our suffering when we have
not sinned, and we are born sinners who need to be refined and made into the
Image of Jesus. But we will have far
fewer problems, and we will be more joyful in God if we are obedient. And if they had obeyed, there would have been
no need for captivity and the death of so many people.
God tells them that if they had obeyed,
they would already have peace like a river and be covered with waves of
righteousness. Their growth is stilted
and broken by their sin. God refers to
the promise to Abraham that his offspring would be like the stars of the sky
and the grains of sand on the seashore, and God tells them that their sin has
delayed this – and some – those who have not believed – have been cut off and
destroyed.
What trouble will we avoid if we do
not sin, but follow the Word of God?
God refines us for His Glory, and God
saves His people.
How ought Israel respond to this
knowledge? How should we respond?
“Go out from Babylon, flee from
Chaldea, declare this with a shout of joy, proclaim it, send it out to the end
of the earth; say, ‘The LORD has redeemed his servant Jacob!’
As we will remember:
“And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All
authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make
disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the
Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded
you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age’” (Matthew
28:18-20, ESV).
The right response to being refined
and saved is to tell everyone! To go
from one end of the globe to the other – and throughout space and time –
telling everyone that God is with us and has given His Only Son to be our
Savior. Joy should propel us to tell
others that suffering is not in vain, and there is a Savior Who will bring us
into a world without sin and suffering on the last day.
We are reminded of Who this is:
” They did not thirst when he led
them through the deserts; he made water flow for them from the rock; he split
the rock and the water gushed out.”
When Israel wandered in the desert, God
provided water for them from a rock. And
Paul explains:
“For I do not want you to be unaware,
brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the
sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate
the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank
from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ” (I
Corinthians 10:1-4, ESV).
God refines us for His Glory. God saves His people. Let us go and tell everyone the hope we have
now and until the day of Christ Jesus.
For:
“’There is no peace,’ says the LORD, ‘for
the wicked.’”
Let us pray:
Almighty God, we hate to suffer and
seek ways to escape from suffering, and we are right not to sin, but when we
find ourselves suffering, help us to understand that You are refining us for
Your Glory – You are making us more like Jesus – disciplining us that we would
be fit for the Kingdom. And let us look
forward – no matter what is happening around us, knowing that the Savior has
come and will come again to receive us into His Kingdom. Open our mouths and cause us to spread this
good news by the Power of the Holy Spirit.
For it is in Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen.
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