Let's go to the Lord one more time in prayer together. Lord, many of us here tonight are in need of you to water us from above. We desire your Spirit. We desire to be filled with his power and presence and we desire to bear fruit for your namesake. So we ask that you would cleanse us from all unrighteousness and be with us and edify us even briefly from this devotional. We pray in Jesus name. Amen. Please turn with me in your Bibles to Isaiah chapter 5 verse 20. As you turn there. Thinking about this verse, reading this verse, I was reminded of a bit of history. In April 1975, Pol Pot, who was the dictator of Cambodia in the 70s, declared year zero. And he was out to make an entirely new nation with entirely new morals. All the things that Cambodians had previously held dear and important for so many years would now be flipped on their head. Listen to what one historian, John Pilger, says about this fundamentally new era in Cambodia and what these dictators sought to impose. This is what he said. The new rulers of Cambodia called 1975 Year Zero. The dawn of an age in which there will be no families, no sentiment, no expressions of love or grief, no medicines, no hospitals, no schools, no books, no learning, no holidays, no music, no song, no money, only work and death. In other words, everything that the Cambodians had cherished as good, education, literature and culture, the family unit, was suddenly snatched from them and redefined as evil. These leaders had defined what was good as evil and evil as good. And contrary to their very upbringing, the Cambodians were compelled to look at the good gifts of God's common grace as something to be neglected and hated. Now we've got to admit that maybe none of us here have been through the unspeakable torture and evil the Cambodians went through in the 1970s, but here's the thing. As a Christian, you know what it's like for the world to flip your sense of morality, right and wrong, good and evil, all around. To call what's good evil, to call what's evil good. I think it's unnecessary to cite obvious examples. We will as we look at the text. But for instance, what you hold dear about the preciousness of life or marriage, what you hold dear about God saving hell-worthy sinners from hell by giving his only son is labeled as bigotry and close-mindedness, hatred. Maybe you yourself have encountered these accusations this Christmas. What does God think about this? Let's read Isaiah 5.20 together. Isaiah 5.20. Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. In the midst of six woes, Isaiah levels at the wicked, He includes those who pursue drunkenness and acquit the guilty with a bribe. Isaiah levels this woe. Woe to those who call evil good and good evil. And then he goes on. Brothers and sisters, as long as men have unregenerate hearts that oppose God, they will to varying degrees call the good evil and the evil good. God pronounces a woe of judgment upon those who do this. Does God stand indifferently in the sky when the world scorns His people, hates His laws, calls His sweetness bitter, His holiness ugly and evil? No, He says, woe. God pronounces judgment on those who will call what is evil good. and good, evil. We're gonna find out what that means for you and me in just a little bit. But just to understand the implications or the truth behind this text more, let's ask a few questions of the text. Or rather, ask a few questions about the God of this text. First, how does God himself look at good? He mentions that, woe to those who call evil good and good evil. How does God look at and gravitate towards Well, let's take for ourselves a living example. Just look at God's relationship with Jesus Christ and find out. Jesus, the Son of God, who was the perfectly obedient man, gave up perfect obedience to the Father. He never knew sin, 2 Corinthians 5.21 tells us. He committed no sin and there was no deceit found in his mouth. 1 Peter 2.22 tells us. God gives his perfect holy law and Jesus obeys it in full. God looks at the perfectly good, perfectly pure Jesus and says of him in Isaiah 42, 1, that he is the one in whom his soul delights. God the Father looks at Jesus and all his obedience and holiness and goodness and he says, my chosen. in whom my soul delights." The father looks at the son and his holiness and goodness at his baptism and he exclaims, this is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. Matthew 3, 17. Again in Matthew 17, when Jesus is shining before the three disciples, they hear God break forth and say, this is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him. So it's not just Jesus' person, but everything about Him, including His perfection and holiness, that draws the Father in delight in Him. God delights in Jesus Christ as the very definition of goodness and holiness. What's God's relationship with evil? God hates evil. You see, friends, God's commitment to purity here, if He's like that towards good, He has to hate evil. Habakkuk 1.13 says of the Lord that He is of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong. And again, look at Jesus. God's hatred for evil is seen powerfully in the cross of Jesus Christ. There Jesus is, taking on the sins of His people, becoming sin for them. And above Him, there's a dark sky. God in heaven has forsaken Him. Jesus sweats drops of blood. He cries out to God as He drinks the full cup of His wrath. He becomes a curse as he hangs on that tree. The only begotten beloved son of God is forsaken by his father because of his hatred for sin. And if this was the hatred God has towards sin, thrown full force in judgment at the head of his only son, you get the sense of how much God really hates sin. We see God's approach to both good and bad, to sweet and bitter. How do sinners react to this? Isaiah 520 tells us, by calling evil good and good evil. Again, take up Christ as an example. Look what sinners do with God's greatest delight, His chief joy, the Lord Christ. Remember, God calls Jesus, His well-beloved, in whom He is well-pleased, What have we done? John 3 19 tells us, this is the judgment. The light has come into the world. Jesus has come as the light into the world and people love the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. The son of God casts out demons and the accusation is that he himself is demon possessed. Jesus loves to set the prisoner free, but captives love their captivity rather than liberty. Do you see the seriousness here, brothers and sisters? Do you see the severity? What God delights in as good and great and glorious and pure, trampled underfoot. And what God hates, proclaimed as delightful and good. God so delights in the obedience, the holiness, the goodness of His Son. The heavens are opened and He says, I'm well pleased. But the sinner says to that which God is well pleased with, bitterness and evil and darkness. These kinds of people, brothers and sisters, are the very people Jesus proclaims a woe to Himself. In Matthew 23, Jesus cries out a woe, seven woes, to the ones who call hypocrisy and idolatry and greed good and righteousness, secret holiness and humility bad. Brothers and sisters, do we think this has ended? Friends, sinners are still about the business of putting, as Isaiah warned, darkness for light and bitter for sweet. Take a few examples that we have contemporaneously. When the murder, for instance, of infants, abortion, is linked with personal freedom and all opposition is looked at as evil, this is a modern instance of putting darkness for light. or when the immorality of homosexuality is paraded and celebrated rather than condemned and all loving gospel persuasion is defined as bigotry, evil is called good and good evil. Godless greed, when that's put out before you and it's just, you know, excused as ambition or drunkenness, as liveliness, Brothers and sisters, the flipping of these terms exists to this day. Again, maybe you have encountered this kind of opposition this Christmas in your own home. The gospel is either a thing-inspiring argument or else something which causes awkward silence. It's an ugly thing standing in the way of the pursuit of pleasure or good. Now as mentioned before, to those who call evil good, bitterness sweet, darkness light, God pronounces his judgment, his woe. He's not indifferent. He's committed to the toppling of those who subvert and redefine good and evil. Those who hate what he calls good and prop up their own wickedness. Very well, that's the truth of the text and kind of thinking about it meditatively. Three applications for us in view of this verse. First application would be this, to repent. Maybe you have a friend, family member, colleague who does what Isaiah levels a woe at here. Maybe you were here and busy yourself doing this. You call what God calls evil good, what he calls bitter sweet, what he calls darkness light. What's the hope for those who believe this? Hope for you, believer, if you're preaching to those who are like this, is that you yourself were once like this. 100% of the Christians in this room, and indeed in any church, were those who were guilty of Isaiah 520's charge. Yet God transformed you. God saved you. God will judge, but God loves to transform the ones who call evil good and good evil. God can do it with your family member, your colleague, your friend, So brother, sister, don't cease to pray and preach to them. And friend, if you're here and that's true of you, God can do it for you. God has placed this judgment of woe that threatens you on Jesus, who went on the cross and was nailed there bearing the sins of those who subvert these terms for sinners like you. Such was His love for a lover of evil like you, like one standing behind this pulpit and those in the pews, that He poured out the just wrath due you on His Son for your sake. So friends, Jesus, rather God, in doing this is not looking for a new social outlook, for you to have a reformed social view. He's not looking for you to have reformed morality. He's looking to give you a new heart that will see His commandments as they are, sweet, good, pure, holy, desirable. So friend, repent and believe. Trust in the person of Jesus for you. See your need and take a hold of his death and his life for you. Not only save you from judgment, but give you a new heart filled with his love. Second, for the Christian, sort of in this text, a woe proclaimed to those who do this, the second application for you is to be angry. That's a commandment, by the way. As a Christian, you're not just called to be some Buddhist, achieving zen and emotionlessness. That's not the right response to the injustices we've talked about. Psalm chapter four, verse four, commands you, brother and sister, be angry and do not sin. So friend, be as much of a mirror image of God's anger at sin as you can be on this side of eternity. Be angry at the profaning of his holiness and goodness. Be angry and do not sin. And third and last, long, long for the world to come. Christian, you aren't like those who call evil good and good evil, but you live in a world that delights in doing this. And you yourself, you fight constantly with the flesh, which often tells you that that which is sweet is bitter. The Holy Spirit will stir you to pray or read the Bible, and sometimes this appears bitter, dark, and strange to you. You live in a world that calls it useless and you fight your flesh which sometimes tells you the same. But brother, sister, comfort of comforts is one day Jesus will return and he will establish his unshakable kingdom on the earth in finality. And the kind of thing going on in Isaiah 520 and in our day, that won't remotely exist in His kingdom. Revelation 21, 27 tells us, nothing unclean. will ever enter the kingdom of God, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life. Total perfection, total purity, total sinlessness and righteousness in a new heavens and new earth for you. So, to conclude, believer, God levels His woe of judgment at those who call evil good, darkness light, bitterness sweet. As a way of application, trust God for the conversion of those guilty of Isaiah 520's charge. Be angry and long for the coming world which will do away with every semblance of evil as we bask in the presence of our King. Amen. Let's pray. Lord we thank you for your mercy and your goodness and your love concerning us. We have all done this and we thank you that such is your righteous anger that you Though you are righteously angry with the wicked, delight in long-suffering, love and mercy and kindness and forgiveness. You love to pass over our sins by punishing your son instead and giving us free pardon and free forgiveness, free grace. We ask, Lord, that in a world that has always done this and will continue to do it till you come, or that has done what Isaiah 520 has charged against it. Lord, would you pour out your spirit, save many who do this. Father, use us as instruments of salvation. Preach the gospel and to pray, Lord, family members and friends and colleagues into the kingdom of God. Give us spiritual stamina, spiritual bent, Lord, to pray and to preach and to evangelize. those who are lost, to see them trust in you. We pray that you would be with us as we go out, in Jesus' name, amen.