Isaiah chapter one. Like to read verses five beginning at verse five. These two. Covenant sanctions. Why should you be stricken again?
You will revolt more and more. The whole head is sick, the whole heart faints. From the sole of the foot even to the head there is no soundness in it, but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores. They have not been closed or bound up or soothed with ointment. 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, as a hut in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city. Unless the Lord of Hosts had left to us a very small remnant, We would have become like Sodom. We would have been made like Gomorrah.
May God give us understanding to keep His law and obey it with our whole heart. Gracious Father, open our hearts now to receive your word, to understand it, to practice it, to remember it. And I ask that you would sanctify my sinful lips this morning, that they may speak your truth and that you will preserve me from error through Jesus Christ. Amen. Well, as you all know, we recently, in the last couple of years, experienced a worldwide health crisis.
Now, whether it was purposely manufactured by evil people, or whether it was developed entirely apart from any human intention, or whether it was some combination of these extremes we may never fully know. But we do know, We do know that it was entirely providential. The Lord ordained every detail. Every evil plan of every person, every death, every lost penny of income, every shuttered business, every unjust gain and enrichment, none of it, none of it is outside of the Lord's control. None of it is beyond his long arm.
None of it is hidden from his penetrating gaze. Now there are two common ditches in understanding and responding to these kinds of events. One is to assume that when something bad happens to people, it's the result of some sin in their life or nation's. And Jesus strongly rebukes that when the disciples fell into this error on a couple of occasions. And you can read about those accounts in the opening of John 9 or Luke 13.
The book of Job, of course, is also a correction to this erroneous way of thinking. But the other error, equally misguided and wrong, is to assume that There is no connection between sickness and our sins. To think that our physical well-being is entirely disconnected from our spiritual well-being. We know because the Bible says that because God loves his children, he chastens them when they go astray to remind us to obey. And Sometimes that chastening involves sickness in the physical body.
Sometimes that's that chastening also involves nations and entire continents. And so it's a sign of spiritual blindness and of a hard heart to be entirely indifferent to a possible need for repentance in the face of God's chastening through sickness, whether that's on a personal level or on a national level or on a global level. And that was the error into which the church in Isaiah's day had fallen. Verses five and six that we just read describe the health of the people of the land, both their spiritual health and their physical health. Concerning their spiritual health, Isaiah told them, you have been insensitive to the Lord's chastening.
The Lord has chastened you with sickness and you have refused to even acknowledge that there's a problem instead you have rebelled even more and that's a terrifying condition to be in insensitive to the Lord's corrections because to despise God's affliction is to despise God. To be insensitive to His chastening and to His corrections is to despise Him. And to despise God is to make light of our sin. And Hebrews 12, verse five specifically admonishes us not to despise the Lord's correction. And so when Isaiah asked, Why should you be stricken again?
He is not asking what's the point of more chastening you refuse to acknowledge or receive the chastening you have already received and are becoming more rebellious. He's saying you're insensitive to God's chastening. God's chastening is not defeated because we are insensitive to it. Resisting the Lord's correction only leads to further correction, not less. And so in saying why should you be stricken again, Isaiah is saying, why do you keep bringing more chastening on yourselves?
If you would just repent and turn from your rebellion, you could be healed instead of receiving more correction. See, as that common saying goes, the first step in solving any problem is recognizing that there is a problem that And so the biggest obstacle to repentance is the belief that you have done nothing wrong, nothing that needs to be repented of. Jesus said it's those who are well, those who are well have no need of a physician. It's those who, those who don't think they are sick, don't seek to be healed. It's only those who acknowledge their illness that seek help and can be healed.
And Isaiah describes their physical condition in the second half of verses five and in verse six. He says the whole head is sick and the whole heart faints there is not any part that is unaffected by disease. The head refers to physical sickness. It's part of the body. The heart refers here to a mental weakness.
To say their heart is faint is to say they've become discouraged and they're giving up instead of persevering and to give up is to long to no longer care to no longer strive in the spiritual battle that we are in. Hebrews 12 five that we just looked at this not only admonishes us not to despise the Lord's correction. You remember it also admonishes not us not to faint when we are rebuked by God, not to give up and to cease to strive. Jesus said in Luke 13, 24, strive, strive to enter through the narrow gate. And Paul said of himself in Acts 24, when he was speaking to those Ephesian elders, I myself always strive to have a conscience without offense toward God and man.
To the Colossians, Paul said that he was striving according to God's working in him to present every man perfect or complete in Christ. And Paul begged the Romans in Romans 15 to strive together with him in prayer to God by the power of the Lord Jesus Christ and through the love of the Spirit for Him. Strive together in prayer for Him. So do not faint. Do not become discouraged when when the Lord chastens us.
And I'm pointing thoroughly then to their sickness. Isaiah is reminding them of the covenant sanctions that Moses listed in Deuteronomy 27 and 28 when he renewed the covenant with Israel before they entered the promised land. Remember this, we've said that this chapter is a summary of this covenant lawsuit that God is bringing through Isaiah to the children of Israel. So in bringing a covenant lawsuit, he cites the terms and refers to the terms of that covenant. And you remember at that time, Moses charged the people to set up these large stones and to whitewash the stones and to write on those whitewashed stones all the words of the law that he was giving them.
And then half the people were to stand on Mount Gerizim and recite the blessings that God had promised to the covenant keepers. And the other half, and God specified which tribes were to be on which side, the other half were to stand on Mount Eval and to recite the curses or the sanctions that would come on those who broke that covenant. And these blessings and curses that are listed cover every facet of our lives. The economy, our finances, our health, the weather, the weather, the weather. The military, the civil government, and so forth.
And so Deuteronomy 28 begins the section dealing with the sanctions of those who don't obey. Verse 15, But it shall come to pass if you do not obey the voice of the Lord your God to observe carefully all his commandments and his statutes which I command you today that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you. And it goes on to list some of those. And some of the sanctions that are listed include our health that include our health are found in verse 21 and following the Lord will make the plague cling to you until he has consumed you from the land which you are going to possess think of an epidemic of pestilence The Lord will strike you with consumption, with fever, with inflammation, with severe burning fever, with the sword, with scorching, and with mildew. They shall pursue you until you perish.
The Lord will strike you with the boils of Egypt, with tumors and with the scab and with the itch from which you cannot be healed. And the Lord will strike you with madness and blindness and confusion of heart. The judgments on Judah as Isaiah has described here in these verses, you can see are exactly the sanctions that were given 800 years earlier as they prepared to enter the Promised Land. But in the second part of verse 6, not only are they sick, But there's no part of them that's not sick. And what's worse, they are untreated.
There's no medicine for them. From the sole of their foot to their head, there is no soundness in it, but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores, they have not been closed or bound up. They've been soothed with ointment Wounds are cuts in the flesh Such as might be made by a sword And so I think that speaks to the civil sanctions and the devastation that he gets to in the next section that we'll look at putrefying sores or more precisely raw wounds or wounds that have not been treated wounds that have not been treated or become infected, and they quickly begin to stink as necrotic tissue rots through the bacteria that come to around dead tissue. And notice how this is almost a quote from Deuteronomy 28 verse 35. The Lord will strike you in the knees and on the legs with severe boils which cannot be healed, and from the sole of your foot to the top of your head.
Isaiah is saying, you are under the sanctions of those who have broken the covenant. That's what's happening to you. Now this covenantal understanding of providence, especially with respect to health, is how the church has always viewed these types of judgments. John Hooper or Johann Hopper, depending on which version you read, was an Anglican bishop and a leader of the Protestant Reformation in England, and he was martyred in in 1555 under Queen Mary or Bloody Mary. And you can read about that in Fox's book of martyrs.
He said this in a homily he wrote in 1553, a couple of years before his martyrdom, which was entitled, A Homily to be read in the time of pestilence, concerning the true causes of the same, and likewise a most present remedy, for as many as may be already or hereafter shall be infected with that disease, gathered out of the holy scriptures." If you haven't read their works, they have very, very long titles for things. That was his title. He hadn't gotten to the substance yet. But you can see where he's going. He said this.
Moses, and I've modernized English a bit, if you could back and look at it. Moses also plainly showed that the principal and chief cause of pestilence is not in the corruption of the air, nor in the superfluous humors within man. But that sin and your transgression of God's law is the very cause and chief occasion of pestilence and of all other diseases. So all that the scripture of God manifestly declares that the contempt and breach of God's law is the chief and principal cause of pestilence and of all other plagues that he sends for our punishment. And for this cause proceeds.
And from this cause proceeds these causes that the physicians speak of, such as the corruption of the air, which is never corrupted nor can corrupt man or beast. Except man. Was first corrupted by sin and the transgression of God's law, what he's saying there is. The first and foremost cause of these things is. Our spiritual condition.
But he's not denying that there are secondary causes. He says, neither could man overeat by meals nor Could any evil humors be generated from any meals unless the man that uses them is corrupt and first infected with sin? So these 16th century pastors were not opposed to lawful medicines or other means of treatment, and they don't ignore the physical causes of illness. Biza said, Theodore Biza of Geneva said in his, he was Calvin's successor there, Biza said in his work on epidemic plagues, he had one too, quote, even as God has ordained that some people will not die from the plague, so also he has appointed remedies which as much as is in their power, people may use to avoid the danger of the plague. But you see, they consider the physical causes behind the epidemics to be the secondary causes.
The primary cause is the breaking of God's covenant. Because see, God is sovereign. And all of the things that happen, from the actions of men to the causes that men can't control, And you see, I think if we take a minute and reflect about our American condition, it's not a pretty sight. It's not good news. When we read articles or see reports like the UCLA Health Bulletin saying about a recently published study, quote, the prevalence of chronic conditions has risen to unprecedented levels over the past 20 years, with nearly one in three young people estimated to now be living with pediatric onset conditions that significantly affect their lives.
When we read that kind of thing, we should be examining the spiritual condition of ourselves and our society. That's saying we're pretty sick people. America spends far more on medical care than any other nation in the world. We are extreme outlier. Even, now the picture is granted complicated but even when all the confounding factors are accounted for like like the higher health care prices that we pay in America.
The higher levels of our wealth, because we are, compared to other nations, we're wealthy. And wealthy people spend more on their medicine. The population age, when you account for that, Even when you account for all these confounding things, Americans still spend far more than any other nation on health care, no matter how we tweak the data. Could it be that Americans are just sicker? And could that be because we have flagrantly turned away from God and flaunt our breaking of his commandments?
In verses six and seven, we come to the second set of sanctions. Isaiah summarizes the civil devastation that Judah was experiencing. And he follows the exact same pattern here that he did with health, pointing out that their experience in the civil arena also aligns with the sanctions that are outlined at the covenant renewal in Deuteronomy 28. Your country is desolate. Your cities are burned with fire.
Strangers devour your land in your and the land that once abounded with milk and honey is now desolate burned with fire. So compare that assessment that Isaiah gives with the sanctions listed in Deuteronomy 28 verses 30 and following. It says, You shall betroth a wife, but another man shall lie with her. You shall build a house, but you shall not dwell in it. You shall plant a vineyard, but you shall not gather its grapes.
Your ox will be slaughtered before your eyes, but you shall not eat of it. Your donkey shall be violently taken away from before you, and you shall not be restored to you. Your sheep shall be given to your enemies, and you shall have no one to rescue them. A nation whom you have not known shall eat the fruit of your land and the produce of your labor and you will only be oppressed and crushed continually. The alien who is among you shall rise higher and higher above you, and you shall come down lower and lower.
Verse 44, he shall lend to you, but you shall not lend to him. He shall be the head and you shall be the tail. And verse 49, God says, the Lord will bring a nation against you from afar. From the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flies, a nation whose language you will not understand, a nation of fierce countenance which does not respect the elderly or show favor to the young. We've certainly seen that on display prominently in our national news.
People that don't respect the weak or the young. And they shall eat the increase of your livestock and the produce of your land until you until you are destroyed. They shall not leave you grain or new wine or oil or the increase of your cattle or the offspring of your flocks until they have destroyed you. They shall besiege you at your gates until your high and fortified walls in which you trust come down throughout all your land, and they shall besiege you at all your gates throughout all your land, which the Lord your God has given you." That was what God promised in Deuteronomy 28. And Isaiah says, Now your country is desolate.
Your cities are burned with fire. Strangers devour the land in your presence. And it is desolate as overthrown by strangers. That's a very concise summary of the much longer list of sanctions that's given that are given in Deuteronomy 28. And when you have to look very far or hard today to see that this could very well be said of our land.
This very topic fills our headlines every day. Strangers are overrunning our land, plundering the wealth. You know, it's interesting that although The immigration rates between 1870 and 1910 are very similar to the immigration rates of the past couple of years, 1921, 2022, 2023, and 2004. The immigration rates in those two periods are very, very similar. They are very different from each other.
The wave 130 years ago consisted of laborers who were assimilated into American culture and contributed to its prosperity. And this recent wave and influx over the past few decades has been of a very different nature. Significant numbers of the people coming now are not assimilated into American culture. They've set up parallel cultures and economies, and in many cases, they've replaced the American culture. So it's not immigration that's the problem.
That's not our problem. Immigrants are very useful and have great and have been a great blessing to this land this land is what it is because of immigrants coming over here to work coming to a land where they were able to work and had opportunities. Total debt in America is over seven times the total production of the entire country. Now economists are quick to tell us that much of that debt is actually money owed to us, the people. But we're the ones that have to pay for the debt.
So that only means that the money in our bank accounts would disappear if the debts were paid. It means the money in our bank accounts is really not there. And those debts will be paid at some point. We can put off repaying them temporarily, but they will be repaid. All debts will be repaid.
Isaiah uses two similes in verses eight to characterize Jerusalem's condition. He says, so the daughter of Zion, referring to Jerusalem, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, That's what he means by the daughters of Zion. He's referring to the Jerusalem that sat at Mount Zion. Jerusalem is left as a booth in a vineyard and as a hut in a garden of cucumbers, a besieged as a besieged city. City of Jerusalem is as a booth in a vineyard.
A booth is a temporary shelter. A booth would be erected in a vineyard as a protection for a person watching over and protecting the vineyard just like Jonah built a little booth as he wanted to watch in a burn didn't happen but He wanted to watch it. So he built a little boost Or got gosh, I'd say God gave him a lot of protection there That's what that is a little temporary shelter in the vineyard for the person watching over it It's a solitary structure. It's the only structure in the entire vineyard. It's not a stronger one.
A hut in the garden of cucumbers paints a very similar picture. The hut is a frail, insecure structure. That's what the word means in Hebrew. And a field of cucumbers is an interesting phrase. I think it's simply speaking of a land that's much poorer than one flowing with milk and honey.
It's a land that has cucumbers, which are fine, but it's different than milk and honey, which are luxuries. That's the picture of Jerusalem, a city that's besieged without protections, without any help around, a little hut an insecure little building amidst the field and that's all you have you're unprotected from any invaders And as I mentioned earlier in the days of Hezekiah, Jerusalem was literally a single city that was untouched by the ravages of the Syrian kings and armies. Even Lekish, the fortified city was taken. So what Isaiah is describing here, very soon came to full reality in the land of Israel. In verse nine, though, in verse nine, Isaiah speaks of the hope of the remnant.
Unless the Lord of hosts had left to us a very small remnant, we would have become like Sodom. We would have been made like Gamora. And what I hope this is, brothers and sisters, they were on a path to destruction, complete destruction, unless, unless, The unless says that there is a hope of deliverance, that there is another option. But that deliverance, secondly, is only found in the Lord, not man. Unless the Lord says the only solution to the civil and personal devastation caused by our sin is found in what the Lord does, unless the Lord.
Rescue from this predicament that they are in and we are in is not found in ourselves. He doesn't call on them to do better, to try harder. He doesn't say you would have been like Sodom unless you. No, He says you would have been like Sodom unless the Lord. See, there is no solution to this desolation in ourselves by anything we can do.
Unless the Lord does something, We would become like Sodom and Gomorrah, utterly destroyed by the just and righteous wrath of God. You remember those cities were destroyed by fire and brimstone that rained down from heaven and utter devastation. That something so that God does is to preserve a remnant. We would be like Sodom and Gomorrah unless the Lord does something. That something that He does is to preserve a remnant.
And remnant is a very important theme in Isaiah. In Isaiah 10 that remnant is Isaiah 10 verse 20. The remnant it says that you shall come to pass in that day that the remnant of Israel And such as have escaped of the house of Judah 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 So this remnant is identified as a people that would be brought back from captivity, a people that would depend upon the Lord. For though your people, oh, Israel, be as the sand of the sea, A remnant will return. And Isaiah says it's a small remnant compared to the number of the sand on the sea that that came into Israel, came into the land originally.
These are the people that are brought back from captivity. It shall come to pass in that day that the Lord will set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people who are left from Assyria and Egypt, from Pathras and Kush, from Elam and Shinar, from Hamath and from the islands of the sea. God is promising he will bring all these people back who were scattered. The remnant, though, are specifically God's people. They're his people.
Isaiah twenty eight five. In that day, the Lord of hosts will will be for a crown of glory and a diadem of beauty to the remnant of his people. The Lord will be a crown of glory and a diadem of beauty to the remnant. The prayers are for the remnant. And Isaiah 37 says, it may be that the Lord your God will hear the words of the rabshaka when he reproached the living God and will rebuke the words which the Lord your God has heard.
Therefore, lift up your prayer for the remnant that is left. The remnant, it says, Here's the promise to the remnant in Isaiah a little later in Isaiah 37. The remnant who have escaped to the house of Judah shall again take root downward and bear fruit upward for out of Jerusalem shall go a remnant. And those who escape from Mount Zion, The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. Oh, listen to me, your house of Jacob and all the remnant of the house of Israel who have been upheld by me from birth who have been carried from the womb.
So The remnant is God's people. The remnant are those that God has taken special care of from the very womb. And though they are scattered throughout the earth, He's going to gather them back, and they will be a crown and a diadem. It's upon him that he sets his love. But this ground of distinction between those in the remnant and those aren't, between those who are delivered and saved and those who are not, is not found in the man, but in God.
It's not based on who is in the church and who is not. And this is Paul's point in Romans nine, twenty nine, where he quotes this very verse. He quotes that passage in the context. Of saying that God's God's choice is according to his sovereign decree and not according to man, whom he loves. Is his grace, his sovereign grace, And it's not anything in us.
There's nothing in us. There's nothing in the remnant that is better than those that weren't in the remnant. There's nothing that they have done that set them apart. All all are alike or under condemnation and are under the wrath of God. Now what God does in saving this remnant is not explicitly spelled out in this chapter yet.
It will be later on, but it is indirectly hinted at. And it's shown and it's hinted at by this by comparing there are three verbs that are used in these verses of verse five and six That are also used in Isaiah 53 And our English translation obscures the connection. But it's very clear in the original. Verse 5, Why should you be stricken again? That word stricken, nakah, is also in Isaiah 53, verse four.
Yet we esteemed him. That's the suffering servant stricken, smitten. There's that same word by God. In Isaiah one, it's the people being stricken in the second in the second verb. The whole is sick or grief.
The whole head is sick. Isaiah said. Speaking of Israel's head in verse 50, in chapter 53, verse four, it's surely he, the suffering Savior has borne our griefs. And that word griefs is the exact same word as sick. And then in verse six of chapter one, and by but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores Isaiah 53 says and by his stripes by his bruises we are healed You see in Isaiah 53 God lays on Christ the sanctions of the covenant for which the people reliable in Isaiah 1 is the people that are under these sanctions in Isaiah 53 what God does is to lay those sanctions upon Christ.
He is bruised. He is born our griefs. He is smitten by God. Sin brings this desolation and destruction. It always does.
It always does. And they seem fine for a time. But it always brings desolation and destruction and that sins desolation and the picture that Isaiah presents here should move us to repent, to turn away from our works and our sin and to turn to Christ and His righteousness, which He offers to all those who put their faith in Him, their trust in Him. That's not a work. That's not something we do.
Christ's righteousness is given to those who put their trust in him. May the Lord grant us the grace to do that. Almighty Heavenly Father, we thank you for your comfort, though you have smitten us and chastened us, we thank you for your promise. And all those who put their trust in you, You lay those sanctions. You're just and holy wrath for all the things that we have done upon your son.
Lord, we are amazed even more that it pleases you to do this. We ask that we may never forget so great a salvation and never forget the great price that was paid to procure it. The precious blood of the Son of God. Lord, thank you. Thank you for your word, thank you for your spirit.
Thank you for your great salvation in Jesus name Amen