Theological Status: Theologically Sound
Biblical Parallel(Archetype): Philadelphia
❓ What do these grades mean?
🔍 Biblical Discernment: The 7 Church Parallels
The Cold Orthodox Parallel
Ephesus
Teaching that upholds doctrinal precision yet parallels the loss of the "first love"—the vital, motivating power of the Gospel (Rev 2:4).
🧐 Overview
Sermon Summary: In a world of uncertainty, where do you place your trust for the future? This sermon powerfully contrasts the man-made gods we must carry with the one true God who promises to carry us, from birth to old age and into eternity. It offers a profound and stable hope grounded not in our circumstances, but in the unchanging, faithful character of God, whose promises are secured by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Big Idea: So what I want to do this morning is invite us to reorient ourselves to God in a deliberate way. [00:03:34 ▶️ 📄]
Pastoral Analysis: This is an exemplary work of expository preaching from Isaiah 46. The sermon is structured around the text's central contrast between the burdensome impotence of idols and the burden-bearing omnipotence of Yahweh. The soteriology is explicitly monergistic, the hermeneutic is redemptive-historical, and the application is deeply pastoral, comforting the believer with God's covenantal promises, which are definitively sealed in the finished work of Christ.
Biblical Parallel(Archetype): Philadelphia — The sermon is a model of faithful exposition, grounding the believer's confidence in God's unchanging, covenantal faithfulness, with a warm pastoral tone and a robust, Christ-centered application.
🧭 Biblical Alignment Dashboard
Overall Verdict: Biblically Sound
| Category | Status | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|
| Soteriology | ✅ PASS | The sermon explicitly affirms a monergistic view of salvation, quoting Titus 3:5-7 to state that God saves 'not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy.' The gospel call is clear, grace-based, and directed to the unbeliever. |
| Bibliology | ✅ PASS | The sermon demonstrates a high view of Scripture, treating it as the inspired and authoritative Word of God. The entire message is derived from and subservient to the biblical text. |
| Hermeneutic | ✅ PASS | The hermeneutic is faithfully expository, with the sermon's structure and main points drawn directly from Isaiah 46. It correctly employs a redemptive-historical lens, connecting the Old Testament promise to its ultimate fulfillment and guarantee in Jesus Christ. |
| Theology Proper | ✅ PASS | The doctrine of God is robustly orthodox, emphasizing His sovereignty, aseity, immutability, and covenantal faithfulness. God is presented as the sole actor and sustainer, in stark contrast to lifeless idols. |
| Sacramentology | ⚪ N/A | Neither Communion nor Baptism was observed in the provided transcript. |
📖 How they Handle Scripture & Jesus
Primary Text: Isaiah 46:1-7 (Expository (Deep))
Scripture Saturation: Verses Read: 7 | Referenced: 10 | Alluded: 3
Passages Read Aloud:
Key References: Psalm 33, Psalm 20:7, Titus 3, Exodus 19, Deuteronomy 1:31, Psalm 28:9, Isaiah 63:9, Isaiah 40:27-31, Isaiah 41:10, 1 Corinthians 15
Christological Connection: Redemptive Trajectory: The promise of Yahweh carrying Israel (Isaiah 46:4) is applied to the New Covenant believer, with the cross and resurrection of Christ serving as the ultimate, unbreakable guarantee that all promises are 'Yes and Amen' (00:31:51 ▶️ 📄).
🧱 Sermon Outline
- Keep trusting God. [00:06:10 ▶️ 📄] : Look at the catastrophic end of those who trusted something other than God (Babylon and its gods, Bel and Nebo).
- Remember His past faithfulness. [00:17:03 ▶️ 📄] : God carried Israel from the womb (like an eagle, like a father, like a shepherd). This past goodness feeds confidence for the future.
- Hope in his future faithfulness. [00:25:15 ▶️ 📄] : God promises, 'Even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you.' This promise is sealed by the resurrection of Christ and extends into eternity.
🗝️ Key Topics & Themes
- Confidence : Finding stable confidence not in circumstances but in the unchanging nature of God.
- Idolatry : The futility of trusting man-made gods or material things (savings, health, economy) contrasted with the living God.
- Divine Faithfulness : God's commitment to carry His people from birth to old age and into eternity.
✅ Commendations
Expository Integrity | Text-Driven Structure
The sermon's three-point structure (Keep Trusting, Remember the Past, Hope for the Future) flows directly and logically from the passage in Isaiah 46, demonstrating a commitment to letting the text set the agenda.
Theological Precision | God-Centered Soteriology
The clear, articulate presentation of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, particularly the use of Titus 3 at 15:29, was a masterful defense of the gospel against any notion of works-righteousness.
Christological Focus | Gospel Climax
The sermon powerfully lands the plane by showing that all of God's promises to carry His people are made 'Yes and Amen' in the cross and resurrection of Christ (31:51). This prevents the sermon from being mere moralism and anchors it in the finished work of the Savior.
Pastoral Application | The Burden-Bearing God
The central contrast between the idols that must be carried and the God who carries His people is a profound and deeply comforting pastoral theme, applied beautifully to the anxieties of facing an unknown future.
🧠 Questions for Reflection
Use these questions for personal study or small group discussion:
- The speaker contrasted the 'gods' people carry (like wealth, health, or success) with the God of the Bible who carries His people. What are some of the 'burdens' you feel you are carrying in your life right now?
- At 15:29, the sermon explained that God saves people not because they are 'good enough,' but out of His own mercy. How does this idea of salvation as a free gift, rather than something to be earned, challenge or comfort you?
📜 Full Sermon Transcript (Audit)
Use the 📄 icons next to quotes above to automatically jump to their location in this raw transcript.
[00:00:01] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_00]:
Good morning everyone.
[00:00:03] I invite you to open in your Bibles to Isaiah chapter 46.
[00:00:07] Isaiah 46, 1 to 7.
[00:00:20] You can find that on page 607 in the Pew Bibles.
[00:00:27] Isaiah 46, 1 to 7.
[00:00:33] This is what the word of the Lord says in that portion.
[00:00:37] Bell bows down.
[00:00:39] Nebo stoops.
[00:00:41] The idols are on beasts and livestock.
[00:00:45] These things you carry are born as burdens on weary beasts.
[00:00:50] They stoop.
[00:00:52] They bow down together.
[00:00:53] They cannot save the burden, but themselves go into captivity.
[00:01:01] Listen to me, O house of Jacob.
[00:01:03] All the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been born by me from before your birth, carried from the womb, even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you.
[00:01:19] I have made and I will bear, I will carry and will save.
[00:01:27] To whom will you liken me and make me equal and compare me that we may be alike?
[00:01:34] Those who lavish gold from the purse and weigh out silver in the scales hire a goldsmith and he makes it into a god.
[00:01:44] Then they fall down and worship.
[00:01:48] They lift it to their shoulders, they carry it, they set it in its place, and it stands there.
[00:01:55] It cannot move from its place.
[00:01:57] If one cries to it, it does not answer or save him from his trouble.
[00:02:08] Father, we pray that you would draw near, you know, our frailties, our weaknesses, our wandering minds.
[00:02:16] We ask that you would unite our hearts to fear your name.
[00:02:20] We pray that you would embolden us in the confidence of your goodness towards us, that you have supremely manifested in the cross of your Son.
[00:02:30] We pray that as we wrap up one year, look to see another begin, that our confidence will rest secure in the goodness of the God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
[00:02:43] We pray that you would use your word this morning to that end.
[00:02:47] In Jesus' name, Amen.
[00:02:52] Just as I was praying, when we next meet for worship,
[00:02:57] We will be in a new year and that's because there is a new year right at our doorsteps at this time of the calendar year.
[00:03:09] And the end of a year and the beginning of a new one is often a good time to reorient ourselves to God.
[00:03:20] To seek to bring our thoughts and our aspirations and our fears and our worries and desires and plans into accord with the person and ways of God.
[00:03:34] So what I want to do this morning is invite us to reorient ourselves to God in a deliberate way.
[00:03:43] Like I said, when a new year is coming, it usually awakens a mixture of aspirations and fears.
[00:03:52] One author says this, For many, it's a chance to turn a new leaf and explore a new territory that from this side of the fence looks promising and green.
[00:04:04] For others, especially those who have been suffering and have received unsettling news, it may look like an ominous void.
[00:04:12] So there could be all kinds of things that the arrival of a new year awakens in a human being.
[00:04:19] But wherever you may be and whatever your aspirations and fears and thoughts and plans may be, what you need most is a fresh reorientation to God.
[00:04:32] A coming into alignment of your mind and whatever is going on in your heart to the person of God and the way He works.
[00:04:42] Augustine once prayed and said, our stability when it is in you, referring to God, is stability indeed.
[00:04:50] But when it is in ourselves, then it is all unstable.
[00:04:56] Because there's no stable ground outside of God.
[00:05:00] And that's what Isaiah invites us to do in the passage we just read.
[00:05:06] Isaiah invites us to resist the temptation to allow ourselves to be controlled by our aspirations, by our fears, by what we think we know, what we don't know, what will happen or what will not happen.
[00:05:19] Isaiah invites us to resist being controlled by those things.
[00:05:23] But then we have to ask, how are we to do that?
[00:05:25] How are we to resist being controlled by fear of the unknown or by an undue excitement about the future?
[00:05:33] How are we to resist that kind of very natural dynamic to us as human beings?
[00:05:40] And I think Isaiah gives us three instructional lines of thought that we need to take into account.
[00:05:47] And the first is this.
[00:05:48] We should keep trusting God.
[00:05:50] The second is we should remember His past faithfulness.
[00:05:55] And the third is we should hope in his future faithfulness.
[00:06:00] Keep trusting God.
[00:06:01] Remember his faithfulness in the past.
[00:06:04] Hope in his faithfulness in the future.
[00:06:08] So let's consider the first thing.
[00:06:10] Keep trusting God.
[00:06:12] Isaiah teaches this truth by saying to his people, to the people of God, just look around you and see the catastrophic end of those who trusted something other than God.
[00:06:22] Just look around here and see.
[00:06:25] He invites them to look at the Babylonians, those who were the dominant world power at the time, and announces to them a calamity that is coming on Babylon.
[00:06:37] So Babylon was going to experience a calamity that will include an overpowering of their gods.
[00:06:44] Now you have to let this sink in because in the ancient world, if something was calamitous enough that it toppled the object of trust and the object of worship of a nation, you couldn't think of a worse calamity than that.
[00:07:00] And Isaiah is painting that kind of picture for the people of God and saying, just look at what happened to those who felt themselves strong because they trusted something other than God.
[00:07:12] So notice verse 1 of our passage.
[00:07:14] Isaiah says, So Bel and Nebo
[00:07:30] were the two chief Babylonian gods.
[00:07:35] They ranked at the top in the Babylonian pantheon, in the collection of the Babylonian gods.
[00:07:41] Those were the chief gods.
[00:07:42] In fact, the special honor that Nebo as a Babylonian god held in the minds of the Babylonian people and in the Babylonian society, you could see that just in the fact that his name was prefixed.
[00:07:54] The name of this god was prefixed to the names of royal figures.
[00:07:59] In the Babylonian line of rulership.
[00:08:02] So names like Nebuchadnezzar or Nebopolazar or Nebonidus.
[00:08:08] These names carry with them the name of their chief God.
[00:08:13] To say, this is what defines us.
[00:08:15] This is what makes us a people.
[00:08:17] This is what powers our dominance around the world.
[00:08:22] But Isaiah is saying,
[00:08:24] The worshippers of these gods are loading up these gods onto carts and going with them into exile.
[00:08:32] That's how bad the Babylonian fall was going to happen.
[00:08:36] Look at verse 2, it makes it more explicit.
[00:08:38] They stoop, they bow down together, they cannot save the burden, but themselves go into captivity.
[00:08:46] So these are gods that are helpless to rescue themselves, they are helpless to rescue anyone else.
[00:08:52] And like their worshippers,
[00:08:54] They go into captivity as well, kind of like the Psalmist says, they become like what they worship.
[00:09:00] The gods are going with their worshippers into captivity.
[00:09:04] This would have been astonishing news for anyone who lived in the time of Babylonian dominance.
[00:09:11] And of course this happened, this came to pass when the Persians overrun the Babylonians and defeated them and overthrew them so that they were no longer a world superpower.
[00:09:23] But Isaiah's main point is, all these gods that the Babylonians parade and they are gilded in gold and they look wonderful and imposing when you look at them as they are carried through the streets, those gods will so come down that they will accompany their people into captivity.
[00:09:41] In fact, before they go into captivity, they are always a burden to their worshippers.
[00:09:45] Look at verse 7.
[00:09:47] They lift it up to their shoulders, they carry it, they set it in its place, and it stands there.
[00:09:53] It cannot move from its place.
[00:09:55] If one cries to it, it does not answer or save him from his trouble.
[00:10:02] So these are gods, they call them, but they cannot save anyone from his troubles.
[00:10:08] For us as believers in Jesus, our problem is very different from that of the Babylonians.
[00:10:16] who were humiliated and shamed by captivity alongside with their gods.
[00:10:21] We trust the living God.
[00:10:24] We love Him.
[00:10:25] We know Him.
[00:10:26] We know that He knows us.
[00:10:28] We know that He cares for us.
[00:10:30] So our problem is different and it's like this.
[00:10:33] Sometimes good things in our lives or the lack thereof can make us begin to face the future more on the basis of what we have or we don't have.
[00:10:44] We could be so shaped by what we have or what we don't have in the way we think about the future, about the new year that is coming.
[00:10:51] Maybe our savings, or maybe the state of the economy, or maybe what the latest visit to the doctor revealed.
[00:11:00] Those things can make us feel better or worse about the future that is ahead of us.
[00:11:06] but we have to remember if our confidence to face this new year is based on how well we feel or how promising our job prospects are or how good the economy feels or looks or is set to be or how promising the business we do is looking to do in the new year we may have some kind of an exciting hope but it's going to be false and fragile because all these things that we look at and touch and feel they can all come crashing down in an instant
[00:11:38] And therefore, Isaiah is inviting us as he invited the people of his day, don't trust the things that you see.
[00:11:45] Don't build your hope on that.
[00:11:47] Don't let that be the source of your confidence.
[00:11:49] Or on the other hand, it may be that the year 2025 that is now wrapping up has just been a distinctly difficult year for you.
[00:11:58] In all kinds of ways, challenging and painful.
[00:12:02] And as you think about the year, you have just painful memories of this and that trial and this and that trial that happened to you.
[00:12:09] And that can begin to make you feel anxious and fearful and worried and hopeless about the future.
[00:12:17] But like the Psalmists, we are invited to say, I have no good apart from my God.
[00:12:24] That's our confidence.
[00:12:26] It is in God that we have every good thing that we truly need.
[00:12:30] When the Psalmist says, I have no good apart from you, O God, that statement is more true about each of our lives as believers in Jesus than we realize.
[00:12:40] We really have no good apart from the one true and living God.
[00:12:44] If you are a Christian, the God of the Psalmist is your God too.
[00:12:48] He is the one who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us also.
[00:12:53] He gave him up for us all.
[00:12:55] And so we can be sure he will along with his son graciously give us all things.
[00:13:01] The most important and most stable truth in your life right now is not how 2025 went for you.
[00:13:09] It's not what your job is like.
[00:13:10] It's not what your health feels like.
[00:13:12] The most important thing about your life is not the trials and the joys of the year that is ending.
[00:13:18] It is the fact that you belong to the living God.
[00:13:20] He knows you by name.
[00:13:22] He has called you to Himself through Jesus Christ.
[00:13:25] That's the one thing that never changes.
[00:13:28] And therefore as God's people, we should keep trusting God.
[00:13:33] It is this God about whom the Psalmist says in Psalm 33, The king is not saved by his great army.
[00:13:40] A warrior is not delivered by his great strength.
[00:13:43] The war horse is a false hope for salvation.
[00:13:47] By its might it cannot rescue.
[00:13:50] Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love, that he may deliver their soul from death and keep them alive in famine.
[00:14:02] There is no stable ground.
[00:14:04] of security here there's no stable ground to keep our lives going to make us face the future with confidence and joy and lion-like boldness and a commitment to walk with the Lord God alone is that kind of ground Psalm 20 verse 7 some trust in chariots and some in horses but we trust in the name of the Lord our God they are brought down and fallen but we stand upright
[00:14:31] That's the God that we are called by Isaiah to trust in.
[00:14:36] If you're an unbeliever here this morning, you've not repented of your sins, you've not trusted in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, you should be aware you are cutting yourself off from care and tender mercies and life that you could otherwise have from this God through Jesus Christ.
[00:14:57] He is the one who is said to be
[00:15:00] the one who feeds the hungry and executes justice and gives food to those who don't have and sets the prisoners free and therefore the Bible says blessed is the one whose God is the Lord that's what you're cutting yourself from if you're not living in submission to him through Jesus Christ and when he calls you to himself he's not calling you at any cost to you he's not calling you on the basis of any merit of yours let's hear what Paul says in Titus 3
[00:15:29] When the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.
[00:15:56] That's how God saves.
[00:15:58] Not because of works done by us in righteousness.
[00:16:01] So you can't sit to say, I'm not good enough.
[00:16:04] I will wait until I am good enough.
[00:16:06] No, he doesn't save us because of works done by us in righteousness.
[00:16:10] But according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.
[00:16:16] So this God can be the ground of your life and the stability of your life if you turn to him today.
[00:16:24] In repentance and faith.
[00:16:27] So beloved, my argument to you this morning is, as you face the new year, as you wrap up an old year and face the new year with all its unknowns and all its potential blessings and trials and whatever will come, you need to orient yourself afresh to God.
[00:16:42] Bring your fears and aspirations and plans
[00:16:45] Into alignment, into accord with the nature of God and the ways of God.
[00:16:50] And the first way you do that is you keep trusting Him.
[00:16:53] You keep knowing He's not going to change, He's not going to be different this new year than He always has been.
[00:16:59] So keep trusting Him.
[00:17:02] Here's the second thing.
[00:17:03] Remember His past faithfulness.
[00:17:08] Look at verse 3.
[00:17:10] Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been born by me from before your birth, carried from the womb.
[00:17:23] So in the contexts, through Isaiah, God begins by calling the attention of his people to consider the Babylonians who trusted Baal and Nebo and how they will come crashing down alongside their gods and go into captivity along with their gods.
[00:17:40] So both God and worshipper will go into captivity.
[00:17:44] And then he turns to his people and invites them to listen to him.
[00:17:48] There is a solemn call from God to his people
[00:17:52] To pay attention to him.
[00:17:54] And notice the way God addresses his people in verse 3.
[00:17:58] O house of Jacob, the remnant of the house of Israel.
[00:18:03] Those names have profound historical and covenantal significance.
[00:18:09] God wants the people to go back to the days when he established them as a nation.
[00:18:15] When he called them to himself, when he was establishing them as a nation, they were not there to make that happen.
[00:18:21] When he was calling Jacob to himself, Jacob was not seeking God.
[00:18:25] Jacob was cheating his way through life.
[00:18:28] But it's this God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who sought Jacob and brought him to himself and that began the beginnings of the nation of Israel.
[00:18:39] So when God is calling the people and saying,
[00:18:43] The house of Jacob, the remnant of the house of Israel, he wants them to go back to those days when they didn't even exist as a nation.
[00:18:50] And it is his hand that singularly worked and brought them into existence as a people.
[00:18:58] And he says he carried them from the womb, which means from the inception of their existence.
[00:19:04] And when God says he carried them,
[00:19:08] There are at least three different things he is conveying to the people.
[00:19:12] And the first one we can see in Exodus chapter 19.
[00:19:15] Remember, in Exodus 19,
[00:19:17] The people of Israel are camped at Mount Sinai.
[00:19:20] They have just been delivered from Egypt.
[00:19:23] They have been brought through the Red Sea.
[00:19:24] They have journeyed through the wilderness and have come to Mount Sinai.
[00:19:27] God is about to bring them into a covenant relationship with Himself.
[00:19:30] And then He says this to them, You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to Myself.
[00:19:40] So when God says He carried them, He's saying He carried them as an eagle carries its young ones with that kind of might and power and resilience.
[00:19:50] That's how they were carried out of the smelting furnace in Egypt and brought to Himself on Mount Sinai.
[00:19:57] But there's another angle of carrying that God wants us to see and that is given us in Deuteronomy 1.31.
[00:20:05] The context, Israel is camped on the plains of Moab and getting ready to cross into the promised land.
[00:20:13] And Moses is preparing them theologically for entry into the promised land.
[00:20:18] And then he rehearses for them all of the things God has done along the way, all the way from Egypt to that point.
[00:20:23] And this is one thing Moses says, Deuteronomy 1.31, You have seen how the Lord your God carried you as a man carries his son.
[00:20:33] That's the tenderness of God's carry.
[00:20:36] He carried them as a man carries his own son.
[00:20:41] There's a third.
[00:20:42] Psalm 28 verse 9.
[00:20:45] The psalmist says, Oh, save your people and bless your heritage.
[00:20:48] Be their shepherd and carry them forever.
[00:20:51] So he carried them like a shepherd.
[00:20:55] And all that caring of God, of his people is summed up by Isaiah in Isaiah 63 verse 9 where he says, In all the affliction, and this is a reference to the wilderness days, the wilderness years.
[00:21:09] In all the affliction he was afflicted and the angel of his presence saved them.
[00:21:15] In his love and in his pity he redeemed them.
[00:21:20] He lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.
[00:21:26] Now at what time in the course of all that carrying did the people ever need to carry their God?
[00:21:34] The answer is never.
[00:21:36] They never needed to carry their God.
[00:21:39] From the very beginning of their existence as a nation, from the hour of their birth as a nation, God has been the one carrying them.
[00:21:50] And beloved, isn't that your story and my story?
[00:21:54] At what time did we ever need to carry our God?
[00:21:58] At what time did we ever need to meet a need or a deficiency in our God?
[00:22:06] It is He who works for those who wait for Him.
[00:22:11] So look back on the way God has carried you and brought you along to himself and let the good he has done for you in the past feed your confidence for the future.
[00:22:23] Let the goodness of God, the faithfulness of God in the past feed your confidence for the future, for the new year and all its unknowns.
[00:22:32] You have to remember, at one time you were dead in trespasses and sins.
[00:22:37] At one time you walked in sins.
[00:22:39] You followed the course of this world.
[00:22:41] You followed the prince of the power of the air.
[00:22:43] You were an object of God's wrath, which is just and righteous.
[00:22:47] You were disobedient.
[00:22:49] You were hostile in mind.
[00:22:50] You did evil deeds.
[00:22:51] And yet, because of the great love with which God loved you, He made you alive together with Christ.
[00:22:58] He reconciled you to Himself.
[00:23:00] He brought you to Himself.
[00:23:04] He worked for your highest good in the past, beloved, and therefore you can be absolutely confident He will work for your good in the future as well.
[00:23:17] In the ancient Hebrew conception of reality, you don't face the future by looking at the future.
[00:23:24] You face the future by looking at the great act of God in the past and back up into the future.
[00:23:32] You don't go into the future looking at it, you look at what God has done in the past.
[00:23:35] Because you know the unchanging character of this God, the unchanging nature of this God, the unchanging purposes of this God guarantee that as He has been good in the past, so will He be also in the future.
[00:23:50] So your preoccupation is not with what will happen in the future, it's with the reality of what has happened in the past and using that as the ground of your confidence that the future will be secure.
[00:24:02] That's how the ancients thought, the ancient Hebrews thought of the future.
[00:24:07] That's exactly what Isaiah is calling these people to hear through God, through Isaiah, calling these people and reminding them, I have born you before birth, I have carried you from the womb.
[00:24:24] So whatever the new year has in store, in one sense, is irrelevant for the life of a believer.
[00:24:32] Whatever your health will be in the new year, whatever your finances will be, whatever your work will be, whatever your relationships, your marriage, your singleness, your aspirations and dreams, those in one sense are completely irrelevant.
[00:24:47] What is a fundamental consequence is that the God who has acted in Jesus Christ to save you is for you, is on your side, and he is committed to your highest good.
[00:25:01] So we orient ourselves to God as we face an unknown future by continuing to trust this God, by remembering his faithfulness in the past, and here's the third,
[00:25:15] By hoping in his faithfulness in the future.
[00:25:20] By hoping in his faithfulness in the future.
[00:25:23] Now our confidence in God, and I've said this already, our confidence that God will walk in the future is inferred from the fact that he has walked in the past.
[00:25:32] But it's not just a mere inference.
[00:25:34] We are not just kind of putting one and two and two together and drawing a conclusion that is reasonable and defensible.
[00:25:42] God himself has given us his word that he will be faithful.
[00:25:46] Do you see verse 4?
[00:25:48] Even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you.
[00:25:54] I have made and I will bear, I will carry and will save.
[00:26:01] Do you remember again the context?
[00:26:03] In the context, God will bring utter humiliation on Babylon and their gods.
[00:26:10] To the point where not only will the Babylonians be exiled, but even their gods will be exiled with them.
[00:26:18] So worshipper and God will go into captivity.
[00:26:22] And then Yahweh tends to his people and says, but remember how I have carried you.
[00:26:26] I've borne you all along.
[00:26:27] It's never been you carrying me.
[00:26:29] It's always been me carrying you.
[00:26:32] And then he says, but my self-sufficiency and my omnipotent ability to carry my people is not just an artifact of history.
[00:26:42] It's also true for the future.
[00:26:44] I will do it as well for the future.
[00:26:47] See what he says in verse 4 again?
[00:26:49] Even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you.
[00:26:54] I have made and will bear, I will carry and will save.
[00:26:58] Even to your old age and gray hairs.
[00:27:02] God says, normally we expect that as children reach maturity that they will not need as much carrying around.
[00:27:13] That's just the natural pattern of things.
[00:27:16] Children are born, they are very helpless, they are very dependent, and after a time they can carry themselves around.
[00:27:24] And then as time progresses, these children who were carried by their parents will turn around and carry the parents who carried them.
[00:27:33] Because the parents grew old and become weak and feeble and needy and the helpers will be in need of help when they become of age, when they grow old.
[00:27:46] But our God transcends history and He transcends the natural order of things.
[00:27:52] There will never be a time when we outgrow our dependence on God.
[00:27:58] We are as dependent on Him when we are old as we were when we were vulnerable, helpless young babies.
[00:28:05] And He carries at both times.
[00:28:08] Whether you've just come out of the womb or you are in a nursing home, He is just as true and powerful and able to bear you.
[00:28:15] That's why He says, even to your old age and to your gray hairs, I will carry.
[00:28:22] He's not subject to history.
[00:28:23] He's not subject to the changes of time and space and degradation that we experience.
[00:28:30] As I wrote this, I just was struck by the reality that if you trust in Jesus Christ and it's God's will that you live and age and become weak, when you are at your feeblest and your systems are weak and failing,
[00:28:45] The true people who will be there caring for you will not be a nursing home ultimately, will not be a senior living facility ultimately, will not even be your children, wonderful as that is, it will be God Himself.
[00:28:57] That's the pledge He gives us in this passage.
[00:29:00] Even to your old age and gray hairs, I am He.
[00:29:06] Who will carry you?
[00:29:09] And he doesn't want us to miss the emphatic point he's making.
[00:29:13] Look at four times at the end of verse 4.
[00:29:17] He says, I have made, I will bear, I will carry, I will save.
[00:29:26] How much clearer could God be in terms of giving His people a confidence that He is for them.
[00:29:33] He has their needs covered.
[00:29:35] He has their fears covered.
[00:29:37] There's a full, full repetition and emphasis.
[00:29:41] It's not someone else.
[00:29:43] It's not you yourself.
[00:29:44] It's not some organization.
[00:29:46] It's not an insurance policy.
[00:29:47] It is I, the Lord God.
[00:29:50] Who made you, who will carry you, who will bear you up when you are at your feeblest.
[00:29:58] So we orient ourselves to God as we face an unknown future by continuing to trust this God, by remembering how faithful He was in the past, by hoping in the truth that He will be just as faithful in the future.
[00:30:12] Not just by inference of how He has acted in the past,
[00:30:16] But on the ground of His unbreakable Word that He's given to us, I will carry and bear and save because I am the one who has made.
[00:30:26] Just listen to some of His promises through Isaiah to this people in this time.
[00:30:31] Isaiah 40, 27.
[00:30:33] Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel?
[00:30:37] My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God.
[00:30:42] Have you not known?
[00:30:43] Have you not heard?
[00:30:45] The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.
[00:30:49] He does not faint or grow weary.
[00:30:51] His understanding is unsearchable.
[00:30:54] He gives power to the faint.
[00:30:56] and to him who has no might he increases strength even youth shall faint and be weary and young men shall fall exhausted but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength they shall mount up with wings like eagles they shall run and not be weary they shall walk and not faint
[00:31:16] It's because the God who was coming to covenant relationship with this people of his own accord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth.
[00:31:26] Never getting weary, never getting old, never getting tired.
[00:31:32] Isaiah 41.10 Fear not.
[00:31:36] For I am with you.
[00:31:38] Be not dismayed, for I am your God.
[00:31:41] I will strengthen you.
[00:31:43] I will help you.
[00:31:45] I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
[00:31:51] And because of the cross of Jesus Christ, all these promises, not one of them is left out, all these promises are yes.
[00:32:01] And through Jesus we say, Amen.
[00:32:04] That's what's true of these promises.
[00:32:05] So you could say, that's God's promise for me too.
[00:32:08] That's God's pledge to me too.
[00:32:11] Not because of me, but because my Lord Jesus Christ made all of those true.
[00:32:16] All of those yes and amen by His cross when He rose again from the dead.
[00:32:24] And this God is not only going to care for you and then sign you off at the nursing home or whenever you are dying off.
[00:32:32] On the other side of the grave, He has an even better promise.
[00:32:38] Because He says, For behold, I create new heavens and new earth.
[00:32:45] I grew up, as all of you know, in Cameroon.
[00:32:51] I was very exposed to many different kinds of man-made gods and trusted them in my growing of years but before the Lord saved me one nagging question that stuck with me for a while was I was terrified by death.
[00:33:10] And I just wondered, which of these gods has an answer for me when it comes to death?
[00:33:16] Like when I die, is there something that any one of these gods has to say about what becomes of me after death?
[00:33:25] And I didn't find an answer.
[00:33:27] And so it was utterly consoling to me to find that Jesus Christ is the resurrection and the life.
[00:33:36] He who believes in him, though he dies physically, yet he shall live.
[00:33:40] And those who live and believe shall never die.
[00:33:44] Because he is creating new heavens and new earth.
[00:33:48] And the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.
[00:33:52] No more shall it be heard in the new heavens and new earth the sound of weeping and a cry of distress.
[00:34:02] So this is not just talking about the year 2026 that is coming.
[00:34:06] It's talking about all of your life including eternity.
[00:34:12] So hoping in God's goodness, God's faithfulness for the future does not have an expiration date on it.
[00:34:20] God will never run out of resources.
[00:34:22] 50 trillion years from today, He will be worthy of your trust.
[00:34:27] That's what we are talking about.
[00:34:28] So orienting yourself to this God is trusting Him continually, remembering His past faithfulness,
[00:34:38] and hoping in his trust in his faithfulness in the future and all of that is true because one Sunday morning 2,000 years ago the cry rang out in Jerusalem he is risen indeed he did indeed rise from the dead the first fruit of those who have fallen asleep because as by a man came death
[00:35:00] by man has come also the resurrection of the dead as in Adam all die so also in Christ shall all be made alive but each in his own order Christ the first fruit then at his coming those who belong to him then the end will come when he delivers the kingdom to the father for he must roll until he has abolished all his enemies and the last to be abolished is death
[00:35:28] So beloved, our supreme call, the ultimate goal of our lives is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.
[00:35:40] And we cannot do that if we are skittish and scared and frightened and agitated and stirred up and exercised about the unknowns of the future.
[00:35:52] And the way we get those fears under control, the way we bring the aspirations, good as they may be, into accord with the person of God and the ways of God and His unfailing faithfulness is to keep trusting Him, is to remember how good He has been in the past and to hope in how good He will be in the future because He has given us His Word and sealed it with the resurrection of His Son.
[00:36:19] Let's pray.
[00:36:24] So Lord, thank you that you alone are the God who works for those who wait for him.
[00:36:32] We pray that as we face a new year with the opportunities that you will open up, with the trials that you will see fit to allow to come our way, that we will remember
[00:36:43] There is no ground more stable than you for our souls.
[00:36:48] There is no greater good we can find than you for our souls.
[00:36:52] We pray that you would make us confident in your goodness, confident in your faithfulness, and utterly focused on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, and live ultimately for the day when he splits the skies and comes in blinding glory to make all things new.
[00:37:10] So help us by your grace and make us to know that you are with us and will be always even to the end of the age.
[00:37:19] In Jesus name, Amen.
Good morning everyone.
[00:00:03] I invite you to open in your Bibles to Isaiah chapter 46.
[00:00:07] Isaiah 46, 1 to 7.
[00:00:20] You can find that on page 607 in the Pew Bibles.
[00:00:27] Isaiah 46, 1 to 7.
[00:00:33] This is what the word of the Lord says in that portion.
[00:00:37] Bell bows down.
[00:00:39] Nebo stoops.
[00:00:41] The idols are on beasts and livestock.
[00:00:45] These things you carry are born as burdens on weary beasts.
[00:00:50] They stoop.
[00:00:52] They bow down together.
[00:00:53] They cannot save the burden, but themselves go into captivity.
[00:01:01] Listen to me, O house of Jacob.
[00:01:03] All the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been born by me from before your birth, carried from the womb, even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you.
[00:01:19] I have made and I will bear, I will carry and will save.
[00:01:27] To whom will you liken me and make me equal and compare me that we may be alike?
[00:01:34] Those who lavish gold from the purse and weigh out silver in the scales hire a goldsmith and he makes it into a god.
[00:01:44] Then they fall down and worship.
[00:01:48] They lift it to their shoulders, they carry it, they set it in its place, and it stands there.
[00:01:55] It cannot move from its place.
[00:01:57] If one cries to it, it does not answer or save him from his trouble.
[00:02:08] Father, we pray that you would draw near, you know, our frailties, our weaknesses, our wandering minds.
[00:02:16] We ask that you would unite our hearts to fear your name.
[00:02:20] We pray that you would embolden us in the confidence of your goodness towards us, that you have supremely manifested in the cross of your Son.
[00:02:30] We pray that as we wrap up one year, look to see another begin, that our confidence will rest secure in the goodness of the God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
[00:02:43] We pray that you would use your word this morning to that end.
[00:02:47] In Jesus' name, Amen.
[00:02:52] Just as I was praying, when we next meet for worship,
[00:02:57] We will be in a new year and that's because there is a new year right at our doorsteps at this time of the calendar year.
[00:03:09] And the end of a year and the beginning of a new one is often a good time to reorient ourselves to God.
[00:03:20] To seek to bring our thoughts and our aspirations and our fears and our worries and desires and plans into accord with the person and ways of God.
[00:03:34] So what I want to do this morning is invite us to reorient ourselves to God in a deliberate way.
[00:03:43] Like I said, when a new year is coming, it usually awakens a mixture of aspirations and fears.
[00:03:52] One author says this, For many, it's a chance to turn a new leaf and explore a new territory that from this side of the fence looks promising and green.
[00:04:04] For others, especially those who have been suffering and have received unsettling news, it may look like an ominous void.
[00:04:12] So there could be all kinds of things that the arrival of a new year awakens in a human being.
[00:04:19] But wherever you may be and whatever your aspirations and fears and thoughts and plans may be, what you need most is a fresh reorientation to God.
[00:04:32] A coming into alignment of your mind and whatever is going on in your heart to the person of God and the way He works.
[00:04:42] Augustine once prayed and said, our stability when it is in you, referring to God, is stability indeed.
[00:04:50] But when it is in ourselves, then it is all unstable.
[00:04:56] Because there's no stable ground outside of God.
[00:05:00] And that's what Isaiah invites us to do in the passage we just read.
[00:05:06] Isaiah invites us to resist the temptation to allow ourselves to be controlled by our aspirations, by our fears, by what we think we know, what we don't know, what will happen or what will not happen.
[00:05:19] Isaiah invites us to resist being controlled by those things.
[00:05:23] But then we have to ask, how are we to do that?
[00:05:25] How are we to resist being controlled by fear of the unknown or by an undue excitement about the future?
[00:05:33] How are we to resist that kind of very natural dynamic to us as human beings?
[00:05:40] And I think Isaiah gives us three instructional lines of thought that we need to take into account.
[00:05:47] And the first is this.
[00:05:48] We should keep trusting God.
[00:05:50] The second is we should remember His past faithfulness.
[00:05:55] And the third is we should hope in his future faithfulness.
[00:06:00] Keep trusting God.
[00:06:01] Remember his faithfulness in the past.
[00:06:04] Hope in his faithfulness in the future.
[00:06:08] So let's consider the first thing.
[00:06:10] Keep trusting God.
[00:06:12] Isaiah teaches this truth by saying to his people, to the people of God, just look around you and see the catastrophic end of those who trusted something other than God.
[00:06:22] Just look around here and see.
[00:06:25] He invites them to look at the Babylonians, those who were the dominant world power at the time, and announces to them a calamity that is coming on Babylon.
[00:06:37] So Babylon was going to experience a calamity that will include an overpowering of their gods.
[00:06:44] Now you have to let this sink in because in the ancient world, if something was calamitous enough that it toppled the object of trust and the object of worship of a nation, you couldn't think of a worse calamity than that.
[00:07:00] And Isaiah is painting that kind of picture for the people of God and saying, just look at what happened to those who felt themselves strong because they trusted something other than God.
[00:07:12] So notice verse 1 of our passage.
[00:07:14] Isaiah says, So Bel and Nebo
[00:07:30] were the two chief Babylonian gods.
[00:07:35] They ranked at the top in the Babylonian pantheon, in the collection of the Babylonian gods.
[00:07:41] Those were the chief gods.
[00:07:42] In fact, the special honor that Nebo as a Babylonian god held in the minds of the Babylonian people and in the Babylonian society, you could see that just in the fact that his name was prefixed.
[00:07:54] The name of this god was prefixed to the names of royal figures.
[00:07:59] In the Babylonian line of rulership.
[00:08:02] So names like Nebuchadnezzar or Nebopolazar or Nebonidus.
[00:08:08] These names carry with them the name of their chief God.
[00:08:13] To say, this is what defines us.
[00:08:15] This is what makes us a people.
[00:08:17] This is what powers our dominance around the world.
[00:08:22] But Isaiah is saying,
[00:08:24] The worshippers of these gods are loading up these gods onto carts and going with them into exile.
[00:08:32] That's how bad the Babylonian fall was going to happen.
[00:08:36] Look at verse 2, it makes it more explicit.
[00:08:38] They stoop, they bow down together, they cannot save the burden, but themselves go into captivity.
[00:08:46] So these are gods that are helpless to rescue themselves, they are helpless to rescue anyone else.
[00:08:52] And like their worshippers,
[00:08:54] They go into captivity as well, kind of like the Psalmist says, they become like what they worship.
[00:09:00] The gods are going with their worshippers into captivity.
[00:09:04] This would have been astonishing news for anyone who lived in the time of Babylonian dominance.
[00:09:11] And of course this happened, this came to pass when the Persians overrun the Babylonians and defeated them and overthrew them so that they were no longer a world superpower.
[00:09:23] But Isaiah's main point is, all these gods that the Babylonians parade and they are gilded in gold and they look wonderful and imposing when you look at them as they are carried through the streets, those gods will so come down that they will accompany their people into captivity.
[00:09:41] In fact, before they go into captivity, they are always a burden to their worshippers.
[00:09:45] Look at verse 7.
[00:09:47] They lift it up to their shoulders, they carry it, they set it in its place, and it stands there.
[00:09:53] It cannot move from its place.
[00:09:55] If one cries to it, it does not answer or save him from his trouble.
[00:10:02] So these are gods, they call them, but they cannot save anyone from his troubles.
[00:10:08] For us as believers in Jesus, our problem is very different from that of the Babylonians.
[00:10:16] who were humiliated and shamed by captivity alongside with their gods.
[00:10:21] We trust the living God.
[00:10:24] We love Him.
[00:10:25] We know Him.
[00:10:26] We know that He knows us.
[00:10:28] We know that He cares for us.
[00:10:30] So our problem is different and it's like this.
[00:10:33] Sometimes good things in our lives or the lack thereof can make us begin to face the future more on the basis of what we have or we don't have.
[00:10:44] We could be so shaped by what we have or what we don't have in the way we think about the future, about the new year that is coming.
[00:10:51] Maybe our savings, or maybe the state of the economy, or maybe what the latest visit to the doctor revealed.
[00:11:00] Those things can make us feel better or worse about the future that is ahead of us.
[00:11:06] but we have to remember if our confidence to face this new year is based on how well we feel or how promising our job prospects are or how good the economy feels or looks or is set to be or how promising the business we do is looking to do in the new year we may have some kind of an exciting hope but it's going to be false and fragile because all these things that we look at and touch and feel they can all come crashing down in an instant
[00:11:38] And therefore, Isaiah is inviting us as he invited the people of his day, don't trust the things that you see.
[00:11:45] Don't build your hope on that.
[00:11:47] Don't let that be the source of your confidence.
[00:11:49] Or on the other hand, it may be that the year 2025 that is now wrapping up has just been a distinctly difficult year for you.
[00:11:58] In all kinds of ways, challenging and painful.
[00:12:02] And as you think about the year, you have just painful memories of this and that trial and this and that trial that happened to you.
[00:12:09] And that can begin to make you feel anxious and fearful and worried and hopeless about the future.
[00:12:17] But like the Psalmists, we are invited to say, I have no good apart from my God.
[00:12:24] That's our confidence.
[00:12:26] It is in God that we have every good thing that we truly need.
[00:12:30] When the Psalmist says, I have no good apart from you, O God, that statement is more true about each of our lives as believers in Jesus than we realize.
[00:12:40] We really have no good apart from the one true and living God.
[00:12:44] If you are a Christian, the God of the Psalmist is your God too.
[00:12:48] He is the one who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us also.
[00:12:53] He gave him up for us all.
[00:12:55] And so we can be sure he will along with his son graciously give us all things.
[00:13:01] The most important and most stable truth in your life right now is not how 2025 went for you.
[00:13:09] It's not what your job is like.
[00:13:10] It's not what your health feels like.
[00:13:12] The most important thing about your life is not the trials and the joys of the year that is ending.
[00:13:18] It is the fact that you belong to the living God.
[00:13:20] He knows you by name.
[00:13:22] He has called you to Himself through Jesus Christ.
[00:13:25] That's the one thing that never changes.
[00:13:28] And therefore as God's people, we should keep trusting God.
[00:13:33] It is this God about whom the Psalmist says in Psalm 33, The king is not saved by his great army.
[00:13:40] A warrior is not delivered by his great strength.
[00:13:43] The war horse is a false hope for salvation.
[00:13:47] By its might it cannot rescue.
[00:13:50] Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love, that he may deliver their soul from death and keep them alive in famine.
[00:14:02] There is no stable ground.
[00:14:04] of security here there's no stable ground to keep our lives going to make us face the future with confidence and joy and lion-like boldness and a commitment to walk with the Lord God alone is that kind of ground Psalm 20 verse 7 some trust in chariots and some in horses but we trust in the name of the Lord our God they are brought down and fallen but we stand upright
[00:14:31] That's the God that we are called by Isaiah to trust in.
[00:14:36] If you're an unbeliever here this morning, you've not repented of your sins, you've not trusted in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, you should be aware you are cutting yourself off from care and tender mercies and life that you could otherwise have from this God through Jesus Christ.
[00:14:57] He is the one who is said to be
[00:15:00] the one who feeds the hungry and executes justice and gives food to those who don't have and sets the prisoners free and therefore the Bible says blessed is the one whose God is the Lord that's what you're cutting yourself from if you're not living in submission to him through Jesus Christ and when he calls you to himself he's not calling you at any cost to you he's not calling you on the basis of any merit of yours let's hear what Paul says in Titus 3
[00:15:29] When the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.
[00:15:56] That's how God saves.
[00:15:58] Not because of works done by us in righteousness.
[00:16:01] So you can't sit to say, I'm not good enough.
[00:16:04] I will wait until I am good enough.
[00:16:06] No, he doesn't save us because of works done by us in righteousness.
[00:16:10] But according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.
[00:16:16] So this God can be the ground of your life and the stability of your life if you turn to him today.
[00:16:24] In repentance and faith.
[00:16:27] So beloved, my argument to you this morning is, as you face the new year, as you wrap up an old year and face the new year with all its unknowns and all its potential blessings and trials and whatever will come, you need to orient yourself afresh to God.
[00:16:42] Bring your fears and aspirations and plans
[00:16:45] Into alignment, into accord with the nature of God and the ways of God.
[00:16:50] And the first way you do that is you keep trusting Him.
[00:16:53] You keep knowing He's not going to change, He's not going to be different this new year than He always has been.
[00:16:59] So keep trusting Him.
[00:17:02] Here's the second thing.
[00:17:03] Remember His past faithfulness.
[00:17:08] Look at verse 3.
[00:17:10] Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been born by me from before your birth, carried from the womb.
[00:17:23] So in the contexts, through Isaiah, God begins by calling the attention of his people to consider the Babylonians who trusted Baal and Nebo and how they will come crashing down alongside their gods and go into captivity along with their gods.
[00:17:40] So both God and worshipper will go into captivity.
[00:17:44] And then he turns to his people and invites them to listen to him.
[00:17:48] There is a solemn call from God to his people
[00:17:52] To pay attention to him.
[00:17:54] And notice the way God addresses his people in verse 3.
[00:17:58] O house of Jacob, the remnant of the house of Israel.
[00:18:03] Those names have profound historical and covenantal significance.
[00:18:09] God wants the people to go back to the days when he established them as a nation.
[00:18:15] When he called them to himself, when he was establishing them as a nation, they were not there to make that happen.
[00:18:21] When he was calling Jacob to himself, Jacob was not seeking God.
[00:18:25] Jacob was cheating his way through life.
[00:18:28] But it's this God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who sought Jacob and brought him to himself and that began the beginnings of the nation of Israel.
[00:18:39] So when God is calling the people and saying,
[00:18:43] The house of Jacob, the remnant of the house of Israel, he wants them to go back to those days when they didn't even exist as a nation.
[00:18:50] And it is his hand that singularly worked and brought them into existence as a people.
[00:18:58] And he says he carried them from the womb, which means from the inception of their existence.
[00:19:04] And when God says he carried them,
[00:19:08] There are at least three different things he is conveying to the people.
[00:19:12] And the first one we can see in Exodus chapter 19.
[00:19:15] Remember, in Exodus 19,
[00:19:17] The people of Israel are camped at Mount Sinai.
[00:19:20] They have just been delivered from Egypt.
[00:19:23] They have been brought through the Red Sea.
[00:19:24] They have journeyed through the wilderness and have come to Mount Sinai.
[00:19:27] God is about to bring them into a covenant relationship with Himself.
[00:19:30] And then He says this to them, You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to Myself.
[00:19:40] So when God says He carried them, He's saying He carried them as an eagle carries its young ones with that kind of might and power and resilience.
[00:19:50] That's how they were carried out of the smelting furnace in Egypt and brought to Himself on Mount Sinai.
[00:19:57] But there's another angle of carrying that God wants us to see and that is given us in Deuteronomy 1.31.
[00:20:05] The context, Israel is camped on the plains of Moab and getting ready to cross into the promised land.
[00:20:13] And Moses is preparing them theologically for entry into the promised land.
[00:20:18] And then he rehearses for them all of the things God has done along the way, all the way from Egypt to that point.
[00:20:23] And this is one thing Moses says, Deuteronomy 1.31, You have seen how the Lord your God carried you as a man carries his son.
[00:20:33] That's the tenderness of God's carry.
[00:20:36] He carried them as a man carries his own son.
[00:20:41] There's a third.
[00:20:42] Psalm 28 verse 9.
[00:20:45] The psalmist says, Oh, save your people and bless your heritage.
[00:20:48] Be their shepherd and carry them forever.
[00:20:51] So he carried them like a shepherd.
[00:20:55] And all that caring of God, of his people is summed up by Isaiah in Isaiah 63 verse 9 where he says, In all the affliction, and this is a reference to the wilderness days, the wilderness years.
[00:21:09] In all the affliction he was afflicted and the angel of his presence saved them.
[00:21:15] In his love and in his pity he redeemed them.
[00:21:20] He lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.
[00:21:26] Now at what time in the course of all that carrying did the people ever need to carry their God?
[00:21:34] The answer is never.
[00:21:36] They never needed to carry their God.
[00:21:39] From the very beginning of their existence as a nation, from the hour of their birth as a nation, God has been the one carrying them.
[00:21:50] And beloved, isn't that your story and my story?
[00:21:54] At what time did we ever need to carry our God?
[00:21:58] At what time did we ever need to meet a need or a deficiency in our God?
[00:22:06] It is He who works for those who wait for Him.
[00:22:11] So look back on the way God has carried you and brought you along to himself and let the good he has done for you in the past feed your confidence for the future.
[00:22:23] Let the goodness of God, the faithfulness of God in the past feed your confidence for the future, for the new year and all its unknowns.
[00:22:32] You have to remember, at one time you were dead in trespasses and sins.
[00:22:37] At one time you walked in sins.
[00:22:39] You followed the course of this world.
[00:22:41] You followed the prince of the power of the air.
[00:22:43] You were an object of God's wrath, which is just and righteous.
[00:22:47] You were disobedient.
[00:22:49] You were hostile in mind.
[00:22:50] You did evil deeds.
[00:22:51] And yet, because of the great love with which God loved you, He made you alive together with Christ.
[00:22:58] He reconciled you to Himself.
[00:23:00] He brought you to Himself.
[00:23:04] He worked for your highest good in the past, beloved, and therefore you can be absolutely confident He will work for your good in the future as well.
[00:23:17] In the ancient Hebrew conception of reality, you don't face the future by looking at the future.
[00:23:24] You face the future by looking at the great act of God in the past and back up into the future.
[00:23:32] You don't go into the future looking at it, you look at what God has done in the past.
[00:23:35] Because you know the unchanging character of this God, the unchanging nature of this God, the unchanging purposes of this God guarantee that as He has been good in the past, so will He be also in the future.
[00:23:50] So your preoccupation is not with what will happen in the future, it's with the reality of what has happened in the past and using that as the ground of your confidence that the future will be secure.
[00:24:02] That's how the ancients thought, the ancient Hebrews thought of the future.
[00:24:07] That's exactly what Isaiah is calling these people to hear through God, through Isaiah, calling these people and reminding them, I have born you before birth, I have carried you from the womb.
[00:24:24] So whatever the new year has in store, in one sense, is irrelevant for the life of a believer.
[00:24:32] Whatever your health will be in the new year, whatever your finances will be, whatever your work will be, whatever your relationships, your marriage, your singleness, your aspirations and dreams, those in one sense are completely irrelevant.
[00:24:47] What is a fundamental consequence is that the God who has acted in Jesus Christ to save you is for you, is on your side, and he is committed to your highest good.
[00:25:01] So we orient ourselves to God as we face an unknown future by continuing to trust this God, by remembering his faithfulness in the past, and here's the third,
[00:25:15] By hoping in his faithfulness in the future.
[00:25:20] By hoping in his faithfulness in the future.
[00:25:23] Now our confidence in God, and I've said this already, our confidence that God will walk in the future is inferred from the fact that he has walked in the past.
[00:25:32] But it's not just a mere inference.
[00:25:34] We are not just kind of putting one and two and two together and drawing a conclusion that is reasonable and defensible.
[00:25:42] God himself has given us his word that he will be faithful.
[00:25:46] Do you see verse 4?
[00:25:48] Even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you.
[00:25:54] I have made and I will bear, I will carry and will save.
[00:26:01] Do you remember again the context?
[00:26:03] In the context, God will bring utter humiliation on Babylon and their gods.
[00:26:10] To the point where not only will the Babylonians be exiled, but even their gods will be exiled with them.
[00:26:18] So worshipper and God will go into captivity.
[00:26:22] And then Yahweh tends to his people and says, but remember how I have carried you.
[00:26:26] I've borne you all along.
[00:26:27] It's never been you carrying me.
[00:26:29] It's always been me carrying you.
[00:26:32] And then he says, but my self-sufficiency and my omnipotent ability to carry my people is not just an artifact of history.
[00:26:42] It's also true for the future.
[00:26:44] I will do it as well for the future.
[00:26:47] See what he says in verse 4 again?
[00:26:49] Even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you.
[00:26:54] I have made and will bear, I will carry and will save.
[00:26:58] Even to your old age and gray hairs.
[00:27:02] God says, normally we expect that as children reach maturity that they will not need as much carrying around.
[00:27:13] That's just the natural pattern of things.
[00:27:16] Children are born, they are very helpless, they are very dependent, and after a time they can carry themselves around.
[00:27:24] And then as time progresses, these children who were carried by their parents will turn around and carry the parents who carried them.
[00:27:33] Because the parents grew old and become weak and feeble and needy and the helpers will be in need of help when they become of age, when they grow old.
[00:27:46] But our God transcends history and He transcends the natural order of things.
[00:27:52] There will never be a time when we outgrow our dependence on God.
[00:27:58] We are as dependent on Him when we are old as we were when we were vulnerable, helpless young babies.
[00:28:05] And He carries at both times.
[00:28:08] Whether you've just come out of the womb or you are in a nursing home, He is just as true and powerful and able to bear you.
[00:28:15] That's why He says, even to your old age and to your gray hairs, I will carry.
[00:28:22] He's not subject to history.
[00:28:23] He's not subject to the changes of time and space and degradation that we experience.
[00:28:30] As I wrote this, I just was struck by the reality that if you trust in Jesus Christ and it's God's will that you live and age and become weak, when you are at your feeblest and your systems are weak and failing,
[00:28:45] The true people who will be there caring for you will not be a nursing home ultimately, will not be a senior living facility ultimately, will not even be your children, wonderful as that is, it will be God Himself.
[00:28:57] That's the pledge He gives us in this passage.
[00:29:00] Even to your old age and gray hairs, I am He.
[00:29:06] Who will carry you?
[00:29:09] And he doesn't want us to miss the emphatic point he's making.
[00:29:13] Look at four times at the end of verse 4.
[00:29:17] He says, I have made, I will bear, I will carry, I will save.
[00:29:26] How much clearer could God be in terms of giving His people a confidence that He is for them.
[00:29:33] He has their needs covered.
[00:29:35] He has their fears covered.
[00:29:37] There's a full, full repetition and emphasis.
[00:29:41] It's not someone else.
[00:29:43] It's not you yourself.
[00:29:44] It's not some organization.
[00:29:46] It's not an insurance policy.
[00:29:47] It is I, the Lord God.
[00:29:50] Who made you, who will carry you, who will bear you up when you are at your feeblest.
[00:29:58] So we orient ourselves to God as we face an unknown future by continuing to trust this God, by remembering how faithful He was in the past, by hoping in the truth that He will be just as faithful in the future.
[00:30:12] Not just by inference of how He has acted in the past,
[00:30:16] But on the ground of His unbreakable Word that He's given to us, I will carry and bear and save because I am the one who has made.
[00:30:26] Just listen to some of His promises through Isaiah to this people in this time.
[00:30:31] Isaiah 40, 27.
[00:30:33] Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel?
[00:30:37] My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God.
[00:30:42] Have you not known?
[00:30:43] Have you not heard?
[00:30:45] The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.
[00:30:49] He does not faint or grow weary.
[00:30:51] His understanding is unsearchable.
[00:30:54] He gives power to the faint.
[00:30:56] and to him who has no might he increases strength even youth shall faint and be weary and young men shall fall exhausted but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength they shall mount up with wings like eagles they shall run and not be weary they shall walk and not faint
[00:31:16] It's because the God who was coming to covenant relationship with this people of his own accord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth.
[00:31:26] Never getting weary, never getting old, never getting tired.
[00:31:32] Isaiah 41.10 Fear not.
[00:31:36] For I am with you.
[00:31:38] Be not dismayed, for I am your God.
[00:31:41] I will strengthen you.
[00:31:43] I will help you.
[00:31:45] I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
[00:31:51] And because of the cross of Jesus Christ, all these promises, not one of them is left out, all these promises are yes.
[00:32:01] And through Jesus we say, Amen.
[00:32:04] That's what's true of these promises.
[00:32:05] So you could say, that's God's promise for me too.
[00:32:08] That's God's pledge to me too.
[00:32:11] Not because of me, but because my Lord Jesus Christ made all of those true.
[00:32:16] All of those yes and amen by His cross when He rose again from the dead.
[00:32:24] And this God is not only going to care for you and then sign you off at the nursing home or whenever you are dying off.
[00:32:32] On the other side of the grave, He has an even better promise.
[00:32:38] Because He says, For behold, I create new heavens and new earth.
[00:32:45] I grew up, as all of you know, in Cameroon.
[00:32:51] I was very exposed to many different kinds of man-made gods and trusted them in my growing of years but before the Lord saved me one nagging question that stuck with me for a while was I was terrified by death.
[00:33:10] And I just wondered, which of these gods has an answer for me when it comes to death?
[00:33:16] Like when I die, is there something that any one of these gods has to say about what becomes of me after death?
[00:33:25] And I didn't find an answer.
[00:33:27] And so it was utterly consoling to me to find that Jesus Christ is the resurrection and the life.
[00:33:36] He who believes in him, though he dies physically, yet he shall live.
[00:33:40] And those who live and believe shall never die.
[00:33:44] Because he is creating new heavens and new earth.
[00:33:48] And the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.
[00:33:52] No more shall it be heard in the new heavens and new earth the sound of weeping and a cry of distress.
[00:34:02] So this is not just talking about the year 2026 that is coming.
[00:34:06] It's talking about all of your life including eternity.
[00:34:12] So hoping in God's goodness, God's faithfulness for the future does not have an expiration date on it.
[00:34:20] God will never run out of resources.
[00:34:22] 50 trillion years from today, He will be worthy of your trust.
[00:34:27] That's what we are talking about.
[00:34:28] So orienting yourself to this God is trusting Him continually, remembering His past faithfulness,
[00:34:38] and hoping in his trust in his faithfulness in the future and all of that is true because one Sunday morning 2,000 years ago the cry rang out in Jerusalem he is risen indeed he did indeed rise from the dead the first fruit of those who have fallen asleep because as by a man came death
[00:35:00] by man has come also the resurrection of the dead as in Adam all die so also in Christ shall all be made alive but each in his own order Christ the first fruit then at his coming those who belong to him then the end will come when he delivers the kingdom to the father for he must roll until he has abolished all his enemies and the last to be abolished is death
[00:35:28] So beloved, our supreme call, the ultimate goal of our lives is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.
[00:35:40] And we cannot do that if we are skittish and scared and frightened and agitated and stirred up and exercised about the unknowns of the future.
[00:35:52] And the way we get those fears under control, the way we bring the aspirations, good as they may be, into accord with the person of God and the ways of God and His unfailing faithfulness is to keep trusting Him, is to remember how good He has been in the past and to hope in how good He will be in the future because He has given us His Word and sealed it with the resurrection of His Son.
[00:36:19] Let's pray.
[00:36:24] So Lord, thank you that you alone are the God who works for those who wait for him.
[00:36:32] We pray that as we face a new year with the opportunities that you will open up, with the trials that you will see fit to allow to come our way, that we will remember
[00:36:43] There is no ground more stable than you for our souls.
[00:36:48] There is no greater good we can find than you for our souls.
[00:36:52] We pray that you would make us confident in your goodness, confident in your faithfulness, and utterly focused on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, and live ultimately for the day when he splits the skies and comes in blinding glory to make all things new.
[00:37:10] So help us by your grace and make us to know that you are with us and will be always even to the end of the age.
[00:37:19] In Jesus name, Amen.
