Isaiah 44:9-23 • Grits and Grace
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
Let's look at Isaiah. Isaiah chapter 44 verses 9 through 23. Isaiah 44 verses 9 through 23. "You would not have wanted Isaiah's job."
Prophet, yes, prosecutor of Israel, no. Goes through a succession of kings. He knows the northern kingdom will be in trouble. He knows the southern kingdom will fall. He tells them that it will happen. And you would think it would soften the people's hearts, that they would turn back to God. Instead, as God has told Isaiah it would happen, their hearts just get harder. You would not have wanted Isaiah's job. But what he's saying is pretty simple. God created you.
God sustains you. By the time you get to verse 8 of this passage, he's your only Savior, the only rock to depend on. He's the unique God. Turn to Him. And the way in which Isaiah now begins to urge the people to do just that will first surprise you, then make you question Isaiah's theology, and ultimately make you appreciate the grace that he preaches. Here's what he says in verse 9. "All who make idols are nothing, and the things they treasure are worthless. Those who would speak up for them are blind. They are ignorant to their own shame. Who shapes a God and casts an idol which can profit him nothing? He and his kind will be put to shame. Craftsmen are nothing but men. Let them all come together and take their stand. They will be brought down to terror and infamy. The blacksmith takes a tool and works with it in the coals. He shapes an idol with hammers. He forges it with the might of his arm. He gets hungry and loses his strength. He drinks no water and grows faint. The carpenter measures with a line and makes an outline with a marker. He roughs it out with chisels and marks it with compasses. He shapes it in the form of a man, of man in all his glory that it may dwell in a shrine. He cuts down cedars or perhaps took a cypress or oak. He let it grow among the trees of the forest or planted a pine and the rain made it grow.
Is it man's fuel for it is man's fuel for burning some of it he takes and warms himself. He kindles a fire, bakes bread, but he also fashions a god and worships it. He makes an idol and bows down to it. Half of the wood he burns in the fire. Over it he prepares his meal. He roasts his meat and eats his fill. He also warms himself and says, "Ah, I'm warm. I see the fire." From the rest he makes a god,
his idol. He bows down to it and worships. He prays to it and says, "Save me. You are my god." They know nothing. They understand nothing. Their eyes are plastered over so they cannot see and their minds closed so they cannot understand. No one stops to think. No one has the knowledge or understanding to say, "Half of it I use for fuel. I even bake bread over its coals. I roasted meat and I ate. Shall I make a detestable thing from what is left? Shall I bow down to a block of wood?" He feeds on ashes. A deluded heart misleads him. He cannot save himself or say, "Is not this thing in my right hand a lie?"
"Remember these things, O Jacob, for you are my servant, O Israel. I have made you. You are my servant, O Israel. I will not forget you. I have swept away your offenses like a cloud, your sins like the morning mist. Return to me, for I have redeemed you. Sing for joy, O heavens, for the Lord has done this. Shout aloud, O earth beneath. Burst into song, you mountains, you forests, and all you trees, for the Lord has redeemed Jacob. He displays his glory in Israel." Let's pray.
Father, for your goodness and grace we thank you. Teach us of it, that we might be strengthened by the rock of our salvation. This we ask in Jesus' name, amen. Okay, one of the most practical things I'm ever going to tell you in a sermon. Waffle house, cheese grits, 35 cents. A couple of weeks ago, my family and I, coming back from a trip, kind of tired of the normal fast food fare that we usually thought, "Well, we'll try Waffle House." So we pulled into Waffle House and you know you can get cheese grits for 35 cents. I don't mean a dab. I mean you get this heaping big bowl. Slathered in butter, you know, dripping with cheese, 35 cents. I mean that's almost as good as free. I mean, you know, and you know being the romantic economizer I am, I'm getting to think, "Listen, I won't even have to wait for anniversaries and birthdays. We can eat out all the time." You know?
And then my eyes of course fell to the small print on the menu. Cheese grits, 35 cents with any full entree.
Almost free. Not really free. You got to add something else.
It's a lot like the grace many people think is in the Bible. Almost free. I mean, few things you got to do. What Isaiah is doing here is telling us of a grace so free it scares us. We can't really believe it is what he says it is because we think he would actually challenge faith rather than promote it. Isaiah has a very simple purpose. He's just saying to the people of Israel, "Only God can save you." The way he says that is first familiar to us, but then it really throws us. I mean the familiar words are the ones about idols where he's simply saying, "Your idols can't save you." And he's of course pointing to the nature of idolatry with three examples. Verse 12, the first one, right? "The blacksmith takes a tool, works it with the coals, shapes an idol with hammers, he forges it with the might of his arm." Probably that's the key phrase.
"His idol is made by the might of his arm, but as a consequence, it may seem hungry and thirsty
and tired. It's supposed to help him out, but it just wears him out." And of course, that's always the nature of idolatry. If you think you're going to be saved, made right, made whole by going after something with the power of your arm, better salary, better position, better relationship, you can get the better salary and lose your family.
Better position and the people that have put you there can betray you.
And the person you thought would make everything right,
you discover is not the person who has everything right.
And what you thought would save you just wears you out.
The carpenter is the next example. Verse 13, "He measures with a line, makes an outline with a marker, roughs it out with chisels, marks it with compasses." You know, it's your carpenter, you understand, measure, mark, chisel, rough it out. And then apparently this is a work of art. You know, he takes out the compass. I mean, there's some refined work going into this particular idol.
"But by the end of it all, he shapes it in the form of man."
The idol that he makes reflects his own skill, his own ability. Ultimately, anything you make to save you just reflects your own ability, reflects who you are. And we can look at it in idolatry this way, in a way that's remote to us, and we think about material things. But I just saw it in a classroom some years ago now where a professor was speaking to a student who was challenging the authority and the inerrancy of God's word. And at some point, I suppose tiring a bit of the discussion, the professor just kind of reached into his desk and took out a pair of scissors and said to the student, "Okay, listen. You take your Bible and you take this pair of scissors and you cut out anything you think doesn't belong in the Bible.
But recognize that by the end, all that you'll have is your own wisdom.
It will just reflect who you are, what you think is right. And in my mind's eye, his Bible just became kind of a collection of paper dolls strung together, and they all look like him. They were just a reflection of his own wisdom. They just reflected who he was.
Finally, there's the cook. This is the carpenter who turns into the cook because he's fixing his lunch. Verse 14, he cuts down cedars, maybe a pine. Verse 15, "It's man's fuel for burning. Somebody takes and warms himself. He kindles a fire and bakes bread. But then the irony," verse 15, "He also fashions a God and worships it. He makes an idol and bows down to it." Now, wait a second. "He uses that wood to warm himself and bake bread, and now he's going to worship it?" Wait. "It serves him. Why does he worship it?" And the greatest irony, of course, is the conclusion of that in verse 19. No one stops to think. No one has knowledge or understanding to say, "Half of it I use for fuel. I even bake bread over its coals, roasted meat and ate. Shall I make it a testable thing from what is left?" Wait. "It can't even save itself.
Why would I think it can save me? It's burning up in the fire. I'm depending on something to provide for me that is being turned to ashes." And so he says at the end of verse 19, concluding with verse 20, "Shall I bow down to a block of wood? He feeds on ashes. A deluded heart misleads him." Always the nature of idolatry. If you think you're going to be provided for by something out of the nature of your own hands, it's like eating ashes. You just want to rinse and spit at the end of it. It won't satisfy. You look for something else. You look for something better. And of course, that's where Isaiah is going. What's better? If this is the nature of idolatry,
what is the nature of redemption? If your idols cannot save you, what's the nature of the God who does save you? He tells us in beautiful words, verse 21, "Remember these things, O Jacob,
for you are my servant, O Israel. I have made you. You are my servant, O Israel. I will not forget you."
Israel and Jacob, "I will not forget you." You have to catch the covenant language. God is addressing them by the names of the patriarchs. He is saying, "You are the children of promise. You are the nation that I intended to bring about for glory, for my own purposes. You didn't save yourself. You were the weakest and the smallest of peoples. I redeemed you,
but I remember you." And that language of remembrance here, as it so often is in the Bible, is not just about mental recollection. It's the statement of promise to act covenantally. "I remember you. I will act on your behalf." Remember, you even get a reflection of it when the thief hangs on the cross next to Jesus.
"When you come into your kingdom, remember me." He doesn't just mean, "Have a thought about me."
He means, "Act in my behalf. Do what I cannot do. Remember me." And that remembrance, as it has covenant impact, now is explained for what it really is in verse 22. "God will not only remember us. We are remembered and we are forgiven. I have swept away your offenses like a cloud." The ESV, a lot of you are looking at, "I blotted away your offenses like a cloud. Your sins like a mourning mist. Return to me, for I have redeemed you. We are forgiven." And the importance of the wording here, if you recognize, it's, "We're forgiven after sin." They have offended God. It's like a cloud about them now. And God says, "Because you're my covenant people, I have forgiven you." What does it mean to be remembered and forgiven? I can get so locked in like you can to the Bible language that we forget the reality of life, of what it would mean for people to really know that the nature of God toward them is that He would remember them, act on their behalf by putting away their sin.
Anne Lamott in her book, Traveling Mercies, talks about it.
What did it mean to be saved? I asked the minister, the first Christian I'd ever met who I could stand to be in the room with, because most Christians seemed almost hostile in their belief that they're saved and you're not. "What does it mean to be saved?" I asked.
"You don't need to think about this," he said. "No, just tell me."
I guess he said, "It's like discovering you're on the shelf of a pawn shop,
dusty and forgotten, and maybe not worth very much." But Jesus comes in and He tells the pawnbroker, "I'll take her place on the shelf. Let her go out into the sun."
That was the promise of the new light, the new day, just being remembered, not forgotten on the shelf because of sin. But you and I know, some of you know her story, it wasn't enough that the cloud was being pushed away. What a wonderful image in the scriptures.
There's this cloud, this grayness, this denseness of our lives because of sin.
But when that cloud is swept away because of the work of God, it's almost as though the sun now comes in. But in most life, in real life, it has to now begin to dissipate the morning mist. It's got to burn, it doesn't happen all at once. It was that way for Lamont. The mist still had to dissipate. She said, "After I heard about God remembering, I wanted to fall on my knees, newly born, but I didn't. I walked back home and got out the scotch. I was feeling better in general, less out of control, even though it would be four more years until I got sober.
I was not willing to give up a life of shame and failure without a fight.
Slowly I came back to life. I was like one of those people that Ezekiel writes about in the Valley of Dry Bones, people who had given up, who were lifeless and without hope. But because of Ezekiel's presence, breath comes into them. Spirit and kindness revive them."
I love the words. They're like the ones that Dr. Dalby already quoted today. In Romans, remember 2-4, the apostle says, "The kindness of God leads to repentance."
And you can kind of sense in Lamont the morning mist dissipating. And it's the kindness of God that swept away the cloud of her sin that's somehow giving her light and life. It's coming in this great kindness of God that he remembers and forgives. That you all know. What's the nature of our redemption? We're remembered. We're forgiven after sin.
But the words that are going to shock you are the next of Isaiah,
because he doesn't just say we are forgiven after sin. He says we are forgiven before repentance. What does repentance mean?
Some of you know that Hebrew shuv, it means to turn. Our catechism talks about turning from sin unto God. All true. What's the order of events here? Look carefully. Verse 22, "I have swept away your offenses like a cloud. Your sins like the morning mist. Return to me, for I have redeemed you." If you knew the history, most of you do. Not only are the circumstances of Israel bad, they are bad and they're about to get worse. I don't mean just their circumstances. I mean the people. And here is Isaiah saying, "Repent, return, come back to God." That's all future. But where is the forgiveness? It was the beginning of verse 22. Look at the past tense. "I have swept away your offenses like a cloud. Your sins like the morning mist." I love it. Part of the joy of being here at seminary is there's so many young parents with toddlers. I don't know. Something about theology and families seems to make babies.
They're just all over the place. And so you get to watch so many families kind of maturing and kids growing up and you watch parents, right, when they're helping a child learn to walk.
Get down. Look at the child. Smile. Come to me. Come to me. Come on.
I have yet to see a parent turn his back and say, "Listen, when you come around here, I'll smile at you." The love comes first. The kindness that's known. It's the tractor beam, you know, pulling. Come to me. And now that tractor beam, as it were, of kindness that Isaiah is talking about, is he's already promising the people of God, God's forgiveness. It's all around them. It's underneath them. It's been since the time of the promise. It's always God saying, "I'm for you. I have forgiven you. Will you come back to me? You know my nature. I'm telling you again. I have forgiven you. I have redeemed you. Come back to me." It's not the way we think. We're actually scared to think that way. So I've got to quote John Calvin.
This is what John Calvin called evangelical repentance as opposed to legal repentance. You know what legal repentance is? Legal repentance believes that the reason God will forgive you is you've either said the right words or you've shed enough tears or you've done both of those long enough. I'll feel bad enough, long enough, then God will forgive me. But don't you understand what Calvin is saying is this. If it's legal repentance that gets your salvation, then your salvation is the product of your own hands. What he called evangelical, we would call it gospel repentance, is the notion that God has already forgiven. It is his forgiveness that is drawing you into repentance, turning you from your sin, is the knowledge of the mercy that was prevenient, that was prior, that was already acting for you when Christ died upon a cross, and there was a completed accomplished fact of your sin being put away forever.
And that knowledge is where real repentance is because it's where the life of the gospel is.
And Lamott, again, the way she expresses it, first she had turned to her own God. Mine was a patchwork God sewn together from bits of rage and ribbon, Eastern and Western, pagan and Hebrew, everything but the kitchen sink and Jesus. Then one afternoon in my dark bedroom the cracks webbed all the way through me. I believed that I would die soon from a fall or an overdose.
I knew there was an afterlife but felt they couldn't possibly take you in in the shape I was in.
I could not imagine how God would love me.
But in my dark bedroom out of nowhere it crossed my mind to call the new guy minister at St. Stephen's. It took me 45 minutes to walk there but this skinny middle-aged guy was still in his office when I arrived and he just listened, he really listened.
And so I let it all tumble out.
The x-rated motels, my father's death, a hint that maybe every so often I drank a little too much.
I don't remember much of his response except that when I said I didn't think God could love me, he said, "God has to love you." That's his job.
Now for all you theologians out there you're now troubled.
That's not a very good theological answer. But years later the minister explained to Anne Lamott why he had said that. That her forgiveness depended entirely upon God's doing, his job, nothing in her. He said, "Here you were in a rather desperate situation. You were suicidal, clearly alcoholic, going down the tubes. I thought the trick was to help you extricate yourself from yourself so that you could breathe again. You said your prayers weren't working anymore and I could see that in your desperation you were trying to save yourself by your prayers. So I said you should stop praying
and let me pray for you. And right away you seem to settle down."
What settled her? It was turning away from trusting in the God that she was trying to control by her actions. By making him forgive her, making him listen to simply say, "No, that's his job. That's what he does. I'm just going to trust him to do his job."
And that ultimately, fundamentally settled her, gave her rest. That was the salvation moment for her was knowing she could rest in what he did, not wait until she got it right, said enough prayer enough ways with the right things. Now I got to answer your worries, don't I?
Well, what if we only repent a little? Well, then he forgive.
You know, can we really say, "Well, I murdered a million. Sorry about that. I'm going to forgive now." No, we always say, "Well, your repentance has to be sincere and authentic
and deep." Now listen, of course our repentance should be sincere and authentic and deep. But if you think that being sincere enough or authentic enough or deep enough is what's going to get God to act right, then fundamentally what you're saying is that God is manipulated by the adequacy of your repentance. And just when do you think a holy God is going to be satisfied by the adequacy of your repentance? It's not the adequacy of your repentance. It should be sincere. Don't hear me say that. But it's not the degree of your sincerity. It's not conjuring something out of you. It really is stepping away from you. It's so much repentance like faith. It's not the degree of our faith, the rightness of it, something we conjure. It's actually the pushing away from ourself. "I'm not depending on you. I don't have the right words. I don't pretend I have the right words. I'm just resting in you." Let's all agree repentance should be sincere.
But I hope you know it is not our sincerity that causes our forgiveness.
Jesus causes our forgiveness. I'm forgiven because He was forsaken.
Not because I'm sincere enough.
Well, what if this forgiveness before repentance is just in the Old Testament?
Isn't that interesting? Usually we say there's too much grace in the New Testament. Now maybe there's too much grace in the Old Testament. But what if it's just because there are covenant people? Maybe this prevenient grace, this grace ahead of time, is just because they're that covenant people. After all, doesn't the New Testament say, 1 John 1.9, "If we confess our sin,
then He is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness."
It actually does say that. Now be smart seminary students and learn to distinguish the difference between a statement of a fact and a statement of cause. When we confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive our sin. That is certainly true. But it's not the cause of His forgiveness. The best commentators look at 1 John 1.9 and they remind us that that is not a single act, as though God is waiting for you to confess a sin. And if you confess it, then He's going to forgive it. He's saying, "If you confess, if this is the confession of your life, if this is the whole of you, then God receives you. Don't you see? You've already pushed away through." If you don't believe that, think of the consequences. If your forgiveness rests on the adequacy of your confession, what results? Pride and purgatory and despair. Pride. All right. I confess enough, God. Do your part. Did it right. Now God's got to forgive me. Or I'm enough aware of a holy God that I know my confession will never make it up to God. It will never do all that it should. So there's an afterlife where I'll make it up there. But what if I don't confess or can't confess? Don't remember
or in the worst scenario, take my life. It really is the argument that says suicide is the sin that cannot be forgiven. Why? Because you can't confess after. What if you really believed
that forgiveness is prior, that we live in this ocean of repentance, that what we are as believers, if you forgive the images, we're these styrofoam balls on this ocean of grace. And our brokenness, our confession is not somehow making us buoyant. We're already made that way. Forgiveness is already but if we'll break, if we'll crack, if we'll confess, then the cooling gospel flows into us. We experience its goodness, but never, never did our forgiveness, did our confession create the ocean. It was already there for us holding us up. Am I saying that we don't need to repent? Don't need to grieve. I'm not saying that. After all, remember Isaiah's purpose. Return to me. He's calling them to repentance. He said earlier, you have not offered the sacrifices that you should, you, you haven't grieved the way you should. But what's going to create the grief that's proper? What will create the repentance that turns them back? It is that tractor beam of the kindness of God that says, I have already forgiven you. Come back to me. We're too often after behavior and the prophet is after a heart. I want your hearts. I know when I have your hearts, the behaviors will follow. The indicatives, when I know that you know the love of God is not waiting for you to act the right way, what will you do? You'll come to him. You want to walk with him. You'll want to be with him. One last thing. Not only is this forgiveness after sin and before repentance, it is through consequences. What's the greatest fear if we say forgiveness comes before repentance? We say, Oh, there is license.
Will the people of God here have consequences for their disobedience?
Exile, hurt, yes. And then what?
Redemption. God's still waiting at the end of the process. After they have turned, after they're back in his will and plan and purpose, he's already forgiven, but now he'll use them fresh. The Redeemer will come. If you don't believe this, think of where you're left. When hard things come into your life, if you believe that you've got to repent before you experience forgiveness, that all the hard things are somehow the wrath of God falling upon you for some unknown thing that you haven't forgiven or some known thing that you haven't confessed enough, you will hate that God who is doing that to you.
Ricky Gray is one of my favorite missionaries, a graduate of here. He has a 17 month old child with a brain malformation that is robbing that child of mind and ability.
And Ricky can't stay on the mission field with his wife and family because of their care of that child. He writes, "When dark thoughts about the Lord's goodness and greatness threaten to undo us, we are learning. The best heart medicine is a bloodstained cross and an empty tomb.
He loves me. He forgives me. That's why I can tell him of my struggle, my heart, my anger. If all I can do is keep it in, can't talk about it, can't confess it, I cannot show him anything that would keep his forgiveness away. But if I can show him my whole heart because I know his forgiveness is already there, then I can tell him what I'm really feeling. And as my heart begins to beat with his heart, I begin to understand his ways. Faith grows, love grows, and life with him is fresh again." I have an agenda for this morning. When you come to Covenant Seminary,
my goal, your goal, I know is to read the Bible rightly, but I hope you read it a new way.
Do you recognize it's like we've all been called to a great party? And as we're going through the Old Testament, we're going down this path to the party and it's a hayride and it's gone on ahead of us. That's the Old Testament. So there's a little clump of hay here, a little clump of hay there. There's a potato chip on the ground, and we hear the strains of the music ahead.
They are all indications of the great party ahead. The party's been here each in its own place, but each of these things is indications of what's ahead. And as we follow that path, we suddenly get to a clearing in the woods and there's the party. It's bright and it's glorious. There's the music and the dance master is calling us all into the dance. And we understand what's there because all these hints along the way have said, "That's the party ahead." Now we see it in its fullness. And so we get these hints of grace along the way, these little pieces,
so that when we finally get to the party, we say, "Wow, here's the glory of grace for us. Here it is."
But it's a hayride. Party's not over. We're going on. More friends, more people, more neighbors, more towns to go to. And we're now in the party on the ride. Why do we see these hints of grace all along the way? So when we get to the party, we'll know the beauty of it and we will join the dance. So the rest of the world hears the music. Would you stand and let me dismiss you?
Now may the God of all grace
enfold you, redeem you, call you unto himself that you might join in the dance of his glory
and invite others to come to the goodness that is in him. In Jesus name. Amen. Go in peace.