Sermon Tone Analysis

Isaiah 28

Good evening church!

I want to begin by thanking you for allowing Nicole and I some time away to celebrate our 30th Wedding anniversary.

We had a wonderful time of exploring Tennessee.

We saw 7 bears not including the ones in zoos and country stores, got to see and do a ton of things, we were able to worship with Calvary Chapel brothers and sisters from the south, and just had a blast together, so thank you for that, but as always, it is good to be home!

Thank you to the men who took on extra duties and taught the Word while I was gone, I’m looking forward to catching up with all of those teachings later in the week.

Let’s pray to begin....

You all can open your Bibles to Isaiah 28, I however want to begin reading from a passage in 2 Samuel chapter 12....

This is similar to what we find in Isaiah chapter 28 this evening…Chapter 28 begins a section of 8 chapters, 28-35 that are directed primarily to the southern kingdom of Judah.

But as an introduction to get their attention, he begins with the sin in Northern Israel, referred to here as Ephraim.

God knows us all too well.

Often times we can get enraged and self righteous when hearing about the sins of others, that is shameful and so gross on them, when sometimes, it is something that is actually happening in our own lives.

This pattern in the Scriptures is seen often.

Here God uses Ephraim to speak to Judah, and we need to understand and see that He is then using Judah to speak to us today.

So chapter 28 verse 1...

This is the first of I believe 6 Woes that are pronounced in this section of Isaiah.

Woe to the crown of pride.

Here speaking of Ephraim and their pride is connected to their abuse of alcohol.

The bible warns throughout of both the sin and the dangers of drunkeness.

Saying here that it will overcome them, that they will be trampled underfoot, that their beauty is a fading flower…it will be their destruction.

Jesus warned that it would be the case in our day, in the final days.

Luke 21:34-36

As clear as the Bible is about drunkeness, it might make things cleaner if the Bible just declared an outright prohibition against alcohol, but it doesn’t do that either.

The first miracle of Jesus was to turn water into wine…, I think there is pretty clear Biblical evidence that Jesus consumed wine and...

In the Psalms we read Psalms 104:15

In it’s proper use the Bible presents wine as a gift from God, outside of it’s moderate use, it is a curse and it is clearly sin.

That is what Isaiah is addressing in chapter 28.

The exception here is those that have not been overtaken or overcome with wine, the remnant that remains faithful to Him.

Isaiah 28:5-6

Now here is where we see the turn, from the north to the south, from Ephraim to Jerusalem in Judah.

Isaiah 28:7-8

SO when it comes to Jerusalem, it is not just the politician, the popular, or the rich and famous that have been abusing the intoxicating drink, but the priest and the prophet as well, and as a result, they have erred....and the end of verse 7, I think gives us the gravest of consequences…They err in vision, and they stumble in judgement....If you guys remember from our study in Ephesians just before I left, Paul wrote…Eph 5:18

These guys were drunk with wine and they were a waste, they erred in vision and they stumbled in judgement.

God is addressing sin in the camp here.

I don’t want to use this as a launching pad to preach against alcohol use, but I want you to consider some statistics just quickly....

In the U.S. annually there are 95 thousand alcohol related deaths.

10.5 K drunk driving deaths.

47.5 K deaths from alcohol related long term health failures…meaning in this advanced educated country, we lose 1 person every 52 minutes from an alcohol related death.

Roughly 980 of those deaths are in children under the age of 18..

We know this is never true, but some might argue, so what, that only effects the drunks....not true, never true related to any sin.

But when we look at alcohol related crime stats...

7,334 homicides have alcohol as a contributing factor every year.

48% of those convicted of homicide were under the influence at the time and 40% of homicide victims were drinking before they died.

Last category…date rape 3 out of 4 attackers had been drinking when they sexually assaulted their victims and half of sexual assault victims have been drinking at the time of their attack.

Drunkenness is clearly sin, and drunkeness has grave consequences in America and around the world.

We somehow take pride in drunkeness here though.

Nicole and I had opportunity to listen to a bunch of live music while we were in TN.

One of the nights we went to live performances, there were four singer songwriters performing at a listening room.

All very talented, two were overcome by alcohol, and it will be the destruction of them.

Continuing on, Isaiah uses the example of the north to get their attention, and then calls out the sin in the south, the drunkeness and err in vision and judgement of the priests and prophets in Jerusalem, being influenced by their drunkenness, rather than the influence of the Holy Spirit.

Now Isaiah shares with us, the reaction of the people to his message, their sarcastic response to his prophecy.

Who is his message for, newborn babies?

It is too simple, I’m not getting anything from it, some might say the same about how we teach line upon line, precept upon precept, but that is how the Word is learned and application is given.

Now we see God’s response to their mockery of Isaiah’s message.

There is a consequence to the rejection of the simple clear teaching of the Word of God.

He speaks to the sinful arrogance of the leaders.

Isaiah 28:14-15

They had made alliances with Egypt in this case, and had placed their reliance and faith in this partnership rather than in God.

This is a huge deception of the enemy, even what it says here of making a covenant with death and with Sheol of the place of the dead we are in agreement.

People today are under this deception that they have their own deal with God, or that they are all set for what comes after death.

But the world should not have a false sense of security or any security in their plan for death or the afterlife, they should in fact fear death, because death is finality.

Death brings the end of opportunity for repentance and getting things right with God!

Jesus said he is the way the truth, and the life…any other way leads to death and separation from God for all of eternity, so this idea that we all go to heaven in the end is just deception.

Isaiah 28:16-19

The prophet is not speaking of a plan or a program here, but a person, Jesus.

The Cornerstone.

To those that will be facing that judgement to come, Isaiah gives some advice....Isaiah 28:20-22

Now in verse 23 he begins an example related to farming.

Isaiah 28:23-26