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“What will you do on the
day of reckoning, when Isaiah 10:3 Having preached one week from Isaiah 9, “and He will be called Wonderful, Counsellor…….”, I then went on to preach from chapter 11, “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse.” I was surprised when the youngest member of our congregation, a five year old little boy, came up to me at then end of the service and asked “When will you preach on chapter 10?” I explained that unlike the study we were doing in Luke, I was just taking extracts from Isaiah. It is a long book in the Old Testament with sixty-six chapters and to preach on it verse by verse would be a tour de force. Our normal practice at Beech Hill is to go through the books of the Bible verse by verse and we intersperse this with more topical preaching and teaching and even more variety comes from our visiting speakers and conversational Bible study. So back to Harry’s question, I felt my answer was very lame and went home to look again at chapter 10 of Isaiah. The first questions are a real shock. “What will you do on the day of reckoning when disaster comes from afar? To whom will you run for help? Where will you leave your riches? Nothing will remain but to cringe among the captives or fall among the slain.” It looks like a passage for us today and yet it was written 2700 years ago to a people in the Middle East. This is the Bible you see. It speaks to every generation, to every man and woman, to every circumstance of human life. Sometimes its message is one of blessed relief and comfort and other times the trumpet calls us clearly to look at ourselves and turn, turn, turn. In Isaiah’s day God’s people were divided. Those in the north worshipped false and pagan gods and made common cause with historic enemies. God said through Isaiah that He would bring down the Assyrians, a mighty and ruthless empire, to fall in judgement upon those who persecuted His people. In turn, bloated with wealth and power Assyria too would fall under God’s judgement. “Therefore the Lord, the Lord Almighty will send a wasting disease upon His sturdy warriors; under his pomp a fire will be kindled like a blazing flame.” Assyria is no more, just remains in a barren land. Why such judgement and can we fall under such as this? The Assyrians had forgotten that God is the Creator, the Sustainer of all things. He is the ruler of this earth and He has the rights of ownership to all that is in it. We do not have the right to question Him, for we were made by Him and for Him. In verse 15 Isaiah asks “Does the axe raise itself above him who swings it, or the saw boast against him who uses it?” We live in a generation that has indeed forgotten God and any concept we have of Him is often moulded in our own image and he is a small and mean god, a god who is helpless in the face of men’s actions. Is it any wonder that few in our land have time for such a god. The Assyrian said, “I have done this by my hand and by my wisdom.” The Assyrian saw himself as mightier than God and so judgement fell. This is not the god we would love you to hear of in the chapel at Beech Hill. Here you will meet a God, whose arm is not shortened. He can reach even you. His grip is not loose. He can hold on to such as me and never let me go. Here is one in whom we live and move and have our being, who rules in all the kingdoms of men and whose ways are past finding out. Our God rides upon the storm, be it the storms of this world or the storms in my life. He can bid it all be still. He is not a little god at my beck and call answerable to my small intellect, but God Almighty who inhabits eternity, whose hand flung the stars into space and He lives in unutterable splendour. We could know nothing of Him, nothing, had His Son Jesus Christ not come to reveal Him, had He not given to us His perfect word. Now we can know Him. Now we can begin that everlasting journey, learning of Him, learning to love Him all the way. In the middle of Isaiah 1 we read “O my people who live in Zion, do not be afraid of the Assyrians”. The chapter 11 explodes with promise. Do read it for yourself and ask God to bless it to your souls. Verse 10 says: “In that day the Root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples; the nations will rally to Him, and His place of rest will be glorious. In that day the Lord will reach out His hand a second time to reclaim the remnant that is left of His people from Assyria…” Will you be a part of that remnant? Turn now to Christ in repentance. Ask Him to forgive you, sinner though you are and come into the glorious light of the children of God.
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For further details please contact MKW@bhbc.gb.com |
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