So the word of God says, Isaiah 28, beginning in verse 16. Therefore, thus says the Lord God, behold, I am the one who has laid as a foundation in Zion, a stone, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone of a sure foundation. Whoever believes will not be in haste. and I will make justice the line and righteousness the plumb line, and hail will sweep away the refuge of lies, and waters will overwhelm the shelter. Then your covenant with death will be annulled, and your agreement with shale will not stand. When the overwhelming scourge passes through, you will be beaten down by it. As often as it passes through, it will take you. For morning by morning, it will pass through by day and by night. And it will be sheer terror to understand the message. For the bed is too short to stretch oneself on, and the covering too narrow to wrap oneself in. For the Lord will rise up as on Mount Perizim, as in the valley of Gibeon he will be roused to do his deed. Strange is his deed, and to work his work, alien is his work. Now therefore do not scoff, lest your bonds be made strong. For I have heard a decree of destruction from the Lord God of hosts against the whole land. give ear, and hear my voice, and give attention, and hear my speech? Does he who plows for sowing plow continually? Does he continually open and harrow his ground? When he has leveled its surface, does he not scatter dill, sow cumin, and put in wheat and rose and barley in its proper place, and emmer as the border? for he is rightly instructed. His God teaches him. Dill is not threshed with a threshing sledge, nor is a cartwheel rolled over cumin, but dill is beaten out with a stick and cumin with a rod. Does one crush grain for bread? No, he does not thresh it forever. When he drives his cartwheel over it with his horses, he does not crush it. This also comes from the Lord of hosts. He is wonderful in counsel and excellent in wisdom. This is God's holy word. Let's pray for God's help. Our Lord, you tell us that the unfolding of your word gives light and it gives understanding to the simple. We come to you recognizing our need for your light. We thank you, Lord, that in you is light and that you give us of your spirit. Your spirit helps us to understand your word. We thank you that the spirit has breathed out this word that we might hear from you today. And so we pray that as we come to Look at your word that you would give us not only mental understanding, intellectual understanding, but that you would also help us to know the help of your spirit within our hearts to worship you and to know you more and to know the truth of the gospel that we might live according to it. We come to you asking for your help. We come in Jesus name. Amen. You may have heard of the sunk cost fallacy. The sunk cost fallacy is the idea that if you sink a bunch of money into something, then you want to continue to sink money into it. So let's say your wife asks you, why do you keep spending thousands and thousands of dollars on maintaining this boat? And your response is, well, I spent $50,000 on this boat. I'm not just gonna let it rust and let it be useless. So you spent a bunch of money, you spent $50,000, but instead of saying, you know what, that was just a bad choice, that was a bad decision, I shouldn't really have done that. Instead of doing that, you say, well, I've already spent all of this money, I just need to spend more on it, or all that money will have gone to waste. And so you see the fallacy. You end up spending $80,000 on your boat for the purchase and the maintenance of it, when you could have just said, you know what? I spent $50,000. That was a really bad decision. I just need to get rid of the boat. And you cut your losses. You've only spent $50,000 as opposed to $80,000. But there's a psychology behind this. There's a psychology as to why people keep sinking money into things that they've already made bad choices about. And basically, the psychology is stubbornness. People are stubborn. People don't want to really face the reality that they made a bad decision, and so they need to pay the consequences for it. Proverbs 29 verse 1 says that the one who stiffens his neck at reproof will be broken beyond healing. So in other words, if you will bend your neck, then you won't break it. But if you keep stiffening your neck, if you continue to be stubborn, your neck is going to break. And so this is what people do spiritually. I've lived decades without Christ. If I were to admit that I need Christ, that would mean I have to admit I've been wrong for decades. I've been outspoken. I've been very open about my beliefs about religion and that's completely to the opposite to what the Bible says. So now I'm going to have to admit that I'm wrong. I was so brash and so confident and so stubborn against what my parents told me when I was a kid and I was a kid and I rebelled against my parents and if I actually change now, then I have to admit my parents were right the whole time. And so there's a stubbornness to not want to admit this. But again, the Bible says that stubbornness leads to a broken neck. And Isaiah is putting this before the people of Judah in his day, that they have been scoffers. And you can imagine if you're a scoffer, known as a scoffer, you wouldn't want to admit that actually Isaiah is right because you've been scoffing at him the whole time. But this is Isaiah's call, even to the scoffer there in verse 22. He gives them another opportunity to repent. Scoffers, the people he's talking to in verse 14, scoffers, Therefore, now, do not scoff. There is still an opportunity for you to change. Don't commit the fallacy of continuing to sink your hopes and your life into what you have already proudly proclaimed you're doing. Just because you've made this covenant with death, this alliance with Egypt doesn't mean you have to lie in that bed, but you can change now and receive the grace of God. And so this is what Isaiah is calling on on the people calling on us to do is to not resist the grace of God, but to receive it even if we have been scoffing for so long. And so he, gets this point across with four images, four points that we'll look at today. A short bed, a strange work, a tightening knot, and a wonderful farmer. So we start with the short bed, verse 20. Remember the context is that God has laid a cornerstone and everything that is built on the cornerstone will stand and he made the plumb line and he's going to line everything up with the plumb line. But there will be the metaphorical storm that will pass through and it will tear down the refuge of lies and the shelter and the covenant of death will be annulled in verse 18. And then verse 19, as often as it passes through, it will take you. It will pass through morning by morning, by day and by night, and it will be sheer terror to understand the message. This judgment will be terror. And so verse 20, now starting with the word for, is explaining one reason why this will be sheer terror. Because the bed is too short to stretch oneself on, and the covering too narrow to wrap oneself in. What's terrifying is not just the judgments, but it's also when you try to find a solution to protect yourself from the judgment and you are realizing that your solution doesn't work. It's terrifying when you know not only that do you have a problem and the problem itself is really bad, but that everything that you're trying to do to fix your problem isn't working. And that just puts you into more anxiety and more panic. And this is what Isaiah says with the metaphor of a bed that's too short. So picture going to the worst hotel in the world. Your flights have been canceled two times on this day and you've had a long day of traveling. And there's only one room left at the hotel nearby. And so you have to take the room. And so after being tired all day, you walk into your hotel room and you plop down on the bed and you realize the bed is four feet long. For you to even put your legs, uh, stretch out and put your legs at the end of the bed means that half of your body practically is going to hang over the bed and is pulling your weight down off of the bottom of the bed. So that's not going to work. And so you lay there in the bed and you have to curl up. And you curl up all night. Your bones start to ache because your legs just really want to stretch out. And you're in this pain and discomfort all night. And then it starts getting cold. And as you start getting cold, you want some sheets and blankets. But this hotel has only provided for you one sheet. And it's so small, so narrow, that it doesn't even wrap around your whole body. And so you're there trying to wrap it around your body and trying to squeeze it as hard as you can to think maybe you can cover yourself up because every little opening, every little pocket of air just makes cold air blow through. And when it gets through that opening, it blows through and makes your whole body cold. And so you try and you try and try to cover yourself up with this bed sheet. but you can't cover your whole body. And so all night, your bones ache because the bed is too short, and you're aching and in pain because you're too cold, because not even a bedsheet will cover you. And Isaiah says this is what they're doing by making a covenant with Egypt. They're trying to protect themselves with something that isn't really going to help them. And unlike what we just talked about, your nightmare in the hotel, this isn't something that was forced upon you. But they decided this. They went to the mattress store and they said, we want this mattress. We want a four foot mattress and a four foot bed. These are their favorite bed sheets that they want to use. They chose this. They wanted it to be this way. And so they pick this to give them rest. but it doesn't bring rest. Remember verse 12, God's offer the whole time was this is rest. I can give you rest, God said. I've got a bed that you can lie on that's comfortable, but instead you decide to go and pick a short bed with a narrow bed sheet. What they're doing, the point that Isaiah is making about what they're doing is that they are trying to seek their own way of escape from the judgment of God. And it doesn't work. It's not going to work. And so remember that Paul, the Apostle Paul in Romans 9 quoted the verse about the cornerstone and how the cornerstone was a stumbling block to the Jews of Paul's day. And Paul applied this to righteousness by works. They were seeking a righteousness before God that was based on the law. And this fits with the whole context of what the people in Isaiah are doing. They are trying to escape from the judgment of God by their own works, by something that they can do, by their own ideas, whatever they can come up with. But what Paul is saying in applying the cornerstone is not only do they stumble over the cornerstone, but we could also say they have created a bed that doesn't give them rest. And they're trying with their righteousness. Oh, if I can just be a little better tomorrow, if I can just do a little better next time, if I can just work a little harder and be more righteous, I can get this bed sheet to wrap me up and cover me. And Isaiah is pointing out the reality that it's not able to cover them. And so this is the point. Seeking to achieve righteousness before God by your own works is a bed that's too short and a covering that is too narrow. And yet people stubbornly insist on this way of being right before God. They insist that they can be good enough that they can just try a little harder. They insist that they are good people. If I can just do good, give, help people, this will be my righteousness before God. And Isaiah says that covering is too narrow. Well, maybe I'll try religion. Maybe I'll try worship services and church attendance and believing in God. But we'll look next week at chapter nine, chapter 29. Isaiah is talking to a people who honor God with their lips, but their hearts are far from Him. These are religious people. These are consistent attenders. Isaiah 29, 13 says, Their hearts are far from him. And so no religion and attendance and service and theism and belief in God are not beds that will give you rest. It is knowing God through Jesus Christ. As Paul said in Romans 9, it is the righteousness of God that comes by faith in Jesus Christ because he is the one who has obeyed God's law perfectly. And he is the one who has made the payment for our sins on the cross and paid for our guilt. And so only in him can we have rest for our souls. So that is the short bed. In the next verse, 21, we see a strange work. We see the word for again in verse 21. Here's another reason it will be sheer terror. It's because this work is going to be so strange. Verse 21, This is going to be a unique work. That's what the word alien means. It just means foreign. It means something that you don't know. It will be an extraordinary work. People today like to use big adjectives to make points, and they overuse adjectives. They say things like historic. Everything's a historic event. Well, you know, technically everything is historic because this event happening right now has never happened before. It's a historic event. Yeah, everything is historic, but they want to act like everything that happens, especially political speeches, political campaigns, everything is historic and monumental. This is another word people overuse. Everything is monumental. But Isaiah really is saying this will be a monumental, extraordinary work that God is going to do. Now, what is this strange work and why is it so strange? Well, let's look first at what he's referencing here when he talks about Mount Parizon. Mount Perizim is probably a reference to 2 Samuel 5, a story about how after David had been anointed as king in Jerusalem, he's finally arrived in Jerusalem and now it's the city of David, the Philistines come to attack King David. And so it says that David and his army defeat the Philistines, but it happens because God gives the Philistines. into his hands. Okay, so God did a great work to give the Philistines into the hands of David at Mount Parazin. What about the Valley of Gibeon? Well, this is probably a reference to Joshua chapter 10. Joshua 10, after Joshua and his armies are conquering the land of Canaan, there are these five kings who want to come and do battle against the armies of Joshua at the city of Gibeon. And so, they do this great battle, and you might know the story, God makes the sun stand still. God brings hailstones, which, by the way, is probably a connection here with verse 17 about the hail sweeping away the refuge. But God, again, gives these five kings into the hand of Joshua. And Joshua and his army defeat them because of this great work of the hail and the sun standing still. So the reference in those two events is probably to the fact that God does an extraordinary great work And he does it on behalf of his people, and he defeats the enemies of God's people. But why is it here, then, this work that God is going to do here called strange? Well, there are some options we can think about. A lot of you have probably heard of this first option. I'll call it the Puritan interpretation. The Puritans make a lot of references to this verse to try to make the point that God prefers to show mercy over judgment. And so they will often say this line that mercy, or sorry, that judgment is God's strange work. Judgment is God's strange work. Mercy is sort of the work that comes from his primary desire, if you want to say it that way. Thomas Watson, he uses the analogy of the bee, and he says the bee doesn't sting unless it's provoked. And so is God. God doesn't want to show judgment, but he'll do it if he is provoked. Thomas Watson says, mercy is God's darling attribute, which he most delights in. God sees mercy as his darling. He most delights to show mercy. Thomas Goodwin says something similar. He says, though God is just, His mercy may be in some respect more natural to him than all acts of justice which God does show. So God is just, but his mercy is more natural to him. Although notice he says, in some respect it may be more natural to him. So he's like, not really. So there's a lot of qualifying there. So, The Puritans like to make this point, and they often go to verse 21, that God would rather show mercy than judgment. Now, whenever I've read those statements, and I see the, in parentheses, the verse that they're citing, I go back to verse 21 and I think, Is that really what Isaiah is saying? Can you really make that point from this verse? Well, that's one option. The other option is, we'll call it the Calvin interpretation. Calvin says, strange because it's just extraordinary. It's going to be amazing. It's going to be something that is shocking, that people have not seen in a very long time. And so it'll really get everybody's attention. Now, I think the best interpretation would be a third one. It's similar to the Puritans, but it's a little different. I believe based on the context of the verse, the best way to understand God's strange work is to say that it's strange for God to judge his own people. The strangeness is that God would bring judgments upon his own people. And so Isaiah references these two stories about God rising up and defeating the enemies of Israel. And now he says, but here's something really strange that's gonna happen. Israel is gonna see God rise up and then turn against them. They're so used to seeing God turn against their enemies, but now they're the enemy. And that's why this is a strange work. And so I think we can agree with the Puritans that God is the bee who does not want to sting unless he's provoked. But we can say that that's especially true of the people of God. God delights to show mercy to his people. The other verses that those Puritans often quote, they really are talking in the context of God's covenant people. Lamentations 3.33 says God does not afflict from the heart the children of man. He does not afflict willingly. And I know it says the children of man, but it's really speaking there in reference to why God destroyed Jerusalem. God destroyed Jerusalem, but it wasn't from his heart. He wanted to show mercy, but he has to bring judgment. Micah 7, 18 says, he delights to show mercy. That's what Thomas Watson was saying. It's his darling attribute. He delights to show mercy, but you look the verse up and it says, for the remnants of his inheritance. Watson quotes Jeremiah 32, verse 41, which says, I will rejoice in doing them good with all my heart and all my soul. And so his point is that there are some things that God rejoices in doing. He does them with all of his heart. He rejoices in doing good. But you look that verse up and what's he talking about? He's talking about the new covenant. For my new covenant people, God says, I will rejoice in doing them good with all my heart and all my soul. So my hesitation about The first option is can we really say about all people, about the non-elect, can we really say that God doesn't want to judge them? There's a sense in which we can say, but we also need to understand the full holiness of God and the full justice of God. But here's what we can be more sure about. is for the covenant people of God. God rejoices in doing them good. So when we read Isaiah, we have to remember the context of the covenant. What covenant are the people of Israel under? It's the covenant of Moses. It's a covenant made with a nation, a nation that was called to strict obedience. And if they did not walk in strict obedience to the law of God, they would be under the curse of God. And so God is right. It is fully within his nature that he would then turn against his own people in judgment because they're the old covenant people who are under a contract, so to speak. They knew that if they were to continue to rebel against them, he would turn against them. The problem is God was so patient and slow to anger that they thought, okay, well then he's never gonna, he's really never gonna turn against us because we're his people and we have his law. And now they're going to see this strange work that God turns against his own people. Here's what I'm trying to get at, though. So we don't live under that covenant. We're, as Christians, in Christ under the new covenant. And in Jeremiah 32, promising the new covenant, in verse 40, God says, I will not turn away from doing good to them. And then the next verse, I will rejoice in doing them good with all my heart and all my soul. And so as we look at verse 21, we need to remember the different contexts that we live under now. God promises to the new covenant people he will not turn away from doing good to them. In other words, this strange work you will never see happen to you in your life. For the Church of Jesus Christ, we will never see this strange work of God rising up and we expect him to defeat our enemies, but instead he's going to turn on us and destroy us. Because we have a promise that He will not turn away from doing good to us. Because we're in the new covenant. We have Jesus Christ as the mediator of a better covenant with more excellent promises. Not a promise of, well, if you're really bad, then I'll turn against you. But I'll wait a long time. No, that's not the promise. I'll never turn away from doing good because we are in Christ. Christ is the mediator of our covenant, and Christ has taken the curse in the place of his people. It's Jesus Christ who hung on a cross and already received that curse from God. A stranger work than Parazim and Gibeon happened on Golgotha. When Christ hung on the cross, And God turned against him, we could say. God unleashes his curse and his wrath upon the humanity of Jesus Christ and his soul bears the weight of the guilt of the sins of all of the people of God. And so it's because Jesus Christ takes the curse for us and experiences a strange work of judgment from God that his people we know God will never turn away from doing good to us. And so this is the comfort when we feel that God has turned on us. When we feel that the bee is stinging, we have to go to the promise. What has God actually said? He has promised to not turn away. So whatever is happening, whatever it's stinging me, I can know that this doesn't indicate that God has decreased in his love for me because God loves his people in Jesus Christ. That's the strange work. Third, let's look now at the tightening knot. How do we respond then to what Isaiah is saying? He says in verse 22, now therefore, do not scoff, lest your bonds be made strong. For I have heard a decree of destruction from the Lord God of hosts against the whole land. Scoffers scoff. God's never turned against us. He's never going to do that. But what does Isaiah say? Don't scoff because I've heard a decree of destruction. It may have never happened before. You may have never experienced it in your life or seen it happen, but your experience doesn't determine truth. Truth is based on what God says and what God does. And God has revealed to Isaiah. Isaiah has heard that destruction is coming. Amos says God never does anything without revealing his secrets to the prophets. God is telling the prophets what he's going to do. Listen to the prophets. As unlikely as you think their statement is of coming to pass, you need to listen because they're speaking on behalf of God. And so, with us, we have the Word of God written. We have people teaching us and explaining the Word of God to us, preaching the Word of God to us. And so, It doesn't really matter what you might think about what's going to happen or whether you find it very likely or realistic. God has told us in his word what's going to happen and we're simply communicating the truth. Don't scoff at the truth. Israel's judgment would come through an army. Our judgment comes by facing God when we die. Hebrews 9.27, here's the decree of destruction. It is appointed for a man to die once and then comes the judgment. That's true for everybody. Everybody will die and everybody will be judged. 2 Corinthians 5 verse 10, we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ and receive the penalty or the reward for what we have done in the body, whether good or evil. There's the decree. We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. There's no point in scoffing about it. There's no point in saying, well, you know, nobody's come back from the dead to tell me that. I've never seen that happen. I've never seen anybody up here before the judgment seat of Christ, so how do I know it's gonna happen? Well, that's a silly thing to say. God has said it, and so we must believe it. We are not to scoff at this. Isaiah says, lest your bonds be made strong. And so we have another image of a knot. your arms are tied down with ropes, and there's a knot on the rope, and maybe you have a little bit of length to your rope chain. And so the more you try to pull the rope, the tighter the knot is gonna get. If you would just stay still, The knot would not be so tight and maybe somebody can come and untie the knots. But Isaiah is saying, if you keep resisting, if you keep scoffing, the bonds keep getting stronger. The knot keeps getting tighter. This is what the Bible talks about as the hardening of the heart. Our hearts become hardened, which means that the more we reject, the easier it is to reject. Rejecting the good and the truth. The more we sin, the easier it is to sin. You have a sin that is a big barrier and you think, you know, I really shouldn't do that. I really shouldn't cross that line. But you get close to the line and you cross it once. And when you cross the line once, you realize, okay, I was able to cross it. I made it past the barrier. So what happens next time? You're not tiptoeing the line. Next time you're blowing past the barrier. Because when we sin, and if we get away with it, we think next time I'll get away with it again. And I got away with it twice, I'll get away with it a third time. And so you keep sinning, and sinning, and sinning, and then you find yourself way past the line. You find yourself in a deep hole, and you realize you've made a big mess. Why? Because you kept hardening and hardening your heart. The knot kept getting tighter and tighter. Sin is the bonds. Satan loves to have you in chains and he wants you to sin and sin and sin again without repentance. without what looks to you like consequences. The worst thing that can happen when we sin is that we don't face those consequences. We don't see that sin leads to destruction, and so we just keep doing it and doing it and doing more. So don't scoff. Don't let the knot get tighter. When you fall into sin, repent of your sin. Repent quickly. Don't think that you can get away with your sin without any consequences. Sin is always going to destroy and it's always going to ruin things. And if you let it go unchecked, it will ruin your soul and ruin your life. So that's the knot. We get now to the last image of a farmer. Verse 23 to 29, now Isaiah moves to a different parable about a farmer. There are two parables here. First one's in verse 24 to 26. He says, does he who plows for sowing plow continually? Does he continually open and harrow his ground? When he has leveled its surface, does he not scatter dill, soak cumin, and put in wheat and rose and barley in its proper place, and emmer as the border? For he is rightly instructed, his God teaches him. This parable means two things. First of all, it's a parable about plowing, and he says the plower doesn't plow forever. What's the point of plowing? It's to break up the ground so that you can put seeds down and plant the seeds. So the plower doesn't just plow endlessly for the rest of his life. He plows for a purpose. And so this is part of Isaiah's lesson. God's judging work and God's strange work that he's going to do for the people of God is so that he will plant the seed back in the remnants of the people. It's so that the people will learn their lesson and repent. Will they repent? Will they learn their lesson? Will you listen to this parable Isaiah is saying? Be the person who is ready when the plowing is over. And then he says the other part of the lesson in verse 26. How does the farmer know how to farm? you might say, well, it's common sense. It's just obvious. You know, anybody can go look at their garden one year, look at their yard, and then they see the next year, oh, look, that plant, that plant is reproducing. There's another kind of that plant in this other part of my yard. Oh, what happened? Oh, there are these things called seeds and seeds go into the ground. So I can figure out just by watching nature that plants grow when seeds go in the ground. That's pretty obvious. But Isaiah says it's God who teaches him. God teaches some things by nature. Now, you can't learn the gospel of salvation by nature, but you can learn some things from God. And we need to understand that all of life is lived under God, and it's God who teaches even the farmer that you put a seed in the ground and a plant comes up. So if the farmer learns about dirt from God, Isaiah says, Will you learn from God? Are you going to be a scoffer? Are you going to tighten the knot? Are you going to resist what God is teaching you just because it's God teaching you and you don't want anything to do with what he says? The farmer is rightly instructed. God teaches him. Let him teach you. Then the second parable. Verse 27, Dill is not threshed with a threshing sledge. I'll stop reading there, because that's really the point. A threshing sledge back then was a giant block of wood, about this big, and it's got weights put on top of it to make it heavy, and on the bottom of the block of wood are metal blades. And so the animal would pull the threshing sledge across the grain and the weight and everything, it would separate the grain from the plant. So this is their version of a combine to harvest their crops, is a threshing sledge. Now you don't get your ox and the threshing sledge and put it over your herbs and put it on top of your dill. because that would crush your dill and crush the cumin. So Isaiah's point, verse 29, this comes from God. God is wonderful in counsel. This is what God is like. When God threshes, He's not going to thresh the dill. God's judgment is coming upon you, Israel, because you're not dill or cumin. You need to be crushed. God knows what to bring into people's lives. God knows how to judge those who need to be judged. He's not going to plow continually. He will let up when he realizes that his lesson has been learned and he will apply the pressure. He will apply the type of judgment that is necessary for every person. So God is not harsh. If you think God is harsh towards you, you've got God wrong. God won't treat you harshly. God doesn't thresh the dill. He picks the dill with gentleness. He's threshing those who need it. This is why he says God is wonderful in counsel, excellent in wisdom. God knows what he's doing. God has his plans. God does things that seem like a strange work to us, and they make us wonder about what he is doing. But we can say he is wonderful in counsel, excellent in wisdom. Is that how you respond? Will you listen to what he's trying to say to you? Will you receive the offer of repentance and forgiveness and grace? Will you go to him and find rest for your souls? Or will you continue to scoff? Continue lying on the bed that's too short with the covering that's too narrow. Continue to tighten the knot. Come to him, find rest. Let's pray. Our God, we come to you thanking you that you are wonderful in counsel, excellent in wisdom. Thank you for revealing yourself in your word that we might know these truths about you. Lord, we pray that you would give us soft hearts to repent, Keep us from hardening ourselves in sin and being deceived by it. Lord, we pray that we would trust in your covenant promise to not turn away from doing good to us. Help us to see your goodness, even in the land of the living, even as we walk through this life. Thank you for all your grace mercy and goodness in Jesus Christ. We pray in his name. Amen.