Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Audio Transcript
Lord, we are confronted this morning with some truths that we have to admit are going to be beyond our ability to fully digest. And yet you give them to us. And we do ask for your help in understanding these things. Give us your insight and help us to see your glory for these things so that we can persist faithfully in the work that you call us to do. Amen.
So this morning we’re actually going to apply this part of Isaiah that we just read directly to ourselves. We’re going to put ourselves in Isaiah’s shoes. And now that’s not always an okay thing to do. The commands and guidance that God gives his his prophets in the Old Testament are often only for them, right? However, in this case, we know that it is the right thing to do.
How do we know that? Because this passage here is often used in the New Testament as describing a state of reality that is still in effect after all these years. In all four gospel accounts, Jesus refers back to this passage. And we see that when he’s teaching the parables, right, what does he say? He says, ye who have ears to hear what let them hear.
That’s a reference back to Isaiah. The apostle Paul also refers to this passage in Acts, chapter 28. And there he has just shared the Gospel with Jewish believers and they reject it. And he references this passage then to explain how is it that. That their hearts can be hard to this message.
And again, Paul In Romans chapter 11, he alludes to this statement here in Isaiah when explaining again, how is it that the Jews of his day rejected this message, but then, so that we don’t just pick on the Jews, right? A few verses later, in chapter 11, also Paul makes the point that if this is true for God’s chosen people, the Jews, how much more true then is it for the Gentiles who are grafted in, as it were, to this godly family tree that is called the church?
So what we find is that what God told Isaiah 2700 years ago is still true for the church and for us. We know that we are called to be messengers on God’s behalf. I don’t think any responsible interpretation of the Bible would say anything else. And we know that we are called to speak to others of the good things that Jesus has done for us. Now think about this, though.
That can take many forms. Sometimes hallelujah. When this happens, sometimes we get to share the whole Gospel with an unbeliever in one sitting. We get to explain that Jesus Christ came to save sinners, of whom I am the very worst. And that he has secured a victory, showing that the sacrifice he made on our behalf is sufficient to not only appease God’s anger, but to make God the Father happy with us.
And now Jesus is sitting at the right hand of God, and he is ever interceding on our behalf, asking for the Father’s blessing and favor toward us, which, of course, the Father is happy to give. And we’re able to say that we look forward with certainty then to a future where all this sin and darkness is going to be stripped away. And we will enjoy eternity with God forever without any of that veil. Hallelujah. Sometimes we get to say all that.
That’s not very often. Sometimes what being faithful looks like is instead, it’s as small but faithful as inviting someone to church so that they can come here and see the love of the church happening. And they can hear the word maybe from others.
Other times, our faithfulness looks like sharing hospitality. We build bridges with the people around us bit by bit. And as they get to know us, they get to know more of this truth as it unfolds. And there are lots of other forms that this can take. But underlying all of this, then, no matter what the channel is for, our faithfulness is a tough reality.
Despite God’s power within us and the powerful commission he gives us and the power of our message, some will not respond in faith. And we then have to grapple with that when we try to be faithful, sharing the gospel, and we don’t see our hearers respond in faith. Whether it’s a simple no, whether they ghost us, whether they politely change the subject, whether they smile and nod, whatever it looks like. That is discouraging, isn’t it? And I think that there are then three specific lies that we start to believe that can keep us from being faithful then in our evangelism.
And I also think that those lies are directly confronted by God in this passage before us this morning. So the rest of our time is going to be spent looking at this passage through that frame. So then in verse 9, when Isaiah goes and he takes God’s word, what will happen? The people will hear, but they will not understand. They will see, but they will not perceive.
Their hearts are going to be made dull, their ears are going to be heavy, their eyes are going to be blinded. In other words, the people will reject Isaiah’s message. And Isaiah is going to shoot straight. And if you read the rest of the book, you’re going to see that he is faithful in delivering a comprehensive message to the people of God. He brings Clear indictment on Israel for their sin and their hardness of heart toward God.
And he proclaims the coming of the servant who will suffer. He proclaims very clearly that future promise of redemption and victory. And what is God’s plan then for the result of that faithfulness? The people will reject the message. That’s the plan.
Which brings us then to the first lie that we tend to believe that destroys our faithfulness. It cripples us in our evangelism. And it’s this. When I share the gospel and someone does not respond in faith, that means I did it wrong.
Do you ever find yourself believing that? Do you reach out to someone in the name of Jesus and all evidence seems to point to a rejection? Do you wonder if maybe it’s because you did it wrong and you start thinking about how could you have done it better? But what we see here in our passage is that when people reject the gospel message we share or our gospel invitations, whether it’s a temporary rejection, sometimes, praise God, it’s temporary. Other times it’s permanent.
That rejection is in fact part of God’s plan for evangelism. Do you see that God doesn’t just tell Isaiah that the people will understand. He says that the hearing of the message will. Will be the cause for their lack of understanding. When we share the message of God with people, that sharing will be the occasion for their hardness of heart.
And this to me is not at all intuitive. Right. If you’re hoping that I’m coming up here this morning, I’m going to give you a very satisfying, complete answer as to why God might choose to do this. You’re going to be very disappointed in me. But what I can do and what I am going to do is I want us to look at an example from the Bible where God causes someone to intentionally.
God causes this intentionally to reject his message, and then he uses that situation for good. That would otherwise not have been possible. Now I want you all then think back to that story in the book of Exodus. It’s when Moses and Aaron go to Pharaoh and they tell him that God has commanded him to let the people leave Egypt. You all remember this?
It’s the let my people go story. Right? And to persuade God, or sorry, and to persuade Pharaoh that God is real, they throw a staff on the ground and it turns into what? A snake. Yeah.
And the priests of Pharaoh, somehow they throw their staffs on the ground too. Those staffs also become snakes. Moses snake eats the other snakes, but nonetheless Pharaoh hardens his heart and he refuses to Heed the word of God that Aaron and Moses bring him. Now we know the rest of the story, right? Ten plagues later, throughout which Pharaoh hardens his heart some ten times.
Only after that horrible tenth plague where death of the firstborn of all of Egypt is carried out by the angel of death, including Pharaoh’s own son, does Pharaoh actually relent and say, okay, Israelites, go, I never want to see you again. But that’s not all that’s going on in the story, because we also see that there are some 10 times that God hardens the heart of Pharaoh. In fact, God predicts that he will harden the heart of Pharaoh before Moses and Aaron even show up in his throne room.
And what God is doing is he strengthening Pharaoh’s will, allowing Pharaoh then to persist in this destruction disobedience. And there’s one last time then that God hardens Pharaoh’s heart. And this is important. The result being that Pharaoh then gathers his chariots and he pursues the departing Israelites all the way to the Red Sea. And as you know, then Moses, with God’s power, parts the Red Sea.
The Israelites go across it as if on dry ground. And once they are across, the Egyptians who had started to follow them get swallowed by. By the waves. Now consider this. This story of God’s special deliverance of his people becomes the basis of the national identity of Israel, the people of God, right from that point forward, they will always look back to these events when they think of God’s kindness to them.
God is evermore the one who led them out of Israel and through the Red Sea with all these signs and wonders. Songs and psalms are written about this. All of their festivals point back to this, and there’s this unmistakable revealing of the glory of God in these events. And the terror of these things still fills their enemies with dread when they enter the promised land some 40 years later. For the nation of Israel, the Exodus is like those first moments when a calf is born, right?
The baby calf gets out and the imprint of its mother is on its mind. And there’s a bond formed there that will never, ever be broken. Israel is similarly bonded to God through the events and the deliverance of the Exodus story.
Now, let’s rewind that story back to the beginning, to when Moses and Aaron have their first audience with Pharaoh and they throw down the staff and it becomes a snake. Now consider this. What would have happened if Pharaoh, instead of being stubborn, had responded in faith and said, yes, of course, go ahead, leave Egypt. God be with you.
Think about that. Because at that moment the Israelites probably would have said, this is wonderful. There couldn’t have been a better outcome to this whole thing. But what would they have lost as a people? God used that situation to reveal Himself to them, to show them his power, to show them the reality of his glory and his kindness, and to bond his people to Himself.
And the point here is this. God knows what he’s doing even when we do not. And we know that he sees a better perspective than we do. And that his plan, if his plan, is that a lost person would reject a gospel invitation, it must be for a reason. And that reason must be that somehow better good will come out of it.
And as I said, I do not expect that to be a satisfying answer. I don’t find that satisfying when I think of those I love who seem to choose the darkness. But it does give me hope that one day in glory God will vindicate Himself, he will give a satisfying answer and there will be a discharge and a knowing of his glory in a way that otherwise would not have been possible.
We are ultimately all going to be in situations where we reach out to people in Jesus name and they reject our invitation. So when that happens, how do we respond? Do you believe the lie that your rejection means that something didn’t go to plan, you weren’t kind enough, you weren’t clear enough, you weren’t persuasive enough, you didn’t use the right arguments? Is that what you believe? Or do you consider that perhaps, just perhaps, instead of believing what very well may be a lie, you embrace the reality that God actually intends for people’s ears to be dull, their ears to be blind, and for them to ultimately not understand.
And this is a hard thing to accept because when we go to our neighbors, when we go to our family, when we go to our co workers, even to strangers on the street, there is real love that we have for them, isn’t there? And also it costs us something to build that bridge. Very rarely does the unfolding of the gospel message from a Christian to an unbeliever happen without there being some real sacrifice, even if small, sometimes very large. There’s time, there’s energy, we sacrifice our plans, we sacrifice our esteem in somebody else’s eyes. Which means that if you put this all together, God’s plan is sometimes for us to go and give something up or invest something into someone in Jesus name that we might have our message rejected.
Have you considered that? Do you get that? God’s plan is often that we would sacrifice for His Glory and in Jesus name there would be no fruit that comes from it, or at least no fruit that comes right away. Now that is hard, but that is exactly what we are being told here. When we have tried to be faithful and we have sacrificed in the attempt to be faithful and nothing comes of that faithfulness, maybe even a little bit of evil comes back as a result of that faithfulness, it doesn’t mean something went wrong.
It means that things went to plan. It’s not our plan. We don’t really understand it. But God does understand it and he’s trustworthy and he knows how best to conduct the unfolding of his plan to the praise of his glory. So we must not base our confidence in the plan on our understanding of the plan.
We have to base it in our faith in God according to the goodness of him that we know and his credibility. Now I want to make a quick aside because I said a couple things I need to go back and clean up here. If you are trying to share the gospel with someone and you know that you’re not being very clear, I would encourage you work on making it more clear. The Apostle Paul In Ephesians chapter 6 asks the church of Ephesus specifically pray for me that my words would be bold and clear, which is how the Gospel ought to be taught. We should likewise be praying that we would speak clearly and boldly and praying that for each other.
So do strive for clarity. But also know this. You will never be so clear that you overturn God’s purpose for somebody else’s heart. Do you get that? Your words clarity is ultimately not going to be the problem if God’s purpose is the heart and the heart now similarly, we do need to be kind.
We are called to kindness, to be peaceful in how we interact with those around us. Sharing the Gospel is no exception. When I read the Gospels and I look at the Acts of Jesus Christ, he never pins down a captive audience to force feed them a message. Now look at it yourselves and see if I’m wrong. Jesus was bold.
He did start conversations and he did respond to people when they came to him and they were angry. But he didn’t seek out the pinning down of people and aggression. If people didn’t have ears to listen, he didn’t make them. We are likewise called to be kind and we should strive to be kind in how we share the gospel. But again, you will never be so perfectly kind that you overturn God’s plan for another person’s heart.
So that’s the first lie that we Tend to believe, when we share the gospel and someone does not respond in faith, that means we did it wrong. Now we’re going to keep going. Verse 10. Isaiah understands how hard this is and he says to God, okay, but for how long? At what point is this going to stop, right?
How long is this whole I share the message and it gets rejected thing going to go on for God then tells Isaiah to keep sharing the message, even up to the point when he sees that his hearers are being judged. Further rejection. Isaiah will warn the people that they need to repent and turn back to God. He will tell of the coming king, the way of salvation, the promise of fulfillment, of all the things they’ve heard over the centuries from all the prophets and from Moses and all the faithful men of God up till now. And as Isaiah preaches, the rejection will persist for so long that the time does come for God to bring judgment on the people for the rejection.
In the verses following, we see the people are carried away, the cities are destroyed, the houses are emptied, all those fertile cultivated places in the land become desolate. And when we take a step back, looking at the history 150 years later, this is exactly what happens when the Babylon Babylonian army sweeps in and destroys Judah. God is not exaggerating. He is making a specific, accurate prediction of a coming future event. And though Isaiah did not live 150 years, other prophets kept coming to the people of Israel and warning them what was to come.
The preaching continued, right, look to God, mourn over your sin. Look to his promised salvation. The prophets kept coming, and the string of them continues up to the day of Jeremiah, who sees both the before and after of the fall of Jerusalem.
And a great lament is written in tears as the prophet sees the aftermath of the fall of the great city, which of course is a book of lamentations which we are in the middle of becoming more familiar with right now. So Isaiah, when do you stop sharing the gospel? You keep on going when they reject it. You keep on going until the people have been almost taken away and until the whole land is burned to a CRISP. In verse 13, even though there’s only a tenth that remain in it, it’s going to keep burning.
It’s going to be like a tree that got chopped down. And it’s not enough that the tree got chopped down, we’re burning the tree, it gets burned again. And even still, Isaiah, you keep preaching, preach as long as there is anybody left to listen to is the intent of the message to him. And this is then the legacy. The prophets in Israel, they kept on preaching that message until the city fell and the people who survived the slaughter were exiled.
So consider with me then the second lie that we tell ourselves.
If people keep rejecting the gospel when I share it with them, that means I need to stop. Do you ever tell yourself that? I’m not saying that. You say it out loud. It sounds awful when you say it out loud.
I’m talking about what goes on in your heart here. Do you say that to yourself? That first lie is that when I share the gospel and someone does not respond in faith, I did it wrong. The second lie is if that keeps happening over and over again, it’s time to stop now. If you’ve ever felt this way, you’re in good company.
If you have never felt this way, don’t feel left out. Because eventually, as you stay faithful reaching out to others, there’s a fatigue that is going to set in and you will be tempted to feel weary in this specific way. And you might even try to rationalize the feeling.
You might say to yourself, God must want me to stop because he’s not giving me any fruit. But that is a lie, my friend. You keep going, you keep fighting to that bitter end, as God has commissioned all of us to do. And you may never see a single person respond to your invitations in your whole lifetime. You nonetheless continue faithfully as long as there’s even one person left for you to share the gospel with.
Some of my heroes in the faith are people who share the gospel for many, many years and who either didn’t see a single positive response during that time, or maybe during their whole lifetime, they never saw someone come to faith. Just a couple names. William Carey was in India for seven years. He sacrificed his whole life back in Europe, seven years he was there before he saw a single convert, Robert Morrison in China. Again, seven years before his first convert, first positive response to his message.
Should they have stopped? Should they have stopped?
Our church directly supports missionaries who would be the first to this church, Red Village Church, who would be the first to admit that despite years as faithfulness, as ambassadors for Christ in difficult places, they have seen very few respond in faith, in human terms, they have very little good to show for their work. Are they unfaithful? Should we be holding them to a quota? Should we devise a formula for how many converts we expect per fiscal quarter as a good faith return on our support? And should we call them home or stop support when they miss our quota?
That would be ridiculous, right? I hope you see that that’s ridiculous. Mind you, there are some large missionary organizations out there that function that way. That line of reasoning is in opposition to God’s plan. It rejects God’s purpose and sovereignty and replaces with a cynical human pragmatism.
Do you get that? I hope you see that. Because when you understand that, it suddenly becomes a lot less of a mystery to understand what missionary work actually is.
You kind of start to understand what makes missionary work so challenging and so discouraging, especially when you go to places where missions takes years before you see a single person respond in faith. So right now I’m going to speak to my brothers and sisters out there in various parts of the world who I know listen to these recorded messages. We give thanks in full hearts to you or to God for you because of your examples and faithfulness. And we want you to know that we as a church are praying that God would give you endurance in that very hard work and that you would indeed see fruit from your labors. We absolutely do pray that you would see some come to faith.
And also for us here this morning, I think we need to find some endurance in these examples out there. Don’t believe the lie. Thinking if people keep rejecting the gospel message, it’s time for me to stop. It’s not a waste of our time. It’s God’s plan unfolding.
And his plan is that we continue to be faithful. So we look to him and we don’t look to our track record. Are you with me? Okay, now onward. The third and final lie we tell ourselves is this.
No one will accept the gospel and I share it. Do you ever feel that you see at some point this continues and that cynicism creeps into our heart? And as we are faithful reaching out to others, we eventually hit this brick wall where that persistent rejection causes us to feel like nobody’s ever going to respond in faith, and you start to assume that no one’s going to be saved. Look with me at this very last statement in verse 13, though, God is talking about the stump of the tree that got cut down, and the stump was even burned in a purifying fire. What’s that stump?
It’s the holy seed.
So of those who hear God’s word and might even initially reject it, may even experience some of the initial consequences of that rejection. From that tiny group, there will be a remnant of those who believe. Some will hear and be healed and saved. There will be a holy seed. Now, this holy seed is often understood as both a reference to the faithful believers out of the Israelites and also a prediction of the coming of Jesus Christ.
Jesus is the seed of the woman. Remember that from Genesis 3, who would eventually grow up to crush the head of the serpent and accomplish the deliverance of humankind.
So in this promise there is also a promise that through this promise the Messiah will come. So not only will there be some who believe Israel’s or Isaiah’s message, but through their belief, the whole of salvation will be enacted. Now, many times in the history of Israel, it looks like there’s no one who’s going to believe. But always hidden in plain sight, right where human eyes don’t see, there are those dead waiting to be brought back to life. There’s the remnant.
And this is true for us as well. Some will be saved through our testimony. God is not going to be mocked by having his word being proven ultimately unfruitful. As we see rejection of God around us, which we do, we need to remember that we see with human eyes. Some will yet be saved.
God has his men and his women and his boys and his girls in his midst all around us. And I would add that we are almost always very poor judges of who will and won’t be receptive to the message, aren’t we, in our society? So when we share the gospel in this society specifically, most people actually respond somewhat kindly, if indifferently to the gospel being shared with them. So even when they reject it, there’s kind of this, you know, surface level kindness there. But interestingly enough, it can be the people who we think would reject it most vehemently who may be the most ripe for it.
But when we feel weary of doing the work, we start to do some thinking, don’t we? We become sparing in what we’re willing to say and to whom we pre evaluate the candidates, right as our cynicism takes over. Maybe it’s because we don’t want more discouragement. Maybe it’s because we assume that the odds are so slim all the way around that we might as well save our ammo for the easiest targets. Do you know what I mean?
But again, I don’t think that we as humans are ever good judges of who is likely to believe and who is not likely to believe. Now, at times the Holy Spirit is going to nudge us to talk to people. He works through our conscience. I think that’s real. And that’s not what I’m talking about.
What I’m talking about again is that cynicism where we say to ourselves, oh yes, that person. I’ve Seen how they live. And again, we never say this out loud, do we? I see how they live. They aren’t going to be interested in this.
And that’s the end of the internal dialogue. No action.
Many years ago, when I was a sophomore in college, I took a trip with our school marching band to Hong Kong for a week. And I remember being on the plane flying over there. The band was spread throughout this giant 747 or 777. One of the guys I knew from the band was a few rows in front of me, and he had evidently discovered that you don’t need to be 21 to enjoy the beer and wine service on international flights. And so he was having so many drinks that the stewardess for our section of the plane started to get pretty nervous.
And that’s kind of how this guy, we’ll call him Party Guy, spent the whole week that we were over there. Now, I remember during this trip, the whole group of us from the band, and it wasn’t the whole band, it was just a small group of us. So we were on the bus together. We were walking around the city together. We were.
We were in restaurants having fun. It was the perfect setup for me to spare a minute to try to connect with this guy and tell him about the love of Jesus Christ.
Of course, I didn’t actually do it. What’s the point? Why bother? He’s not going to be interested. That’s how the trip went.
Now fast forward a year and a half and I am in a Bible study. I am still a student. And one of my friends in the Bible study says during prayer time, hey, guess what do you remember? You know, Party Guy? He didn’t call him Party Guy.
He used his real name. Remember? Party Guy? I shared the gospel with him and we’ve started going together weekly through a book of the Bible. And he’s accepted Jesus Christ.
Hallelujah. I got it wrong.
And brothers and sisters, we don’t know who’s going to respond. We don’t know. Many of the people in this church, including the elders, many of the elders are what you would call unlikely converts. Okay? Now, if God has his remnant in such places, hiding in plain sight, who are we to flounce and accept defeat, believing that no one will respond.
Power to God’s message. No matter how many times people say no, there is yet a yes out there somewhere. There’s always another yes. There will be fruit. God’s not going to be mocked.
He’s going to show the power and goodness of his Word and There will be some who are saved, and we do not know in advance who those people are. Hallelujah.
So we’ve looked at three different lies this morning then, right? First, if I share the gospel and they do not respond in faith, I did it wrong. Second, if people keep rejecting the gospel when I share it, that means I need to stop. And finally, no one will accept the gospel when I share it. We say these things to ourselves in our hearts, and inside there it feels like wisdom.
But as soon as I say it out loud, it sounds demonic. Right? Right.
So before I close, I think we need to flip that around and instead let’s turn that into three truths we do need to remember so that we can persist faithfully in sharing the gospel. First, when I share the gospel and somebody rejects it, God’s plan is working. I don’t get God’s plan, but it is his plan and it’s working. Second, if I keep rejecting the gospel and I. If people keep rejecting the gospel and I share it, that means the work is not done and God does indeed give us strength to continue the work.
And third, when we are tempted to believe that no one will believe, right? We remember that God says that he indeed has his remnant left in this world. We also remind ourselves that we humans have a lousy track record at picking them. Amen.
So that’s where we’re going to end this morning. God still has his people in this world. He still has his holy people who have not yet been made his people and have not yet been made holy. They are dead and they need to be brought back to life. And we are each called into the ministry of raising the dead.
That is our function as proclaimers of God’s goodness. So right now we are going to pray that God would help us to see the glory of the mission for what it is, and that we would be humble, trusting in him instead of the enemy’s lies to persist when we encounter the difficult realities of that mission. Please pray with me, Lord. It is probably true that the sharing of the gospel is both the most challenging and the most invigorating task that you’ve set before us in this life.
We cannot come to this passage without acknowledging time and time again how small and inadequate our thinking is when we try to line it up against your plan and your greater wisdom.
We ask that you would instill in us a spirit of trust in your plan that allows us to persist joyfully. Root out that cynicism not just for those here in this room, but for those who are on vacation and for those who are out there in the various parts of the world, in your name. And we ask that there would be clarity and boldness and kindness to accompany the Word. And that you would allow your Word to be very fruitful in our time. To the glory of Jesus Christ, we pray all these things in his precious name.
Amen.