Celebrating God’s All-Conquering Grace (Isaiah Sermon 12)

There are a number of books that come along in a Christian’s life and change his entire way of thinking. Those things are good. It’s a gift of God, a gift of His grace, that teachers in the church can lift up a theme or an insight and so press it to our hearts that we’re never the same again. There have been a number of books like that in my life. Of course, I’m not speaking of the Bible here. That’s in a whole different category. The Bible lifts us up every day and speaks the blessing and promises and commands of God. I’m talking about books written by Christians that strengthen us in the Christian life. One of those books, for me, has been Randy Alcorn’s book “Heaven.”

This book has been an incredible blessing to me because it’s shown me how much I underestimate my heavenly reward and the power of meditating on heaven and heavenly life. I underestimate the joy that meditating on heaven gives, the strength and the energy for Christian service. Brothers and sisters in Christ, it is not a guilty pleasure for us to think a lot about heaven. It’s actually commanded. We should be thinking about heaven. Alcorn, in the beginning of his book, talked about somebody that was trying to swim across the English Channel. There was fog and the person failed in his attempt. After being pulled out and saved, he said, “I think I would have made it if I could’ve seen the shore.”

I think there’s such a lesson for us: we have to keep the shore in front of us every day. We’re going to make it, friends. We’re going to be there someday. We’re going to see God face to face, and we need to rejoice with great joy. What Alcorn’s book did for me more than anything was to blow away the idea that we’re going to be sitting on wispy clouds and bored for eternity, that we’re going to be strumming on these harps and chanting songs that after the first 100 years aren’t so exciting any more.  We’re going to be bored and we’re going to look around and all we’re going to see is white everywhere. We’re going to long for color and something under our feet other than this wispy cloud that we’re sitting on all the time.

This vision of heaven is actually satanic because it’s not true. We’re going to be resurrected in physical bodies, and we’re going to be living in a physically resurrected world called the New Heaven and the New Earth. Heaven is going to come down in the form of the New Jerusalem and God’s throne is going to be there. It’s all going to be so very real. We’re going to walk on resurrected feet on a resurrected earth. We’re going to see glory and we’re going to touch things and taste things and work and experience things that we can scarcely imagine.

I. For the Praise of His Glorious Grace

All of that’s wonderful. It’s glorious and it’s good. It’s good for us to meditate on these things. But you know something? In the end, the center of our joy in heaven will be worshipping and praising Almighty God. That actually hasn’t changed. I think what Alcorn’s book did for me was to help me to remember again that it’s impossible that worshipping God could be boring. It’s just impossible. Giving praise and honor and glory and worship to God could not possibly be boring. He is the One who created the physical world we live in now (even in its corrupted state) with all of its beauty and its variety. He is the One who created all the different kinds of birds and animals and plants, all of the things that we experience in the immense variety of our physical lives here on Earth.

All of that comes from someplace, friends. It comes from the mind of Almighty God, and it’s going to be even better in the New Heaven and New Earth. There will be even more clear and powerful displays of the glory of God’s thoughts, His character, His love for us, and His goodness towards us in Christ than we can possibly imagine. All we’re going to want to do all the time is praise Him and give Him honor and glory. And you know something? That’s what we are created to do. We just don’t do it well here on Earth.

Jonathan Edwards, in a sermon entitled, “Praise, One of the Chief Employments of Heaven,” says, first of all, there’s going to be employment in heaven. We’re not going to be sitting around doing nothing. We’re going to be busy in heaven, but the chief employment will be praising God. He said the reason we don’t do it now like we should is because we don’t really see God clearly now. We see Him through a glass darkly, but then we shall see face to face. How rich that will be when, at last, we see how much He has loved us in Christ. When we see the greatness of His mercy to us in Christ, how great it will be.

We know from scripture that God created the heavens and the earth for the praise of His glorious grace. Even more than that, we know from many places in scripture, but I think especially in Ephesians Chapter 1, that God has crafted the Salvation Plan. He has crafted redemptive history for the praise of His glorious grace so that we might worship Him for His grace to us in Christ Jesus. He says it three times in those verses. In Ephesians 1:3-6, it says, “Praise be to the God and Father our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every blessing in Christ. For He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will. To the praise of His glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One He loves.”

That’s why He did it all. That’s why He predestined us. That’s why He is working out “everything in conformity with the purpose of His will, in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of His glory. And you also were included in Christ” (Eph 1:11-13) so that you also might be for the praise of His glorious grace. That’s why he’s done it all. And so we are going to be worshipping God. We’re going to be praising Him. We’re going to be standing in awe as history itself unfolds with a fresh vision of what God did in it, of His amazing grace to a variety of sinners.

We’re going to see who we really were and how gracious God was to us. How plentiful were His effusions of grace to cover us moment by moment in all of our weakness and our acts of rebellion! We’re going to see in a fresh way just how much patience He showed to Saul of Tarsus, that blasphemer and murderer. Paul will be right there, astonished and amazed at the grace of God shown to him in Christ. We’re going to see God’s mercy and the tenderness that He showed here in this world, in space and time, to those who were weak and frail, broken by sin patterns, habits, drunkenness, sexual immorality, and all kinds of bad decisions. We’re going to see how gracious He was to each one of them. We’ll see how much power He has extended to each one of us to protect us from the evil one, all of his demonic intentions, and the powers and principalities that are against us.

How much power He extended to us in Christ so that we would make it through! We will know just what kind of power held us through it all so that we would not drift away, turn away, or fall away from Christ. We will see it all and that will be for the praise of His glory. That’s the center of heaven, this throne of God’s grace and the greatness of the praise that he deserves. But the second reason that God did it all is because He just loves us and wants us to be happy. The greatest thing He can give us is Himself so that we might see it, we might experience Him, we might be joyful in Him, and we might have experiences of pleasure and joy and satisfaction in Him. That’s the secondary reason.

It’s not first because man can’t be first. God is first. God is glorious and displayed as glorious. That’s the highest reason for everything. But secondly, that we would taste and see that the Lord is good, and that we would be tasting it forever. To this end, Jesus prayed in John 17:24, “Father, I want those whom you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.” “I want them to see it, Father. I want them to experience it. I want them to know how much you love me, and in me, how much you love them. I want them to see my glory.”

He prays for it. To this end, Christ entered the world. To this end, He lived a sinless life. To this end, He shed His blood on the cross. He died in our place. To this end, He was raised from the dead. To this end, He sent forth His Spirit to advance the gospel to the ends of the earth so that all of God’s chosen people from every tribe and language and people and nation might be there and see His glory. So that they might enjoy it, have a good time in His presence, eat at His table, and be refreshed for all eternity. That’s what He’s doing.

Now, as we come to Isaiah 12, we come therefore to a psalm of praise. Right in the middle of the unfolding of this magnificent prophecy, we get these six verses of praise. It just seems so appropriate. To the praise of His glorious grace and already in 11 chapters of Isaiah, we’ve seen just how much grace God had to show them and us. It’s just been an unfolding, a river of sin among the Jews and the Gentiles alike. We’ve seen in Isaiah 1 that God expressed his disgust at their religious system, this trampling of God’s courts, all the animal sacrifice without any righteousness at all, without any concern for the poor, the needy, the widow, and the orphan. This machinery of Jewish religiosity, it made Him sick.

He didn’t want any part of their prayers or their worship. In Isaiah Chapter 2, God speaks vigorously against their arrogance and their pride. All human arrogance will be cast down and the Lord alone will be exalted in that day. All the idols will totally disappear. Then in Isaiah 3, we saw the wickedness of Israel’s leaders: their kings, their magistrates, their prophets, their priests, and all of their leaders. We saw how they led Israel astray, how they confiscated the houses of the poor and needy. They used their positions of influence to dominate and crush God’s people. We saw how evil they were and how they led Israel astray.

In Isaiah 5, we saw how God likened the Jews, the Jewish nation, to a vineyard that was cleared of stones with a wall put around it and the choicest vines planted in it. That was the Jews in the promised land. God set up a watchtower. He watched out for them to protect them. Despite all of that, the vineyard yielded only bad grapes, and we saw that God was going to take away their protection. They were going to be trampled. Then it got intensely personal in Isaiah 6, where Isaiah in his calling had a vision of the Lord seated on His throne, high and exalted. The train of His robe filled the temple and above him there were seraphs crying aloud to one another, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty. The whole earth is full of His glory.”

Isaiah felt his own sinfulness crying out from within him. “’Woe to me!’ I cried. ‘I am ruined!’ For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.’” (Is 6:5) He felt his own wickedness. We see how God dispatched an angel to atone for his sin. Sinfulness, even of that prophet, he the best of men it seemed, the best perhaps of his generation, and he felt his own sinfulness within him.

In Isaiah 7, we see wicked King Ahaz who had no interest in the things of God and who was threatened by an invasion from Israel, the northern kingdom, and from Syria. He was terrified; terrified of dying, terrified of losing his kingdom. Isaiah, the prophet, goes from the Lord and hands King Ahaz a blank check: ask for a sign, whether in the deepest depths or the highest heights. Anything you want and God will display His power for you. King Ahaz throws it in God’s face. He makes an alliance with Assyria, of all people! Of all the nations, he asks these wicked people to deliver him from Israel and Syria. The wickedness of this king!

In Isaiah 8 through 10, we see the wickedness of Assyria itself and of the Jews again displayed. After all of that, in Isaiah 11, is a depiction of the coming reign of the Messiah, a shoot coming up from the stump of Jesse, from his roots a branch bearing fruit. He’s a king who reigns in righteousness and rules in justice. He loves righteousness and hates wickedness. He’s going to strike the earth with the rod of his mouth. The wolf will live with the lamb and the leopard lie down with the calf and the lion and the yearling together, a picture of peace to the ends of the earth. It’s a peaceful reign where righteousness is at the center. You almost get the feeling that Isaiah says, “how can it be that a race, the human race, as wicked as us could get a king like that, reigning like that in righteousness?”

“How can it be? Oh, praise You, Lord! I praise You and I give you thanks! I’m going to take six verses here, in the middle of it all, and I’m just going to praise You for that coming kingdom. I’m going to worship You and I’m going to give You praise and glory in Isaiah12. I’m going to give You honor for what You’re going to do, for your salvation work force in Christ.” Now, of course, Isaiah didn’t know about Chapter 12 or six verses or any of that. He just wrote under the inspiration of God. But we have the privilege to come along centuries later and join him in a celebration of God’s grace. How much has that grace had to overcome in their lives and how much in yours? But where sin abounds, my friends, grace abounds all the more. Grace wins. Praise His holy name!

And so we come to a time of praise and of worship. And as we do, we recognize that this is a healing of the human soul. We don’t naturally praise God, frankly. We naturally curse Him and hate Him. But we are being healed from the insanity of sin, the insanity of not praising God. We’re going to be healed into sanity. It really is insane not to praise a God like this. I don’t just mean because He can destroy us in hell. I don’t just mean that He’s got that kind of power. I mean just because He’s so glorious and beautiful and wonderful. Can’t you see Him? Well, we can, just through a glass darkly. It’s just a reflected glory we see now.

You know what? The redeemed are going to be singing in heaven. It says this in Revelation 15:3-4, while history’s still unfolding there, “Great and marvelous are your deeds, Lord God Almighty. Just and true are your ways, King of the ages. Who will fear you, O Lord, and bring glory to your name? For you alone are holy.” It’s almost a sense of amazement. How can they not worship you? Oh, I look forward to being healed as Nebuchadnezzar was from his beast-like insanity. At last, the Lord took that from him and he lifted up his eyes and he praised God, the Most High. And so we will do in heaven.

II. Your Personal Theme: “God is my salvation” (vs. 1-2)

Look at Isaiah 12: 1-2. It says there, “In that day you will say, ‘I will praise you, O Lord. Although you were angry with me, your anger has turned away and you have comforted me. Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid. The Lord, the Lord, is my strength and my song; He has become my salvation.’” That’s your personal theme. For you individually: God is my salvation. The Hebrew here is singular. In that day, you, singular, will say, “God is my salvation.” You, individual sinner, are saved by grace. You’re going to stand before Him and you will say this. This is a word of prophecy, spoken to individual persons who God will save. After that immense work of salvation is completed in your soul, you’re going to stand in front of Jesus. And you will say this. We’re saved as individuals. We’re personally called as individuals to the Savior.

John 10:3 says, “He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.” He gives them eternal life. Your name is your individuality. It’s who you are. He calls you by name. And so Paul says beautifully, in Galatians 2:20, making it very intensely personal, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Paul’s not there denying that Jesus also died for a multitude greater than anyone could count, from every tribe and language, people, and nation. He’s just saying that this is also true: He died for me, for me personally, for me individually. Isaiah says to the individual sinner that, saved by grace, in that day you’ll praise God.

In what day? Well, whenever that phrase shows up in Isaiah (and it’s many, many times) it refers to a future day of judgment. Of wrath poured out. But here, it’s speaking of grace. So I look ahead to Judgment Day when at last I, a sinner, am vindicated by the blood of Jesus and welcomed into eternity in His name. In that day, I’m going to be thanking Him for His salvation because things are going to be very clear that day. It will be very clear on Judgment Day that I was saved by grace and that my works could not help me at all. Why? Because God’s wrath has been satisfied. Look again at verse 1, “I will praise you, O Lord. Although you were angry with me, your anger has turned away and you have comforted me.”

God has a passionate, emotional reaction to evil. He hates it and He gets angry about it. He is a God, it says, who expresses His wrath every day. JI Packer, speaking of God’s anger and wrath, says this in his book “Knowing God,” “It is not the capricious, arbitrary, bad-tempered and conceited anger which pagans attribute to their gods. It’s not the sinful, resentful, malicious, infantile anger which we find among men. It is a function of that holiness which is expressed in the demands of God’s moral law. ‘Be holy because I am holy.’ 1 Peter 1:16”

Throughout the first ten chapters of Isaiah, we saw depicted again and again the wrath of God. Remember there was that phrase, “Yet for all of this his anger is not turned away, his hand is still upraised.” It says it again and again. For example, in Isaiah 5:25, “Therefore the Lord’s anger burns against his people; his hand is raised and he strikes them down. The mountains shake, and the dead bodies are like refuse in the streets. Yet for all this, his anger is not turned away, his hand is still upraised.” But in Isaiah 12:1, he says, “I will praise you, O Lord. Although you were angry with me, your anger has turned away and you have comforted me.”

What can turn away the wrath of God? What can turn away His wrath so that it’s not on us anymore as individuals? We come now to that doctrine called propitiation: the turning away of the wrath of God by the giving of a sacrifice. It is the foundation of our faith. God’s wrath can turn away from us to a substitute, and the substitute can be our lightning rod. He can draw the wrath of God away from us so that we never have to experience it. Jesus Christ is the One who made this verse come true.

It is because of Jesus that the anger of God has turned away from me as an individual. God’s not angry with me anymore. There’s no wrath for me to experience. It’s been removed. It’s been absorbed. It’s been propitiated. Jesus has stood in my place. He drank the cup of God’s wrath on the cross. God will never be angry with me because of sin again. Oh, how hard it is for us sinners to believe this!

I dare say it’s hard for you. I tell you it’s hard for me. I mean to really believe that God’s anger has turned away and He’s now in a state of comforting us. I’m not saying that God doesn’t discipline us for sin. He does. But that’s not wrath, friends. That’s not anger. That’s a loving, caring stroke from a Father who knows that the biggest evil in our lives is sin and wants to wean us from it. From our insane love of it. But the wrath is gone, my friends, if you’re in Christ. It’s gone. Are you in Christ? I see some unfamiliar faces here today. Some guests. Praise God that you’re here! I’m glad that God brought you. I don’t know your spiritual state. Even if I knew you well, I wouldn’t definitely know your spiritual state. Do you know that the wrath of God has been removed? Do you understand that Jesus is your substitute?

Isaiah will say later in Isaiah 53:5-6 “He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Friends, in paganism man propitiates the gods by choosing a suitable sacrifice that will avert the gods’ wrath. It’s a work of man to find something big enough that will turn the gods’ wrath away from that person. We can’t do that. It’s impossible for us to avert the wrath of God. It’s something that God must do Himself. And He has done it in Christ.

JI Packer said that kind of pagan view of propitiation opens up a kind of commercialism with God, a transactional approach. If I can find something good enough, I can pay for my sins this way. Well, you can’t. It’s something only God can do. And you can only receive it by faith, simply by trusting in the blood shed on the cross for you. It says in Romans 3:23-24, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that come by Christ Jesus.” Listen to Romans 3:25, “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.” Propitiation means that the wrath of God is averted by the giving of a blood sacrifice. That’s the key to our faith. Have you received it? Are you standing forgiven now before the throne of God?

If not, I urge you to flee to Christ. I think about Luke’s testimony, as he was sitting there in the pew. Doug, I think that’s where you’re sitting right now. I praise God for your salvation, brother. But it could be that someone else in the sanctuary doesn’t know whether he’s under the wrath of God. You don’t know. You came here today to just go to church, to hear a sermon. Flee to Christ, look to Christ now, while there’s still time. Because today is the day of salvation. Trust in Him. It’s the only way that this verse will be fulfilled for you.

Look what else it says in verse 2, “Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid. The Lord, the Lord, is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation.” This is a profound concept here. God is not merely your Savior. You know, the one who rescues you from danger? The one who does that, gets you out of danger, that’s a savior. He is your savior, but He’s more than that. He is your salvation. So what’s the difference? Well, when you’re saved out of danger, you get Him. He’s what you get. He is heaven. I’m not saying that there’s not going to be a new heaven, a new earth, but God’s going to be woven all through it. You’ll know it. You’ll just see God in everything He’s made, the glory of God everywhere. He is your salvation.

That is the good news of the Gospel. The good news of the Gospel is God. He is the Gospel. He’s what you get. He’s the one who saves. He’s the one who redeems, who calls, who sanctifies, who glorifies. After all that, He’s the reward you get. As God said to Abram in Genesis 15:1, “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.” It says in Revelation 22:3-4 “The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.” You get God.

John Piper, in his book “God Is the Gospel,” asks a very poignant question, very powerful. Listen to this. “If you could have Heaven, with no sickness, with all the friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and no human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with heaven if Christ were not there?” I can’t. I can’t imagine it. I’d wonder where He is! After all I’ve learned about Him, I want to see Jesus. I want to be in His presence. I don’t want all of that and no Christ.

Christ IS heaven to me. He has become my salvation. It’s very personal. Is He your salvation? Heaven is heaven precisely because Christ is there. Hell is hell precisely because He’s not there, not in that way. He’s there in wrath, but He’s not there. He has become our salvation.

III. Our Corporate Pleasure: Joyful Satisfaction in God (vs 3)

Now that’s all individual and personal, but He’s not going to leave it there. Isaiah then moves to the corporate experience. You don’t see it in the English because we just have one word, “you,” for both single and plural, but the rest of the hymn of praise is plural. It’s got to do with all of you folks. I can’t say “all y’all” with the joy of a native speaker of southern English. I can’t do it, but you know what I mean, okay? All y’all. Mike Waters has been training me in that. I still can’t quite do it the way I need to, but this is corporate salvation, our joyful satisfaction in God. Verse 3 is plural, “With joy [all of] you will draw water from the wells of salvation.” Oh, what a sweet verse that is! Something shared.

He’s addressing the whole community of believers and he’s giving an image of deep satisfaction. In the ancient Near East, it’s very dry and they understand very well the value of water. Water is life. Wells are life. To draw water from a healthy, clean well, that is life. Wars are fought over those wells by nomadic tribes. They dig the wells and they’ll fight for them.

The image here is finding an endless source of cool refreshing water from which you can drink whenever you’re thirsty. As Jesus said to the Samaritan woman at the well, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks the water that I give him will never be thirsty again. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (Jn 4:3-14) You can drink from it any time you want. With joy, you’re going to draw buckets of water from the wells of salvation. You’re going to drink abundance in God’s household. You will be deeply and richly satisfied. You’re not going to be alone. You’re going to be looking around and there’s going to be this countless multitude from every tribe and language and people and nation. They’re going to be drinking too. They’re going to be satisfied too. They’re going to be giving praise and thanks to God with you. You’re not going to be alone.

Satan keeps lying to us about pleasure. “I am the god of pleasure,” he tells us. “Follow me and you’ll enjoy yourself.” He’s not the god of pleasure. He’s the god of anti-pleasure. He’s the god of misery and death. John 10:10 says, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.” That doesn’t sound like pleasure to me! “I have come that they might have life and have it abundantly. I want to give you abundant life. I want you to know the joy that comes from being in a right relationship with Almighty God.” With joy, he will draw water from the well of salvation.

Heaven is a place of eternal pleasure. Psalm 16:11 says, “You have made known to me the path of life.” His name is Jesus, by the way. “You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.” And so we’re going to be drinking from the river of the water of life flowing clear as crystal down the center of the city, coming right from the throne. It’s coming right from the throne and on each side of the river there’s going to be the tree of life with crops every month, and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. It’s going to be a rich, full experience, and we’re going to be there with people from all over the world.

IV. Our Universal Mission: Magnify the Greatness of God

So that leave us, thirdly, with our universal mission, which is to magnify the greatness of God. This is for all of us as well. “In that day, you will say, ‘Give thanks to the Lord, all in his name; make known among the nations what he has done, and proclaim that his name is exalted. Sing to the Lord, for he has done glorious things; let this be known to all the world. Shout aloud and sing for joy, people of Zion, for great is the Holy One of Israel among you.” (Is 12:4-6) This is missions, friends. This is evangelism. This is sharing the gospel with people who don’t know your joy. And more than that, this is missions and evangelism done as worship. You’re just overflowing with joy.

You’re just happy in Jesus and you’re making known among the nations what He has done, all of His great works of redemptive history. What He did with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. What He did with the Jews and how He led them out of Egypt by a mighty hand and outstretched arm, with all the plagues and with the water walling up on the right and on the left. And what He did through the history of Israel and the Jews through King David and all of the kings that followed. God’s patience in dealing with sin. And then how in the fullness of time He sent His only begotten son, born of a virgin, and how Jesus lived a sinless life and did great miracles. You can tell lost people these miracles. They’ll be interested.

If they get past the initial weirdness of talking to you, a total stranger, about spiritual things, they’ll actually want to hear more about Jesus’s miracles. Tell them! Tell them your favorite miracle. If you don’t have one, get one, alright? The resurrection of Lazarus will do just fine. Four days dead. Lazarus, come forth! I tried that with someone once. They said, if they’d been there, they’d have been running away screaming. All right, so that didn’t work too well. But I said, “Look, to me, it’s a happy thing that Lazarus came back to life.” They were thinking it was like a zombie movie or something like that. I said, “No, it’s a resurrection. He’s alive. He’s healthy. They had a feast and celebrated.”

We get to proclaim the greatness of God and all the great things He did and how Jesus himself was dead. And on the third day, God raised Him from the dead. We get to share some of His promises; “Because I live, you also will live.” “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” That’s what we get to say. We get to proclaim that His name is exalted. We get to say that great is the Holy One of Israel among us and proclaim these great things. If you think about missions and evangelism this way, you’ll lose your fear because you’re going to just have an awesome time of worship, whether the non-Christian joins you or not.

Oh, but I hope they do! “I hope you’re with me,” you can say. I hope that you can spend eternity praising a God like this. Repent and believe the Gospel, that your sins can be forgiven. Proclaim that His name is exalted. And so we’re involved in missions. And why? Because there’s going to be a multitude greater than any we can count, from every tribe and language and people and nation. It’s our job to tell them, to go out and proclaim this to people who’ve never heard of His name and to sing among them.

I know some of you think singing is weird. Maybe it’s not your favorite thing now. I’ve talked to you. Some of you think, “Kinda just not great on singing.” You will be. You will be. Because it says in the Book of Revelation that you’re going to sing a new song. Music, when done well, just resonates spiritually inside your heart. It just does. I just love good worship. Don’t you? I just love to sing praise songs. There’s a kind of music that’s reserved for heaven. None of us have heard it yet. It’s called a new song. We will resonate with it in our resurrected bodies and minds, and we will love it, and we will sing to it, and we’re going to be joining Jesus who sings. He does. It says so right in Hebrews 2:12, “I will declare your name to my brothers; in the presence of the congregation, I will sing your praises.”

Now, that’s some special music I’d like to hear! Jesus singing in the assembly, the praises of Almighty God, but God Himself singing. Zephaniah 3:17 says, “The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.” In the Chronicles of Narnia, CS Lewis said, “It was by song that Aslan created the world.” In “The Magicians Nephew,” when Digory and Polly and the rest go into Narnia for the first time, they find it a void. Then a voice, later revealed to be Aslan (representing Christ), sings the new world into existence. It’s by singing that He creates. Perhaps by metaphor, by singing He will create the New Heavens and the New Earth as well. We’ll hear that song and we’ll join in singing it.

Do you praise God like this? These six verses, memorize them. They’re rich. Just set them in front of you and say, “With joy, I’m going to draw water from the wells of salvation. For great is the Holy One among us.” These are great words. Do you praise God like this? You know, right from the beginning, it says, “In that day, you will say, ‘I will praise you, O Lord.” Now stop there. It’s just a way of thinking. “I will praise you today.” That sounds like an act of my will. Well, that’s about what it is.

You have to determine that you’re going to praise Him today. You’re going to rejoice in the Lord today. I know some of your hearts are breaking. I know you’re struggling with sin. You may have come here today feeling defiled and guilty because of sin. Your heart may be breaking for other reasons. You may be going through trials. There might be sickness or death hanging over a loved one, or maybe even over you. You may be facing economic difficulties. You may have lost your job and you haven’t been able to find another job. There may be any one of a number of things causing your misery today. “I will praise you, O Lord. Although you are angry with me, your anger has turned away and you have comforted me.” Can you say that? Will you praise Him? It’s a choice you make, really. It really is a decision as a Christian that you make by the power of the Spirit. “I’m going to praise Him. And Spirit, pass me things all day long that I can praise God for.” He’ll do it.

Finally, are you involved in the mission? Are you involved in evangelism? Have you shared the Gospel with anyone? Have you proclaimed among the nations that His name is exalted? That’s what it says that we’re to do. Find somebody whose spiritual situation you’re unsure about and just praise God in front of him. I would urge you to get into a conversation first or they might have you arrested as somebody insane or something like that. Just get into the conversation and then just talk about the greatness of God, of Christ. You might find that to be the greatest witnessing opportunity you’ve ever had. It’s our responsibility and joy and privilege to proclaim among the nations that His name is exalted.

One final thing: be praying for our friends that are serving the Lord right now. We can join them in their work by praying for them. Pray for the trip that’s out there in East Asia and for the friends that are hosting them and that live there all the time. Pray for that work. Close with me in prayer.

Some books change your whole way of thinking about something vital in the Christian life, and Randy Alcorn’s book on Heaven did that for me

I have to be honest, I was among those who had trouble with the boring view of heaven… sitting on clouds, strumming harps, bored for eternity

Alcorn’s book helped dispel the disembodied wispy ethereal view of heaven and made the reality, the physical nature of the resurrected body and the resurrected earth come alive for me

Imagining what it will be like to walk with energetic legs on a verdant, resplendent, perfect earth, breathing perfectly clear air, looking at perfectly flowing water, in a world constantly lit by the glory of God… having fellowship with other resurrected people, no sin, no jealousy, no arguing… just perfect joy

These aspects of our future in the new heaven and new earth

But yet, for all of that, I come back to this… the central joy and purpose and task we will have in heaven is praising and worshiping the Triune God

And no, it will NOT be boring… how could it be, when creation is so varied, and the stars so majestic?  If there are hundreds of thousands of varieties of plants, animals, tropical fish, birds, etc. how could the God who made it all ever be boring himself?

Jonathan Edwards;  Praise one of the chief employments of heaven

WHY?  First, because they there see God. This is a blessedness promised to the saints, that they shall see God, Mat. 5:8. That they see God, sufficiently shows the reason why they praise him. They that see God cannot but praise him. He is a Being of such glory and excellency that the sight of this excellency of his will necessarily influence them that behold it to praise him. Such a glorious sight will awaken and rouse all the powers of the soul, and will irresistibly impel them, and draw them into acts of praise. Such a sight enlarges their souls, and fills them with admiration, and with an unspeakable exultation of spirit.

’Tis from the little that the saints have seen of God, and know of him in this world that they are excited to praise him in the degree they do here. But here they see but as in a glass darkly; they have only now and then a little glimpse of God’s excellency. But then they shall have the transcendent gory and divine excellency of God set in their immediate and full view. They shall dwell in his immediate glorious presence and shall see face to face, 1 Cor. 13:12. Now the saints see the glory of God but by a reflected light, as we in the night see the light of the sun reflected from the moon. But in heaven they shall directly behold the Sun of righteousness, and shall look full upon him when shining in all his glory. This being the case, it can be no otherwise, but that they should very much employ themselves in praising God. When they behold the glorious power of God, they cannot but praise that power. When they see God’s wisdom that is so wonderful, and infinitely beyond all created wisdom, they cannot but continually praise that wisdom. When they view the infinitely pure and lovely holiness of God, whereby the heavens themselves are not pure in comparison with him, how can they avoid with an exalted heart to praise that beauty of the divine nature! When they see the infinite grace of God, and see what a boundless ocean of mercy and love he is, how can they but celebrate that grace with the highest praise!

So it is with a sense of the perfection of praise that we come to Isaiah 12… a little Psalm of praise after a display of God’s amazing grace to sinners in Israel, Judah and the world

I. For the Praise of His Glorious Grace

A. God’s Ultimate Goal:  His Glory

1.  There was a time when God was all there was

2.  God is the massive center of the universe;  all heaven is arrayed in concentric circles, totally focused on this overwhelming majesty

3.  God does all things to display His glory

4.  The greatest display of God’s glory ever has been the immense undertaking of saving rebellious sinners and fitting them for heaven

5.  Ephesians 1 tells us that God planned redemptive history for this one purpose…

Ephesians 1:4-6  he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love  5 he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will–  6 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.

Ephesians 1:11-14  In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will,  12 in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory.  13 And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit,  14 who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession– to the praise of his glory.

What is this phrase, “To the praise of His glorious grace”?  What does it mean that we might be for the praise of His glory?  Why did the indwelling Spirit come to guarantee our redemption, again, “To the praise of His glory?”

6. I think it means that, when history is finally over, we will at last see Him in all His glory.  Then also we will be able to look back over the span of the ages, across the flow of the eras, one after another, and see all the ways that God displayed His glorious nature

a.   His amazing grace to sinners as wretched as us

b.  His overwhelming patience to blasphemers like Paul

c.   His incredible kindness and tenderness to brokenhearted wretches, who deserved to be left on the scrapheap of history

d.  His awesome power displayed in protecting us from Satan and all His demonic horde

e.   His terrifying wrath poured out on Satan, his devils, and all the reprobate of humanity

f.   And the display will take us all eternity to take in in its fullness

g.  This is the purpose of God… to put Himself on full display in the salvation of a countless multitude from every tribe and language and people and nation

B.  God’s Second Highest Goal:  Our Joy in Him

1.  God is a God of love… of a deep compassion, who yearns to do us good, to make us happy, to fill our very beings with all the joy they can hold

2.  He yearns to expand us to an astonishing degree in the inner man, so that we can take in more and more of His glory

3.  He deeply desires to do us good, and to make us eternally joyful

4.  This is God’s second highest goal… our blessedness in beholding His glory

5.  to this end Christ prayed

John 17:24  “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.

6.  to this end Christ lived a sinless life, to this end He died an atoning death, to this end He was raised from the dead on the third day… to give us an unchanging basis for eternal joy

7.  thus we can understand this incredible Psalm of praise for God… Isaiah 12;  six verses saturated with deep gratitude, with joyful praise

C.  What Grace Had to Conquer

1.  these chapters (Isaiah 1-11) have depicted very clearly the wickedness of God’s people

2.  Isaiah 1 spoke of Israel’s sin in graphic terms

a.   God openly despised their efforts at self-salvation through religiosity

b.  God hated their prayers and their religious convocations

c.   For their hands were dripping with the blood of injustice toward the poor and needy

3.  Isaiah 2 spoke just as graphically of Israel’s pride, arrogance and self-worship

a.   He despised their idolatry, their false religion

b.  Even worse, God hated their pride, their self-importance, their arrogance

4.  Isaiah 3 laid open the filth of their bad leadership, of their cowardly men, of their plundering, robbing, corrupt judges, magistrates

5.  Isaiah 5 continued the tragic gaze at Israel’s depravity:

a.   A beautiful vineyard, planted with the choicest vines… having received every possible benefit, yet producing only bad grapes

b.  Those clusters of bad grapes he then defined in a series of six woes

•       Woe #1:  Aggressive Greed

•       Woe #2:  Sinful Excess

•       Woe #3:  Shameless Sin and Mocking of God

•       Woe #4:  Relativism and Redefining of Truth

•       Woe #5:  Arrogant False Wisdom

•       Woe #6:  Drunken, Corrupt Justice System

Isaiah made it clear that each of these six woes would result in specific judgments from God

6.  Isaiah 6:  the prophet’s own call, poignant in that even Isaiah, the best of men, felt acutely his wretched sinfulness… in the view of God’s overwhelming holiness

Isaiah 6:1-3  In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple.  2 Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying.  3 And they were calling to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.”

Isaiah 6:5   “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.”

7.  Isaiah 7:  evil King Ahaz, terrified by a crisis (the alliance of the northern kingdom of Israel and the pagan country of Aram), offered a blank check from

God, a sign whether in the deepest depths or the highest heights, threw it in God’s face;  then he decided to save himself by a faithless and shameful alliance with Assyria

8.  Isaiah 8-10, the destruction of Judah by Assyria, and the subsequent destruction of Assyria as well

Romans 3:10-18  As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one;  11 there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God.  12 All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”  13 “Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.” “The poison of vipers is on their lips.”  14 “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”  15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood;  16 ruin and misery mark their ways,  17 and the way of peace they do not know.”  18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

By the time we get to the Messianic vision of Isaiah 11, it would be the last thing any thinking and feeling Jew would expect… that God would still give them a beautiful, perfect, eternally peaceful kingdom, where Messiah would reign

Isaiah 11:1-9  A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.  2 The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him– the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of power, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD–  3 and he will delight in the fear of the LORD. He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears;  4 but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth; with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.  5 Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash around his waist.  6 The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them.  7 The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox.  8 The infant will play near the hole of the cobra, and the young child put his hand into the viper’s nest.  9 They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.

9.      O the astonishing measure of grace God has lavished on wretched sinners like us!!  How overwhelming it is

Romans 5:20  but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more

10.  All that is left by the time we get to Isaiah 12 is to praise God for His glorious grace!!!

D. Praise:  The Healed from Insanity to Healthy Delight

1.  more and more as I minister and study God’s word, I have come to see worship as the most reasonable thing any created being can do

a.   look at the greatness of God Himself… the perfection of His character… all His attributes, his immensity, his eternity, his goodness, mercy and love, the unapproachable light in which he dwells, his omnipotence, his wisdom

b.  look at the greatness of God’s achievements and mighty acts in creation… the sun, moon, and stars… the earth with all of its beauty and wonder, the creatures he made to inhabit it, their marvelous variety

c.   look at the even more majestic greatness of God’s achievements in redemptive history

2.  in light of all that God is, and all that God has done, to praise Him with total abandon, with perfect joy, is the most reasonable and fulfilling thing we can do

3.  the fact that we don’t praise Him is a sign of unreasonableness that must look like insanity to the holy angels who surround his throne and constantly cry their praises to one another in heaven, the redeemed pick up on this theme… not to worship God seems like insanity

Revelation 15:3-4  “Great and marvelous are your deeds, Lord God Almighty. Just and true are your ways, King of the ages.  4 Who will not fear you, O Lord, and bring glory to your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship before you, for your righteous acts have been revealed.”

4.  insanity cured by salvation, we will praise God

Daniel 4:34  At the end of that time, I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven, and my sanity was restored. Then I praised the Most High; I honored and glorified him who lives forever.

II. Your Personal Theme:  “God is My Salvation” (vs. 1-2)

Isaiah 12:1-2   In that day you will say: “I will praise you, O LORD. Although you were angry with me, your anger has turned away and you have comforted me.  2 Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid. The LORD, the LORD, is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation.”

A.  Personal Salvation, Personal Praise

1.  in that day, you (singular) will say

2.  this is a word of prophecy spoken to individual persons whom God will save

3.  after that immense work of salvation is consummated (or perhaps while it is) individual sinners saved by grace will say these things

4.  we are saved as individuals, personally saved, personally called by name to follow Christ

John 10:3  He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.

Galatians 2:20  I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

5.  so Isaiah speaks to the individual sinner saved by grace and says, “In that day, you will praise God”

6.  “In that day…”  In what day??

a.   Phrase usually used by Isaiah to speak of future day of judgment… he uses it 42 times in the first 30 chapters

b.  Again and again pointing to the future when God will act powerfully, usually in judgment on Israel for their sins

c.   But here, Isaiah is speaking of a future celebration of God’s grace in salvation

d.  It could refer to heavenly worship… or perhaps earthly celebration of forgiveness from God while our final salvation is still being worked out

B.   God’s Wrath Satisfied

Isaiah 12:1  “I will praise you, O LORD. Although you were angry with me, your anger has turned away and you have comforted me.

1.  God’s passionate reaction to all evil is intrinsic to His character

a.   God is an emotional being

b.  But His emotions are perfectly constrained by His character

c.   God’s wrath different than ours J.I. Packer, Knowing God:

“It is not the capricious, arbitrary, bad-tempered and conceited anger which pagans attribute to their gods.  It is not the sinful, resentful, malicious, infantile anger which we find among men.  It is a function of that holiness which is expressed in the demands of God’s moral law, ‘be holy because I am holy’ (1 Peter 1:16)…”  (p. 166)

d.  Throughout Isaiah, the passionate reaction of God toward sin is prominently displayed

i)    Repeated phrase… stated again and again “Yet for all this his anger is not turned away, his hand is still upraised.”

Isaiah 5:25  Therefore the LORD’s anger burns against his people; his hand is raised and he strikes them down. The mountains shake, and the dead bodies are like refuse in the streets. Yet for all this, his anger is not turned away, his hand is still upraised.

ii)  Assyria was called the rod of God’s anger

Isaiah 10:5-6  “Woe to the Assyrian, the rod of my anger, in whose hand is the club of my wrath!  6 I send him against a godless nation, I dispatch him against a people who anger me, to seize loot and snatch plunder, and to trample them down like mud in the streets.

2.  But now, God’s anger has been completely turned away

a.   What an incredible turn of events!!

3.  Propitiation

a.   Many deny that God has any wrath against human sin

b.  They portray God as all-loving, all-forgiving, fatherly, who is just patiently waiting people to come back to Him

c.   But Isaiah has consistently portrayed the wrath of God against sin

d.  And here in this verse he turns His anger away

e.   This brings us to the essential doctrine of propitiation… the turning away of God’s wrath by the offering of blood sacrifice

John Murray:  “The idea of propitiation is precisely this, that God loved the objects of His wrath so much that He gave His own Son to the end that He by His blood should make provision for the removal of this wrath.  It was Christ’s so to deal with the wrath that the loved would no longer be the objects of wrath, and love would achieve its aim of making the children of wrath the children of God’s good pleasure.”  [The Atonement, p. 15]

f.   Only God can turn his own anger aside

g.  Pagan religions had the idea of appeasing the wrath of the gods by sacrifice

Packer:  “In paganism, man propitiates the gods, and religion becomes a form of commercialism and, indeed, of bribery.  In Christianity, God propitiates His own wrath by

His own action…”  by setting forth Christ to be a propitiation for us

h.  No human works, no human plot or scheme could ever have done it

i.    Christ alone can accomplish this by dying in our place as our substitute

Isaiah 53:5-6  he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.  6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Romans 3:23-25  all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,  24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,  25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.

The end result of Christ’s work on the cross… God will never be angry with us again;  rather all His wrath is poured out on the substitute

Now God is able to speak words of comfort to us:

Isaiah 40:1-2 Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.  2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the LORD’s hand double for all her sins.

Isaiah 66:13  As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you

C. God IS Salvation

Isaiah 12:2  Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid. The LORD, the LORD, is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation.”

1.  profound concept here:  not merely that God is our Savior… the one who reaches out and rescues us from His wrath and from hell and all danger

2.  it is far deeper than that… it is that God Himself IS our salvation

3.  the good news of the gospel is that, when God is done exerting all His saving power toward us and rescuing us from sin, that we will have the greatest reward imaginable… GOD HIMSELF

Revelation 22:3-4  The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him.  4 They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.

Genesis 15:1  After this, the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision: “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.”

4.  many people think of heaven in lower terms… what we get—the pearly gates, seeing grandma again, playing golf on some celestial golf course

5.  John Piper in his book God Is the Gospel, asks a very poignant question:

If you could have heaven, with no sickness, and with all the friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and no human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with heaven, if Christ were not there?  [p. 15]

Heaven is heaven precisely because God is there, loving us, knowing us, embracing us, showing us Himself fully

Hell is hell precisely because God is not there, not positively, but only by the steady outpouring of His wrath

III. Our Corporate Pleasure:  Joyful Satisfaction in God (vs. 3)

Isaiah 12:3  With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.

A.  Something Shared

1.  now Isaiah moves to plural form, you (pl.)

2.  he is addressing the whole community of believers and is sharing what they will enjoy

B.   Deep Satisfaction

1.  image is one of total refreshment, of delight, of satisfaction, of joy

a.   Near East a place of deserts where everyone knows the value of water

b.  Wells are dug with great effort, at great cost

c.   Sometimes wars have been fought between nomadic desert tribes over ownership of wells

Darfur and the entire region has had a serious water problem that has, for generations, been a source of unending conflict among various sections of the Darfur population. In particular the settled and nomadic tribes have fought over water for a long time. In November 2004 Brian Smith wrote “Water is strategically important, given that the blue Nile and white Nile meet in Sudan and constitute the lifeline of Egypt immediately north.

The discovery this year of an underground mega-lake the size of Lake Erie under the windblown sands of northern Darfur has made the Darfur region even more valuable. A “1000 wells for Darfur” initiative was recently agreed upon to help bring survival to the people who live in that area and end armed conflict over water

Bottom line:  wells mean water, and water means life

d.  The image here:  finding an endless source of cool, refreshing water from which you can drink whenever you are thirsty

2.  consistent image in the Bible:  salvation is like water

Psalm 36:8-9  They feast on the abundance of your house; you give them drink from your river of delights.  9 For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light.

John 4:14  whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

John 7:37-38  On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.  38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.”

3.  one of Satan’s biggest lies… “God hates pleasure”

a.   Satan portrays himself as the real joy-giver

b.  He lies saying that his agenda of lust of the eyes, of the flesh and the pride of life is “Where it’s at… what’s hot… what’s fresh and cutting edge”… in other words, this is where the true pleasure lies

4.  God INVENTED pleasure!!

5.  Heaven is a place of ultimate delights

Psalm 16:11  You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.  

C.   Ongoing Refreshment for Eternity in Christ

1.  the book of Revelation speak much of this theme of refreshment

2.  the idea there is that joy and delight in drinking deeply from God will last forever

Revelation 21:6  He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life.

Revelation 22:1-2   Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb  2 down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

IV. Our Universal Mission:  Magnify the Greatness of God (vs. 4-6)

Isaiah 12:4-6  In that day you will say: “Give thanks to the LORD, call on his name; make known among the nations what he has done, and proclaim that his name is exalted.  5 Sing to the LORD, for he has done glorious things; let this be known to all the world.  6 Shout aloud and sing for joy, people of Zion, for great is the Holy One of Israel among you.”

A. Evangelism:  Proclaiming Among the Nations the Greatness of God

1.  the Psalm of praise ends with a focus on evangelism… and specifically evangelism as worship

2.  the psalm focuses on thanksgiving… giving thanks to God for his marvelous salvation

3.  “Call on his name”

a.   This is the central message of the gospel

Romans 10:13  “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

b.  The call on the name of the Lord is to ask Him for salvation… to plead with Him that He might become our salvation… to ask Him to live up to His character and His promises

4.  “Make known among the nations what he has done…”

a.   A rehearsing of the great acts of God in redemptive history

i)      the calling of Abraham and the way he enabled a 100 year old man and a 90 year old barren woman to conceive a child

ii)    the great multiplication of the descendents of Abraham until they were like the stars in the sky and like the sand on the seashore

iii)  the rescue of the Jews from bondage in Egypt by Moses… by signs and wonders, by the ten plagues and the awesome Red Sea crossing

iv)   the giving of the Ten Commandments at Sinai… and all the Mosaic Covenant

v)     the patience of God in dealing with sinful Israel, with a stiff-necked people who refused to love God and obey Him… the prophets God sent again and again to warn Israel

vi)   all the miracles God did in Israel’s history to deliver His people from one enemy after another vii) the Babylonian exile and restoration of the Jews from Babylon

viii) In the fullness of time, the birth of God’s only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to a virgin ix) The miracles Christ did to display God’s glory

x) The Sinlessness of Christ, his astonishing teachings xi) The atoning death of Christ, his mighty resurrection

xii) The giving of the Holy Spirit, the amazing spread of the gospel to the ends of the earth over twenty incredible centuries of church history

b.  The gospel is a call to the nations to understand what God has done in Christ to save us from His wrath and bring us to eternal life

c.   The good news is that God has done it!!

5.  evangelism and missions is simply making known to the people what God has done in Christ

‘and proclaim that his name is exalted’

God is high above all things

The greatness of God, his exalted position on His throne is the centerpiece of our mission to the world

B. Worship:  Immersed in the Greatness of God

Vs. 5-6  Sing to the LORD, for he has done glorious things; let this be known to all the world.  6 Shout aloud and sing for joy, people of Zion, for great is the Holy One of Israel among you.

1. singing is worship raised to its highest level in the Chronicles of Narnia,

The Magician’s Nephew. When Diggory, Polly, and the rest enter into Narnia for the first time, they find it a void, and a voice—later revealed to be Aslan—sings the new world into existence.  Aslan represents Jesus Christ, so C.S. Lewis is ascribing creation to Christ as Colossians does… but amazing that Christ does it by singing

So in salvation, Christ sings

Hebrews 2:12  He says, “I will declare your name to my brothers; in the presence of the congregation I will sing your praises.”

And God the Father will join in the song

Zephaniah 3:17  The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.”

2.  there is something spiritual about a skillfully composed song… something that reaches to the very fiber of our souls

3.  but there is a kind of music that has never been heard on earth but that will resonate with our souls

Revelation 14:1-3  hen I looked, and there before me was the Lamb, standing on Mount Zion, and with him 144,000 who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads.  2 And I heard a sound from heaven like the roar of rushing waters and like a loud peal of thunder. The sound I heard was like that of harpists playing their harps.  3 And they sang a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and the elders. No one could learn the song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth.

4.  the theme of the song… the greatness of God

‘great is the Holy One of Israel among you”

5.  and of his achievements

‘he has done glorious things’

The people of God will spend eternity immersed joyfully in song, celebrating the greatness of God and the rehearsing of His achievements

One theme that has much occupied my mind:  the rehearsing of testimonies of God’s saving work among the nations from every generation

•       European peasants saved during the 14th century when the Black Plague spread death over 1/3rd of the continent… some godly and courageous believers risked life and health to bring the gospel and medical attention where no one else dared to go

•       Tribal people in Irian Jaya will relate the story of how missionaries came after WWII to share the gospel with them

•       American Indians will speak of the sacrifices David Brainerd made to bring them to Christ… an of how they then took the gospel to other tribes as well

•       There will be many hidden stories coming from Mongolia and China in the imperial era, of how God secretly worked to save His elect

•       We will see the tapestry of grace woven through history and we will sing God’s praises forever