Intown Community Church Sermons
Whose Song Are We Hearing?
- Well, good morning, we're looking this summer together at the Old Testament book of Isaiah. 66 chapters long. Today we're gonna use one song to tell a whole story. We'll use one song to tell the whole story of the book of Isaiah, kind of in a nutshell. We'll also be telling the whole story of the whole Bible. And in that sense, the whole story of the entire human race. All captured in one song, this song is a diss track. If you don't know what a diss track is, let me explain. Right, so imagine that you're a world famous music star and you have a breakup. Guess what you get to do now? You get to write a song that everybody will listen to and tell them just how bad your ex really is. Right, that's a diss track, disrespect. Or imagine you're a hip hop artist and you're involved in this years long feud about who's the greatest. And somebody lets out their song saying they think they're the greatest and then you get to put out your own diss track and say you ain't all that. Right, that's a diss track. The earliest diss track I know of is written by God. It's here in Isaiah chapter 14. Somebody who thinks they're all that has shown up and God is saying, hey, there's a day coming when you get to sing a new song. This is in the context of God's work among his people through the Old Testament as they forget him and stray away from him and begin to trust all the good things that they have in life rather than trusting God. He warns them, I can't let you keep enjoying those good things because they're taking you away from me. So I will root you up out of your land and another nation will come and take you captive and take you away into exile. And that will happen in two stages. The northern tribes of the Kingdom of Israel, you'll be captured, taken away by Assyria. And then 136 years later, the Babylonian Empire is the big kid on the block and they're gonna come and take captive the remaining tribes, Judah and Benjamin. And you will be led into exile. That second exile will be led by the King of Babylon. The King of Babylon, after this happens, he will think that he is the greatest and my people. This is the song that you will get to sing. This is the ultimate diss track that you get to sing to the King of Babylon in the moment when it looks like the most powerful evil on the planet has triumphed. Now, Sonya's gonna come and read this song for us in a moment, we don't know how the song went. So we won't sing it. We will hear it read. I don't think Sonya's gonna wrap it. I think she's gonna read it. And you're gonna hear like it's gonna go through different verses like what will this song be like on the whole earth? And then what would this song be like down in the grave? The people who have been killed by this mighty King of Babylon, what will they have to say when they get to sing this song about him? And then up in heaven where he said he deserved to sit because he's basically a God on this earth. And we're looking around and going, I don't see you. What would the song be like up in heaven? And then at the very end, Sonya's gonna read the end of the song and he's gonna tell us who's really the greatest. Let's listen, thank you Sonya. - Good morning. Our sermon scripture today is Satan from Isaiah, chapter 14 verses three to 15 and then verses 26 to 27. When the Lord has given you rest from your pain and turmoil and the hard service with which you were made to serve, you will take up this taunt against the King of Babylon. How the oppressor has seized, the insolent fury seized. The Lord has broken the staff of the wicked, the scepter of rulers that struck the people in wrath with on season blows, that rule the nations in anger with unrelenting persecution. The whole earth is at rest and quiet. They break forth into singing. The cypresses rejoice at you with the cedars of Lebanon, saying, since you were laid low, no woodcutter comes up against us. Shield beneath is stirred up to meet you when you come. It rouses the shades to greet you, all who were leaders of the earth. It raises from their throats all who were kings of the nations. All of them will answer and say to you, you too have become as weak as we. You have become like us. Your pump is brought down to shield the sound of your hops. Maggots are laid as a bed beneath you and worms are your covers. How are you falling from heaven, old day star, son of dawn? How you are cut down to the ground, you who lay the nations low. You said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven. Above the stars of God, I will set my throne in high. I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will make myself like the most high, but you're brought down to shield to the far reaches of the pit. This is a purpose that is purposed concerning the whole earth. And this is the hand that is stretched out over all the nations, for the Lord of hosts has purposed. And who will annul it? His hand is stretched out and who will turn it back. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. - Let's pray together briefly. The Lord, my rock, and my redeemer. May all my words and all of our thoughts bring glory to your name. Amen. Okay, disclaimer, I cannot say Isaiah as wonderfully as Sonya can. So I don't have the right accent to pull it off. So I'm gonna continue to say Isaiah with Sonya's permission. And if you wanna hear it pronounced properly, she will do that for you. What is this song saying, right? So you hear the feel, right? It doesn't say diss track anywhere. It doesn't say, you know, seeing this kind of song and rap battle kind of thing. But it uses the ancient equivalent as this song is called a taunt. Isaiah 14 verse four. There's gonna come a day when you'll be taken into exile, but then the Lord will give you rest from your pain and turmoil. And then on that great day, you will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon. You will sing this song mocking the power of this ruthless evil mighty ruler who has been brought low. What is the song saying? We'll ask that question and then we'll move on to another question. What story is the song telling? Let's start with what the song is saying. It's saying to the king of Babylon, your evil may seem unstoppable, but God can stop it. Now, who's the king of Babylon? Notice that no specific name is given. Probably the reason for that is that at the moment Isaiah writes this message, Babylon is not the mighty empire in the ancient Near East. At the moment, Isaiah writes this, the big dog is the Assyrian empire. And so there is no mighty emperor of the Babylonian empire to give a name to yet in history. God knows the future, he could have used that name. But interestingly enough, when Isaiah writes these words, Assyria is the dominant power. And Babylon was seen as such an influential center of culture and the arts and sophistication that even Assyrian leaders said, "I am the king of Babylon." So King of Babylon became this sort of symbolic way of saying, "I am the most important leader on the planet." I hold the key to power, I hold the key to culture, anything that needs to be influenced, it has to come through here. So a little bit like saying, where is the seat of power in the U.S. and go in, well, it's clearly Washington, D.C. And people from New York would be like, "Excuse me?" In some ways, New York City is more of a place of intellectual and cultural influence than Washington, D.C. And so in the same way that New York City today might symbolize this, now we're not talking about government power, we're talking about a different kind of power. King of Babylon had that same kind of sense in the ancient world. And here is God saying that the people who pulled the levers on what's considered intellectual and cultural sophistication joined with political and economic power when they begin to do evil and it looks like nothing can stop them, God can stop it. Listen to the language again. Verse four, one day the oppressor will cease, the insolent fury of this evil leader, King of Babylon, symbolizing this kind of whole corrupt system will cease. The Lord is able to break the staff of the wicked, the scepter of rulers. You know, in the ancient world, the king's scepter was the symbolic representation of their power and might. And you couldn't touch the king's scepter, you couldn't get close enough to where the scepter is stored and survive to tell the tale, someone would cut you down first. And here's God saying, oh, I can get close enough and I can break it. That scepter, that verse six says, struck the peoples in wrath with unceasing blows. It looked like it would never end. This mighty evil power that ruled the nations in anger with unrelenting persecution, it will come to an end, God can stop it. And when he does, there will be celebration on the earth and under the earth and above the earth. Celebration on the earth, and you hear this kind of interesting metaphor, right? The trees are singing, nobody's coming to cut us down now. You had your soldiers and slaves come cut us down to make more sieve ramps and make more weapons and build more teary wheels out of our branches and timbers. And now you have been put in your place and we're rejoicing. The whole planet is rejoicing, that evil has been stopped in its tracks. And then Isaiah shifts to saying, what would be like under the earth and all these fallen kings who are down in Shiel, that's a Hebrew word that means grave, kind of the realm of the dead. Some people say, Shiel, is that the same as hell? Well, not quite, let's do and do that. But here they are saying, this mighty king killed us and now he's in his own grave, he's no stronger than the rest of us. Turns out in the end, the mightiest human being is no stronger than anybody else. Lookers, there's a great equalizer called the grave. That's coming for all of us. And then you get this kind of last verse of the diss track, go in, hey man, you said you were so great that you're a God who deserved a place in heaven. I'm looking all around heaven and I don't see you here. King of Babylon, where are you? You boasted, you said that you deserved it, you said that you were the bearer of light, the day star. You were like the planet Venus, that's day star in verse 12 is an ancient name for that planet that looks so bright when it comes up in the morning. It looks so bright in the evening sky, Venus is there all day long, most days, but you can't see it, do you know why? Venus comes too close to the sun and the sun is the real source of light. And the thing that looks so bright is completely overshadowed. Hey, King of Babylon. Hey, culture, shapers, influencers, hey, intellectual elite, you think you've got it all figured out but held up beside the real wise one, the God of this universe? You're nothing. It seems so strong and powerful, held up against the might of God, you're nothing, you fade into dimness, you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low. We're looking for you in the heavens above the clouds where you said you belonged in verse 15, actually where we find you is yeah, down there in the grave, you're buried in the pit. This song is telling us that God's people may seem small and insignificant. Remember how the song began. Verse three, "When the Lord has given you rest "from your pain and turmoil, "God is saying to his people, "there may be moments when "mighty powers inflict pain and turmoil on you, "and in those moments you seem small and insignificant. "There may be moments "when it looks like "you have been completely defeated. "There may be moments when God himself "seems powerless and irrelevant. "Because if God is that powerful, "why would his people experience pain and turmoil? "In those moments it looks like he himself is absent, "but nothing can stop the story he is writing." That's why the song ends this way. It's something you read for us, a couple of verses from the end of Isaiah 14. This is the purpose. God's purpose is the purpose that governs the whole earth. His is the hand that has stretched out over all the nations. He is not weak and insignificant. He is not absent. If his hand is stretched out, nobody can turn it back. That's what the song is saying. In the moments when we, as God's sons and daughters, his servants, his people feel most abandoned, most hopeless, most small, most insignificant. He says, "Go ahead and start practicing. "Rehearse this song, 'cause one day you'll get to sing it." You'll get to sing a song about how his hand couldn't be stopped. All right, so if God's story can't be stopped, what story is this song telling? What was the song saying? We've seen it, heard it, but what story is it telling? I'm gonna summarize the story this way. We're gonna kinda build it up. It's the story of arrogance and judgment. A story of promise and commitment. You might be going, "Don't aren't those two words for the same thing? "Stay tuned." A story of faith and repentance. A story. A story. Patience and resilience. Let's unpack the story a little bit. What story is this song telling? What story is Isaiah, all 66 chapters ultimately telling? What story is the whole Bible telling? There are lots of ways to summarize this story. We're gonna do it this way today. What is the story that God is writing about the entire human race? Could summarize it this way. It begins with arrogance and judgment. People created who ought to be honoring God, a creator as the Lord and ruler over everything, the one who stamped his image on us. We ought to be reflecting what he truly is like, and at some point we turn astray, and we begin this kind of arrogant cycle of saying, "Well, maybe we could just do better without him." Or maybe it would be better if it was my image stamped on the whole planet rather than his. Maybe if everybody would do what I think is right. For the reasons I think it should be done, life would be better. It's a story of arrogance and judgment. The arrogance of God's people in the Old Testament led to judgment. That judgment took the form of exile. First into Assyria, then into Babylon for a smaller group later. Here God is saying, Babylon's arrogance will also lead to judgment. The king of Babylon and every wicked, powerful, mighty empire he represents and symbolizes in the ancient world and throughout scripture. Babylon becomes a code word for this kind of evil arrogance joined with power that looks unstoppable. That arrogance will lead to judgment one day. All human arrogance will lead to judgment. This is not just a song for the king of Babylon and the rest of us can sit back and relax because God tells us in verse 26. This is the purpose that is purpose for the whole earth. This is the hand that stretched out over all the nations. There's a story that involves arrogance and judgment. If you think about it, this story begins at the very beginning of the biblical story with the human race set in this setting where they have everything they need. Adam and Eve living in the garden of Eden, needing nothing. Having everything that they could wish for and thinking, maybe it could be better than this. God, what you've done for us is nice, we appreciate it, but we think we could do a little bit better for ourselves. And that arrogance results in exile from the garden. And the whole human race is exiled from the closeness to God that he designed us to have, exiled from the closeness to one another that we're meant to experience. It results even in conflict with the natural world. The planet is not always at home with all of our choices and decisions. We are not always kind in the way we treat God's other creatures so that you get the trees singing. Yay, the king of Babylon can't send his soldiers to swing their axes at us anymore. We're sent into exile, it's a story of arrogance and judgment. But then it becomes a story of promise and commitment where God says, you know what? I promise to put an end to pain and to evil. I promise to break the scepter of every power that disrupts the goodness of the world I have made. I will take my mighty hand that no one can stop and I will turn it toward you for your good. Even though in your arrogance you have rejected me and even though you deserve exile, judgment, I will turn that mighty hand toward you for your good. I promise I'll put an end to pain and evil and suffering and sorrow in this world. Here's where the word commitment comes in. Promise and commitment could seem like synonyms? I want to use both today because I want to say not only did God make that promise, God is so committed to that promise that he's saying I will do whatever it takes to keep this promise. I will do whatever it takes to make sure that this story into which the human race has interjected arrogance, worthy of judgment. I will make sure that's not the end of the story. I will do whatever it takes to turn my hand toward you for your good in every way for eternity. I will do whatever it takes. This story is ultimately a story of Jesus. Jesus is God demonstrating that commitment. Jesus is God's way of saying I did whatever it takes. And in the end it turns out that what it's gonna take is me coming into this world in flesh and blood and suffering and dying to bear all the judgment that your arrogance deserves. And it's gonna take the Son of God dying and rising from the dead and shattering the power of the grave forever. It's gonna take that to put this world back on its right axis. And I told you I would do it and I've done it. That's the story that Isaiah is telling us about. It's a story in which the mightiest hand in the universe turns against people like you and me, but it turns against Jesus himself. That's the crucifixion. It's God turning his mighty hand against his own son in our place. And then that mighty hand turns back toward Jesus for good. That's the resurrection. For good and blessing. It's a story of faith and repentance too. Faith and repentance is when we say I'm owning it and I'm all in. Repentance is the I own it part. God, I know that I have lived like a loyal citizen in Babylon where the law of the day is busfulness and arrogance and pride where the law is harshness and cruelty where the law is wanting things my way and kind of doing whatever it takes to get that. I have lived like a loyal citizen that kind of kingdom I own it. That is me. So I cannot believe that you would include me in your promises of goodness like this. I cannot believe that you'd be willing to turn your hand toward me for my good. I can't believe that you would do whatever it takes to keep loving me. I can't believe that you would give your son to accomplish that. The gap between who I am and how you're treating me is so big I can't begin to imagine it. So if there's a love like this, I am all in. I own it. I don't deserve to be part of this story but if you're telling a story like that, I'm all in. Sign me up. That's faith and repentance right there. Now, it sounds better when we give them kind of fancy Bible word names like faith and repentance. But it's ultimately that description of going, "When God tells me that I don't deserve to be part of this story, I just own it." I'm like, "Yeah, you're right." I don't even fully understand how far outside this story I ought to be. That's repentance. But if you're telling me that I can trust your son and be part of this, I'm all in, count me in. I want every promise you got. I want the fullest version of that promise. And if I get it through Jesus, I'm all in. That's faith. Are you part of that story? You should celebrate it. Are you not part of that story? Come on in. It's great. It's a story that leads ultimately to patience and resilience. This is God saying, "If you embrace my promises with faith and repentance, I will give you strength. Strength to endure even the worst kinds of circumstances with courage." Remember, put yourself back in the moment when Isaiah first wrote this song down and gave it to the people. He was saying, "You are going to be uprooted from your land, taken as slaves into a foreign place. You will not be home for 70 years." And I want you to have courage to face even those hard circumstances. God is saying, "I will give you resilience. Patience to endure the worst circumstances of courage and resilience so that in conditions that are designed to destroy your faith in me, you will actually come out with stronger faith." That's what resilience is. Viblically, not just a bouncing back, but a bouncing back stronger than before. More energy coming out than was put in. Why? Because God's part of the story. That's what you and I need today. We live in cultural conditions that are designed to destroy faith in anything supernatural, designed to destroy faith in Jesus as the Son of God, designed to destroy faith in anybody who could rescue arrogant people who need rescuing, partly by the assumption that, well, I'm not one of those people and I don't need rescuing. Our culture is designed to destroy that faith and God is saying, "Let me make you a deal. I'll do whatever it takes to make you part of this story of goodness forever. And I will give you a kind of resilient strength that even in conditions designed to destroy faith in me, that faith will grow stronger." You may have seen this firsthand. I've had opportunity to see more of it than I wanted this spring. As I watched my aunt June and I watched our brother, Dale Smith, both battling cancer, both of them have now passed away. And both of them were in these circumstances, that if there's ever any set of conditions that ought to destroy your confidence in Jesus, I would think that when your own body is destroying itself, attacking itself every day. And the best technology and the best physicians can't do anything to change it. And everything around you seems to be unraveling. And in that moment, when I would sit with my aunt June or talk with her on the phone, it's like she's encouraging me. She wants to know how I'm doing. You sit with Dale and find out that you both love Indian food. Him partly because chemo made stuff hard to taste and the more spice the better. And find out that my faith in Jesus is stronger because I sat with Dale while he was looking deaf in the face every day. Where does that come from? Circumstances designed to destroy faith and yet that faith grows stronger. You and I want to be part of a story like that. Ultimately, it's a story of Christ. It's the story of Jesus. It's a story. It's for all kinds of people. It's for you if you haven't come to faith in Jesus yet. If you're not all in with Him yet because you can't really own your arrogance. So you're not sure that you need Him to be the solution to that arrogance. You haven't owned it yet. So you're not all in. Jesus is saying to you, I am inviting you. Jesus is saying to you right now. To become part of the story. If you've already come to faith in Him and repentance, you own it, you're in. And you're looking at the future and you're going, I just don't see how my faith will survive. I think there are too many things in this world designed to kill it and destroy it. And I'm going to do my best and limp along. But someday the fuel for faith is going to run dry. And I don't think I'll finish the race. Jesus is inviting you today to say. Listen to my promise. Listen to the promise that one day there will be an end to your pain and turmoil. That one day, one day, the powerful scepter of evil and the shadow of the grave will be broken for good. Because one day, Jesus came into our exile and he lived like he was not quite at home in this world full of evil. He died in rose again and he's singing a song. His song says, according to 1 Corinthians 15, "Hey, death, where's your victory now?" "Hey, grave, you got a mighty powerful sting. It lasted for three whole days." "Hey, grave, where's your sting?" Jesus is singing that song over you to draw yourself to him in faith and repentance for the first time. Jesus is singing that song over you today to give you stronger faith than you have ever had. So as you look to the unknowns of this world and wonder what's around the next corner, his mighty purpose, a hand stretched out, turned to you for your good forever. And nobody and nothing can turn it away. That's his promise.