Isaiah 63-64 • The Day of Vengeance

let's open our bibles tonight to the book of isaiah we're in isaiah chapter 63 and we have some more very incredible prophecies to go through tonight uh in our study i hope you have a bible if you don't we have some extras down or over by the between the doors there are a bunch of bibles there some over on the back beside the sound booth good to have a bible to look at so that you can see what we're going through here let's pray heavenly father we open our hearts to you tonight into the ministry of your word your word is true and we thank you lord for the prophecies that you've given lord this study of isaiah has been absolutely incredible and we pray that you'd continue to open our hearts to what you're saying tonight in the scriptures because we confess to you lord that without your holy spirit these are just words on a page but through the ministry of your spirit who is the teacher the one who enlightens this word comes alive and it is nourishment to our souls we pray that you would nourish us tonight we thank you and praise you in jesus precious name amen you know we're going to be talking tonight isaiah chapter 63 and and kind of these these chapters by the way go together i personally don't believe there should be a chapter division between 63 and 64 that we're going to be looking at tonight but there's some pretty incredible stuff that the prophet gets into here this evening concerning uh the the coming of the lord the the the battle of armageddon which takes place at the end of the tribulation period and so forth these are prophecies that that isaiah is going to cover here and he's talking about things that are yet future and this man wrote these things down 700 years before christ was born on the earth 700 years and yet he's talking about things that are still to come but are corroborated by many many other prophetic writers in the scripture this this chapter begins interestingly enough with a vision isaiah receives a vision of the messiah who he doesn't really refer to at this point as the messiah but we know him to be the messiah who is returning from victorious battle and the battle is the battle of armageddon you'll remember we've told you many times that at the conclusion of the tribulation period at the very end of that seven years the nations of the world are going to gather to completely obliterate israel and they are going to look like they are about to accomplish that and that is when jesus is going to return physically to the earth and the bible gives us many many statements about his physical return to the earth but that is going to begin a battle we call it the battle of armageddon and he's not going to talk about that battle interestingly enough he simply gives us a picture of the messiah after the battle who has been victorious over the kingdoms of the world this chapter interestingly enough begins with some questions and two answers that are given from the lord look at verse one with me it begins with the question who is this who comes from edom or at least from the direction of edom in crimsoned garments from basra basra was a chief city in edom and it says he who is splendid in his apparel marching in the greatness of his strength so there's the question and the lord himself responds by saying it is i speaking in righteousness mighty to save and so the lord speaks this glorious victorious response it is i coming speaking in righteousness mighty to save and then the second question is posed why is your apparel red and your garments like his who treads in the wine press you know when they would press the the grapes the wine press was basically a big kind of a hollowed out rock and they would put all the grapes in there and there would be a hole that would be drilled in the bottom of it and the people would get in there with their bare feet and they would tread the grapes and of course you know you've probably seen that in pictures movies and things like that and uh and the the juice would drain out and of course they would stain their garments and yet the the the uh the writer here asks who is this whose garments are are uh are appearing as if he has tread the wine press and he says here's his response in in verse three i have trodden the wine press alone and from the peoples no one was with me i trod them in my anger and trampled them in my wrath their life blood spattered on my garments and stained all my apparel for the day of and this is very important guys look at verse 4 for the day of vengeance was in my heart and my year of redemption had come in other words my time of redemption now this is really this is really incredible because the lord is saying here the day of vengeance has finally arrived now he's speaking of course of that time when the wrath of god is poured out through the course of the tribulation period culminating in that battle of armageddon at the very end but that day of vengeance is very important for us to see here because i don't know if you remember the last time we got together and we studied isaiah we were in chapter 61 and you'll remember that there was a prophecy given then that jesus actually quotes in the synagogue in nazareth and i want to show it to you on the screen just so you don't have to turn back so we can see it all together you'll remember back in chapter 61 the spirit of the lord god is upon me because the lord yahweh has anointed me to bring good news to the poor he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to those who are bound to proclaim the year of the lord's favor look at this last part of that quotation and the day of vengeance of our god did you catch that that connects with what we just read here in chapter 63. the lord's day of vengeance has come now what's interesting about this this whole idea is that when jesus quoted this on in the synagogue in nazareth he left off the last part did you guys ever notice that he actually ends his quotation by saying and to proclaim the year of the lord's favor he didn't quote the rest because it's up to proclaiming the year of the lord's favor that pertained to his first coming if you read on in that sentence it now pertains to his second coming the day of vengeance his first coming was not a day of vengeance it was a day of the lord's favor it was the literally the the call of people to hearken to the kingdom of god and yet now isaiah is prophesying the day of the lord's vengeance this is the day of wrath and i know that this is challenging for a modern audience to kind of hear when we talk about god's wrath it's it's challenging for a lot of people god's wrath you know it's like why why what is the what is the big deal about god's wrath i mean why is why is he so wrathful why is god's wrath going to be poured out i mean you know he he forgave us who came to cry why can't he just forgive everybody what's the deal with with wrath you know it's interesting we've talked about this before but you and i turn on the news and we watch about what's happening in the world or we open up our laptop or whatever and read whatever news service we happen to be tuning into at the time and we read about what's happening the tragedies the the corruption the murders the rapes the children being sold into sexual slavery and eventually i have to tell you that i i get enough and i can't i can't do any more i have to turn it off i have to shut it down i don't actually get into the news nearly as much as i used to i found that it was actually eroding my faith and my joy i've turned it off to a large degree and i've been better for it i think do you ever stop to think that god can't turn it off every day every second of every day 24 hours a day seven days a week he sees every single act of mankind against mankind and against god every single day and the you know i'm a sinner and i have a hard time taking it in small doses can you imagine what the pure holy righteous heart of god does with a constant barrage of the sinful activity of man do you think it grieves him do you think that's an understatement so do i and so god has set a day for his wrath to be poured out now what's interesting about that is that even in the midst of his wrath and that wrath is entirely deserved even in the midst of that wrath he's made a way for us to be saved he has literally bent over backwards to provide a means by which we would never have to experience the wrath of god all we have to do is just embrace the finished work of his son on the cross and say i believe i accept that's for me i'm a sinner i put jesus on that cross myself i accept what he did for me boom you know what the wrath of god is gone for me and for you if we do just that isn't that crazy but there is a day there is a day that he has set out for judgment and vengeance in fact he goes on in verse 5 to say i looked but there was no one to help i was appalled but there was no one to uphold so look at this my own arm and remember arm in the old testament refers to strength brought me salvation and my wrath upheld me i trampled down the peoples in my anger i made them drunk in my wrath and i poured out their lifeblood on the earth he says my own arm brought me salvation and that's salvation you know i've told you many times in the old testament the word that we translate salvation can also mean deliverance and so it can refer here to the deliverance that jesus is going to perform for the nation of israel to pull them out of this destructive attack at the very end but you know the word salvation here can also speak of eternal salvation and either way either way whether he's talking about the deliverance of israel or the deliverance of all those who put their faith in jesus the point is what he's saying is my own arm brought it about in other words my own strength brought it about the lord is saying here that he alone is the one who makes salvation happen you with me that's something you got to hang on to i mean hang on to that he alone he alone he alone and that's the emphasis of these verses he atones for our sin alone he judges the world alone he alone is the savior he alone is the judge alone okay i mean honestly guys that's one of the reasons why the roman catholic doctrine of purgatory stands in such stark contrast to the message of the word of god because it's essentially when you think about purgatory you know in in the roman catholic idea of purgatory it's a place where you go and work off your sins certain sins if those didn't get forgiven you know while you were here on this earth you've got to go work them off after death in this place called purgatory well essentially what that does is it takes the work of salvation out of the hands of jesus alone and it characterizes his work on the cross as being insufficient to handle all of our sin because there's some we got to go take care of he didn't take care of it all apparently so we got to go work it off and nothing could be further from the truth this passage says he did it all he always says my own arm worked deliverance my own arm worked salvation it was complete i love what he said on the cross it is finished sometimes you know i get emails from christians who are convinced that god is punishing them for their past sins happens a lot a lot people will go through something whatever it may be some some place of difficulty and they will and they'll just come out and say to me and i appreciate the honesty but they'll say to me pastor paul i really truly believe that god is punishing me for my sin i've i've lived a really rotten life and you know i came to the lord with a long laundry list of sins and so forth and and now i believe that god is punishing me and every time i get a note like that i got to tell you my heart breaks for those people because you know they've become convinced that god's punishing them i wish they were half as convinced that what jesus did on the cross was enough because if they were you know that convinced that what jesus did was enough they wouldn't be worrying about god punishing them and i have to you know tell them you are not being punished for your sin christians can i say that to you too you are not being punished for your sin jesus was punished for your sin and he did it alone and he did it completely and it was finished you say well then what what how do i explain some of the rotten things that go on you know in my life well the bible does say that he chastens us you say well what's the difference chastening punishing who cares no no no no very different things very very different things god chastens us for our good as a father who loves his children he disciplines us in that form of chastening listen punishment is always for condemnation and we know that that can't be what he's doing to you because as paul wrote in his letter to the romans there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in christ jesus right romans 8 1. that should have been your memory verse way back when because that helps you and i remember oh i'm not being punished because punishment deals with condemnation jesus was already condemned for you he was condemned on the cross bearing your sin he took the condemnation so you would never have to so what you're dealing with from time to time is the chastening hand of the lord but you are to consider it an act of his love for you and that's a completely different thing from condemnation listen condemnation comes from the enemy the enemy loves to condemn and so what happens is you go through a difficult situation or circumstance and the enemy comes along to condemn he says i know why this is happening to you you're a scumbag and you're finally getting what you deserve bottom line and you know what we believe it just like that oop swallow it down hook line and sinker even with the word of god speaking to us as it does saying there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in christ jesus even with that we feel condemned pastor why do i feel condemned because the enemy lied to you and you believed it that's not that's not rocket science you guys we give in to those kinds of deceptions all the time regularly and we that's why we have to go back to the word of god and remind ourselves about what it says because we need an adjustment right just like you're going to the spiritual chiropractor we're all coming into church you know walking in a corkscrew you know and we're like oh man the enemy's been beating me up so we get back to the word of god and we get back into alignment with the truth god loves me god hears my prayer he's for me he loves me as a father yes he chastens and disciplines me but it's for my good that i might be formed into the image of his son a completely different sort of a situation isn't it than that feeling of condemnation you know like you're under god's thumb so it's a completely different thing now verses 7 through 14 i'll just tell you is a beautiful recollection of the mercy of the lord and it actually begins by saying in verse 7 i will recount the steadfast love of the lord the praises of the lord according to all that the lord has granted us and the great goodness to the house of israel that he has granted them according to his compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love you know why i love versus verse seven here because it's it stands in such stark contrast to what people normally think of as god in the old testament i've heard so many people say i just don't really like to study the old testament because god's always mad and he's always like nuking somebody or whatever the ground's opening up or or they're dropped dead where they stand or god's saying you know you're a sinner and this and that and so i just kind of stay away from you know the old testament well i give you verse 7 again as proof that that is not always the case yes god shows himself as holy but that happens in the new testament too he he shows himself as very holy no i like to hang out with jesus he's always telling people they're okay really i remember jesus saying things like and you too will die in your sins if you don't repent those are the kind of things jesus would say so you know the holiness of god is consistent through the whole bible old and new but look at here verse 7 again i will recount the steadfast love of the lord not just the love of the lord the steadfast love of the lord he says the praises that are due to the lord according to all that he has granted us all the incredible goodness that he's poured out to the house of israel and according to his what compassion according to the abundance the overflowing abundance of his steadfast love look at verse 8 for he said surely they are my people children who will not deal falsely and he became their savior all their affliction well check this out guys in all their affliction he was afflicted and the angel of his presence saved them in his love and in his pity he redeemed them he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old how did they respond to him verse 10 they rebelled they rebelled against that kind of goodness and they grieved his holy spirit therefore he turned to be their enemy and himself fought against them then he remembered the days of old of moses and his people where is he who brought them up out of the sea with the shepherds of his flock where is he who put in the midst of them his holy spirit who caused his glorious arm read that against strength to go at the right hand of moses who divided the waters before them to make for himself an everlasting name who led them through the depths like a horse in the desert they did not stumble like livestock that go down into the valley the spirit of the lord gave them rest so you led your people to make for yourself a glorious name what i like about this prayer is that it comes to that place of remembrance and it is it is being spoken from the voice of someone who has experienced defeat did you catch that in the midst of those verses he speaks like somebody who has experienced genuine defeat and yet is now recognizing uh god's incredible goodness to the nation of israel now the rest of this chapter begins a prayer of confession and this is what's going to spill over into the next chapter and continue there but here in verse 15 we we see this beautiful prayer of a godly individual praying about the sin of his nation and and the reason i like this is because this is the kind of prayer i think that we can pray for our nation as well he begins this way look down from heaven and see from your holy and beautiful habitation where are your zeal in your might the stirring of your inner parts and your compassion are held back from me for you are our father though abraham does not know us and israel does not acknowledge us you o lord are our father our redeemer from of old is your name oh lord why do you make us wander from your ways and harden our hearts so that we fear you not return for the sake of your servants the tribes of your heritage your holy people held possession for a little while our adversaries have trampled down your sanctuary we have become like those over whom you have never ruled like those who are not called by your name that last verse is particularly poignant because the the the the prayer confesses just that agony of the fact that we're like a completely atheistic nation we're we're like a nation that never knew you in the first place we're like a nation that has become so godless that you you wouldn't even know that we we ever heard about you in the first place man i hope you know i pray that that's not what happens to the united states of america you know i know that we're already considered a post-christian nation but i i pray that that the references to god in this country are not the things that are carved in stone on monuments around scattered around washington dc and that's all there is i pray that's not all there is i pray there's more i pray there's a people who long to know the lord and walk with the lord chapter 64 continues with this incredible prayer that this prayer of national confession and repentance and he goes on here in verse 1 saying oh that you would rend the heavens and come down that the mountains might quake at your presence and i want you to stop there for a moment because i believe this is the true cry of the child of god throughout the ages it was the cry of the righteous israelites it's the cry of god's people today we see it in the book of revelation let me show you on the screen from revelation chapter 22 the spirit and the bride say come rend the heavens tear apart the heavens and come let the one who hears say or repeat come that's the heart it's the heart of the spirit it's the heart of the church lord come you see it here even in isaiah lord come he says i i wish that you would come and that the mountains would would quake again like they did we haven't seen that in our lifetime he says verse 2 as when fire kindles brush wood and the fire causes water to boil to make your name known to your adversaries and that the nations might tremble at your presence and that's a prayer that's being held up for when jesus returns the nations of the world will tremble at his presence when you did awesome things that we did not look for you came down the mountains quaked at your presence have you ever had the lord do something that you weren't looking for him to do isn't that crazy you know you pray and you pray and you pray sometimes for god to do something that you want him to do and that prayer seems to kind of go unanswered and then the lord does something that you never asked for something that you never expected him to do is just that he he pops into that situation sovereignly and just moves and it's undeniable the lord has moved and you're kind of like wow that's incredible that's amazing i've had i've had that happen in my life on occasion where the lord picked me up and and rescued me out of situations that i never asked him to rescue me out of in fact i didn't even know i was in a situation until later on and then i could find i looked back at this thing and wow thank you god for taking care of me i didn't even know my fat was in the fire didn't even realize it and that's what the the the prayer is is saying here thank you lord for those times you did those awesome things that we didn't even look for verse 4 says from of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear nor i no i have seen a god beside you who acts for those who wait for him if that's not underlined in your bible probably should be that especially that area there the god who acts for those who wait for him great said you know somebody wrote me a note just this last week said pastor paul what does it mean to wait on the lord i love it when people ask me bible questions because i got to go back and think about it myself it's good for me but i uh i thought about that i thought wow this is a really important question you know earlier in isaiah you'll remember that we were told that those who wait upon the lord shall renew their strength they'll mount up with wings as eagles well yeah that's pretty cool passage but it's all predicated on waiting on the lord so we better figure out what waiting on the lord is and so i thought to myself that's a really good question i'm glad they asked and i wrote back and i i basically said waiting on the lord is refraining from stepping out in the power and strength of self and instead telling the lord that my confidence is in you and i'm going to trust you for deliverance i am not going to work my own deliverance we do that all the time you know we have a situation that is pressing and we become panicked we become you know fearful about it and so what do we do we just step into the fray and we work out our own deliverance here's the problem with that sometimes it works sometimes we're successful actually delivering ourselves and i say that that's a bad thing because it becomes very much easier to just step out and do that again and again and again and so now every time we face a difficult situation we've just kind of gotten we've grown into this habitual sort of action where i just fix it i just fix it and you know some of us are resolvers i don't know if you're a resolver or not but that's part of my personality unfortunately so i i have to really really watch this all the resolvers in the room you you guys are the ones that have a hard time going to bed at night until things are taken care of until things are squared away right and and so we resolvers we have a a special kind of a temptation that we can enter into very easily to step in to the arena that is god's to take care of and we begin to work out our own sort of deliverance and uh and again it becomes habitual and then and then finally we reach a situation where there's nothing we can do or we try to fix it ourselves you know kind of like jacob i love reading about jacob in the book of genesis because he's so like me or i like him trying to fix things trying to fix things in his own strength trying to work it out you know and then we get to a place where there's nothing we can do and then what happens there's this wrestling match with god where we have to kind of find out that even though we've been wrestling with god and he'll allow us to wrestle with him for a season he comes to that point where the sun comes up and he just simply touches us and the fight is over it's done all he had to do was touch us and it's like i can't fight anymore and i'm reminded oh yeah i'm a weak idiot i i i obviously lost sight of that because i've been stepping into god's arena and trying to work out problems in my own strength well that's the opposite of waiting on the lord waiting on the lord is not sitting and doing nothing because anybody who has continued to put your hope and trust and confidence in god knows that that is a very active sort of a action on your part it's not passive you are constantly putting your faith in god lord i trust in you i refuse to step into the middle of this situation and fix it on my own so what is the what is the promise that's given to us there in verse four and that's the part i wanted you to to kind of highlight god acts on behalf of those who wait for him okay he acts on behalf of those who wait pastor paul i've been praying about this and i didn't get an answer you mean yet you mean yet you didn't get an answer yet how long you been praying two weeks where in the world did you did someone tell you that two weeks is as long as anybody should ever have to go keep praying keep pressing i had somebody write me too another another question this week how long should i pray how long should i keep praying for a situation for i think it was they were talking about a deal regarding like healing or something like that how long should i pray for healing or or or you know because the lord hasn't done anything so or at what point do i just kind of consider that my my my physical issue is a thorn in the flesh like paul's thorn in the flesh and i wrote back that person i rhymed i reminded him i said listen paul did not believe that his issue was the thorn in the flesh simply because god hadn't answered him he didn't deduce that from silence god spoke to him jesus spoke to paul and said no stop asking it's there for a purpose it's to keep your feet on the ground son and that's why paul went on to say because of all these incredible revelations that i've been receiving throughout my the course of my life in order to keep me from becoming conceited now i understand he gave me a thorn in the flesh to keep me grounded to keep me understanding that i'm a human being okay i get it but god showed him that that's why he stopped praying about his thorn in the flesh so don't don't don't kind of look at that thing and go well i guess paul eventually just concluded it was a thorn in the flesh no that's what jesus told him you keep praying you keep praying till you get the answer whatever the answer may be persevere in prayer continue to wait on the lord doesn't matter how long keep waiting on the lord god's timetable is rarely in sync with our own rarely in fact i can't remember a time in my life when my timetable was the same as god's he's continuing to talk about the blessings of the man who walks with the lord waits on the lord verse 5 he says you meet him in that cool in that a neat image you meet him you meet the one who joyfully works righteousness and that means is living his life to please you not self those who remember you in your ways behold he says no you were angry and we sinned we we deserved it in our sins we have been a long time and shall we be saved he's kind of asking that rhetorical question will deliverance come he says we all have become like one who is unclean and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment or your bible may say filthy rags i want you to notice there that it doesn't say that all of our sins are like filthy garments or polluted rags or something like that he says our righteous deeds are like that that means the best you and i can do is like a polluted garment that's kind of a wake up comment isn't it i mean we start to kind of think that we've kind of got this serving god thing dialed in he's probably pretty happy with everything i'm doing but alongside the absolute purity and holiness of the lord the best that you and i can do by comparison in the power of the flesh is polluted and unclean you know it's basically what it's talking about all of our righteous acts all righteous acts i had somebody ask me one time does that mean god doesn't appreciate what i do you got to understand he doesn't expect you to do things in the flesh he's given you his spirit that you might walk in the spirit and accomplish things according to the power of the spirit and when we do that because we're connected to him we begin to do things which have an eternal value when we do things in the flesh they have a temporal value and they cannot please god the man who walks in the flesh cannot please god the man who walks in the spirit is pleasing to god so our most righteous acts of self are like polluted garments he goes on to say in the middle kind of the end of verse six there we all fade like a leaf because of obviously our sins and our iniquities like the wind take us away and that's a very poetic reference to how death comes to all because of sin verse seven there's no one who calls upon your name that's interesting you might say well i don't think that's true i mean i've heard people call on the name of the lord i i think i remember at some point in my life myself calling on the name of the lord so what does he mean when he says there's no one who calls upon your name is he just kind of being down is he just kind of being negative i think this is a statement he's comparing sinful human man and and and completely eliminating the the whole idea of the grace of god and the power of god and the drawing work of the holy spirit and apart from that in our flesh no one no one calls upon the name of the lord we don't call upon the name of the lord apart from him even you guys see that's the incredible thing about grace the grace that god gives us to live our lives we even gives us grace to call upon him that even calling on his name is not a credit to your account that is through the spirit jesus said no one comes to me unless the father draws him there's this work of the spirit that is always going on so there's no one who in and of themself by their flesh calls upon the name of the lord nobody who rouses himself to take hold of you for you've hidden your face from us and have made us melt in the hand of our iniquities but now o lord you are our father we are the clay and you are our potter we are the work of your hand that verse right there verse 8 is an important one to meditate on there is a place a very important place that every christian has to come to at some point in their walk with jesus where they recognize the hand of the potter and not just the hand of the potter but that they themselves are the clay in his hand that is a very important determination realization revelation that we all come to and we begin to then see what happens in our lives and the difficulties that we come to as the work of god's hand rather than just some random acts of evil or bad luck or karma or whatever you want to call it but that i am in the hands of god and he's the potter i'm the clay it's a pretty incredible idea verse 9 be not so terribly angry oh lord and remember not iniquity forever behold please look we are all your people holy cities your holy cities have become a wilderness zion has become a wilderness jerusalem a desolation our holy and beautiful house where our fathers praised you has been burned by fire remember something when isaiah wrote this the temple was still standing this is prophetic and all our pleasant places have become ruins will you restrain yourself at these things o lord will you keep silent and afflict us so terribly wow you just you can just you just feel the heart can't you of that prayer that prayer is so intimate so passionate so necessary so beautiful you know to recognize lord we need you we need you you

Channel: Calvary Chapel Ontario

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Keywords: Bible, Bible teaching, Thru-the-Bible, verse by verse, Calvary Chapel, Bible study, Christianity, New Testament, Old Testament

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Length: 44min 27sec (2667 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 05 2020