JOY "God's Help or Man's?" November 17

November 17, 2010
“God’s Help or Man’s?”
Isaiah 28:1-31:9

1. God’s Power on God’s Terms----29:1-24
2. Our One Security: God’s Sure Foundation----28:1-29, 30:1-31:9

When I was about 10 years old, I was spending the weekend with my grandparents. On the way to church on Sunday morning, we stopped to get gas and some candy for my grandfather to give out to the children, like he always did, after the service. I, being spoiled rotten, was allowed to get a bag of Cheetos and a Mtn. Dew for my mid-morning snack. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to finish eating the Cheetos before we got to church. And I really wanted to, so needless to say, I couldn’t stop thinking about those Cheetos all through Sunday School. By the time we got to the sanctuary, for the morning service, I could not sit still----I wanted those Cheetos soooo badly-----I kept fidgeting and wiggling, until finally, I just asked my grandmother if I could go to the bathroom and she told me to go during one of the songs. When the time came, I jumped up and almost ran down the aisle. I am sure I thought that it looked like I was going to the bathroom---but dummy me, the bathrooms were through the doors on each side of the pulpit—---and I went down the aisle and out the front door.  I was totally blind and oblivious to anything but satisfying my craving for those Cheetos.
Now, when I got out there, I knew that I didn’t want to be, suspiciously, gone too long, so I crammed as many Cheetos, as I could get, into my mouth, and grapped a fistful in each hand and went back into the sanctuary----again dummy me, right through the front door.  Just as I started down the aisle, I realized that my 6’4” white-haired, granddaddy had gotten up to preach------He was standing behind the pulpit—and he was looking right at me. He paused in what he was saying to the congregation (I have no idea what it was) and he said, “Debbie Jean, you come right up here with me.” Every person in the church turned and watched me walk in total silence, down that long aisle, that seemed like it was the length of a football field. All I can remember thinking, at that moment, was that I didn’t want my granddaddy to know what was in my mouth and in my hands----because that would mean, that he would know that I had lied to my grandmother. Again, dummy me, like he couldn’t see that my cheeks were bulging and that my hands were clinched behind my back and that I had cheese powder on my mouth. He didn’t say another word. He just helped me up the steps and settled me into one of the big pulpit chairs to the side of him and he went on with his sermon.
Meanwhile, when he turned his back to me, I proceeded to get rid of the Cheetos by eating them as quickly as I could. It didn’t matter to me that he whole church was witnessing my shame—all I knew was that I felt sick and sorry for having disappointed my granddaddy, and I wanted to get rid of the cause of my sin, as fast as I could. After church, when we got into the car-------all he said to me was that there was a time to satisfy our tummies and a time to satisfy our souls and that I’d gotten the two of them confused ----and he knew that it would never happen again.
And, it never did---and you know, I still have a hard time eating food anywhere else in the church, other than in the fellowship hall. And I still love Cheetos!
You can see by this illustration, how apparent my childish sin was to my grandfather and to everybody else in the congregation----and this illustration also shows us just how apparent, our sin is to God. We can’t hide anything from Him. He sees everything and He knows everything------why do we even try to cover it up? Because the more we try to pretend our innocence, the more God will expose it, to us, and to everybody else too. My granddaddy taught me a very public lesson, that day, but it was for my own good---------and in the short and long run, he showed me the blessing, of a love relationship that is based on mercy and repentance and restoration.

That is exactly what God wants his children to understand through the words of Isaiah--------that He is Almighty Sovereign God and that there is nothing that He can’t do and there is nothing that He doesn’t see and there is nothing that He want do for His children. These words were spoken to the nations of Israel and Judah, so long ago and they are still speaking to us, today.

1. God’s Power on God’s Terms    29:1-29

Throughout the scripture, God is telling us, “You won’t always be able to understand me or my ways; but I promise, that you will always be able to trust them and Me. If I surprise you with trouble, don’t be scared and don’t despair, because I will also surprise you, with the joy, which I will bring to you, when the trouble is over. There may be times when it will be hard for you to believe what I am telling you------but take heart------- I am God and what seems impossible to you, is the very thing that I specialize in.”  
The truth is, sometime our greatest break-through, in our relationship with the Lord, is when we hit a brick wall. Sometimes the most constructive thing, which can happen to us, can happen, when our world seems to be falling apart. Sometimes we need to be pulled up short and to be forced to realize, that we can’t even begin to know, the mystery and depth and the goodness, of who God is.
When we think, that we have God figured out, it is way too easy, for us to slide into the feeling, where we think we know everything that there is to know about Him, and we start to take Him for granted. But the truth is, that God is too big, there is no way that we could ever understand or explain everything about Him, on this side of Glory.
Sometimes, God and His ways don’t make sense to us. We just need to humble ourselves and admit that the mind and character of God are beyond human comprehension. When we can’t see the reasoning, behind some of the things that happen in our lives and we can’t figure out the motivation behind them----that is often, when God will surprise us the most, with some manifestation of His presence or His power, and we will have a small break-through in understanding-----just a little glimpse, of His Sovereignty. That is when we are able to see that God is God and that we are not God and that there is nothing else but God;
and that ,is when we can discover what it means to trust God and to surrender to Him, instead of trying to control Him, by attempting to always control ourselves and our circumstances.
(When our children were growing up, with their very different personalities---we had to nurture and discipline them in different and creative ways, from time to time. What usually worked with Mary Kathryn was to send her to her room, so that she could get herself under control by herself------what worked with Griff was to give him extra responsibilities or to keep him right with me, no matter what I was doing-----and what worked with Lizzie was to take something away from her----usually, just the hint, of a loss of privilege, would pull her into line.)The whole world is under God’s authority; Jews and Gentiles and believers and unbelievers; and God uses very different and surprising methods to show Himself to us, and to draw us close to Him, and to encourage us to obey Him. What works with one person doesn’t always work with another one, so we can’t even begin to imagine the scope of God’s creative and compassionate mind.
One thing that we have to always remember is that God never gives us what we deserve. Because, what we deserve, is death. In His grace, He always gives us just what we need, no matter what that is. If we need encouragement, He makes sure that we get encouragement. If we need discipline, He makes sure that we get discipline. If we need instruction, He makes sure that we get instruction. If we need humility; He makes sure that we get humility. God makes sure that we get what we need, at all levels; in the complexity of our hearts and our souls and our personalities and our minds----and it is beyond our own self-understanding. God alone can see how and when we need to experience defeat and how and when we need to experience victory. And in His mercy, the defeat and the victory are both severe and sweet.
Isaiah gives two encouragements in this passage, that reflect the truth of God’s individual understanding and way of dealing with each one of us. (He uses the illustration of a humble and uneducated peasant farmer. This man knows that you can’t just keep plowing a field, over and over again, without planting a crop, at some point in time. God taught the farmer that truth. God knows that endless upheaval and disruption in our lives would be fruitless------He breaks up the rock-hard soil, of our hearts, in any way that He sees necessary, so that He can plant the seeds that He wants to grow there. God always has a life-enriching; life-growing purpose for us.  We need to yield ourselves to Him.
Looking at the illustration of the farmer again, we can see the 2nd encouragement. God taught the man that after the crops are harvested, they can’t all be threshed and crushed in the same way. Each different crop required its own treatment and its own method of refinement. And even a correct method can’t be overused. God knows how to work with each one of us. He has just the right touch for each one of us. We can trust His hand. He has to do what is necessary to accomplish His purpose. Threshing is meant to be productive, not destructive. God judges, not to destroy, but to encourage repentance and obedience.)
Isaiah makes it very clear to his readers that---- God will keep every promise that He makes to us, because He has the power and the desire, to do it. The power of the Gospel changes our hearts and our lives, when we accept defeat at God’s hands and embrace the renewal ,that only He promises.
In this passage, Isaiah addressed Jerusalem as “Ariel”, which basically means, “lionlike” and it carries with it the idea of the “lion of God”; the lion was the insignia of King David’s family-----and this use of the word “Ariel”, is also translated the “altar of God”---The city of Jerusalem contained the temple, which housed the altar of God. Jerusalem itself, was considered the altar, where sinners worshiped a holy God, through the substitutionary sacrifice system, which God had laid out in Exodus.
The problem in Isaiah’s day, was that the people were meticulously, observing all the religious feasts and rituals, but they were totally insincere in their worship. It was empty observance and it was getting them nowhere. Jerusalem didn’t see how privileged she was and she didn’t recognize the danger that was coming her way. For us, sinners saved by grace, God is both our danger and our overflowing salvation. The only refuge from His holy wrath is His holy love, which was poured out for us, by Jesus, on the cross. In other words, the only escape that we can have from God is to lose ourselves in God. The only purpose, for the whole of mankind’s history, has been for the work of mankind’s redemption.
The worship, of the people in Isaiah’s day, was immune to the heat of God’s anger and to the warmth of His love. They couldn’t distinguish one from the other.  They didn’t tremble or rejoice in God’s presence. They were just going through the motions of worship. They were wasting their time. God cannot abide lukewarm worshipers----Jesus says in Revelation 3:16 “that He will spit lukewarm believers out of His mouth.”
So God told them, through Isaiah, that His judgment would burn inside the city-----and He would allow the city to be attacked and eventually destroyed, not just one time, but over and over again. That promise started to be fulfilled in Isaiah’s day and it is still being fulfilled today and it will continue to be fulfilled, until the time comes, for Jesus to end the burning and to set up His Millennial Kingdom. Jerusalem has been besieged and captured more than any other city in the world. Dr. Vernon McGee said that He had counted 27 times, that Jerusalem had been captured and destroyed, throughout its history.
If the only way that God can get our attention is to bring judgment against us, then He will do it, because He knows that the end result will be greater than any pain or heartache that we might have to, momentarily, endure. (Dr Chuck Swindoll says this about God’s judgment, “Surely this phrase, “the wrath of God” is greatly misunderstood. Many think, invariably, of some sort of peeved deity, a kind of cosmic, terrible-tempered Mr. Bang, who indulges in violent, uncontrolled displays of temper when human beings don’t know what they ought to do. But such a concept only reveals the limitations of our understanding. The Bible never deals with the wrath of God that way. According to the scriptures, the wrath of God is God’s moral integrity. When man refuses to yield himself to God, he creates certain conditions, not only for himself but for others as well, which God has ordained for harm. It is God who makes evil result in sorrow, heartache, injustice and despair. It is God’s way of saying to man, “Now look, you must face the truth. You were made for me. If you decide that you don’t want me, then you will have to bear the consequences.” The absence of God is destructive to human life. That absence is God’s wrath. And God cannot withhold it. In His moral integrity, he insists that these things should occur as a result of our disobedience. He sets man’s sin and His wrath in the same frame.)
The fact that only the city of Jerusalem was saved from the Assyrian’s, in Isaiah’s day, should have brought the Judeans to their knees in repentance, but it didn’t, because after good King Hezekiah died, in a very short time, the people went deep into sin again.
Isaiah was so frustrated with the spiritual inertia, in His generation, that he told the people that if they wanted to be blind to the sovereignty of God, then God would just turn them over to their blindness. They would just be given over to their own lack of understanding. Jesus made this same application to the Pharisees in his day, in Matt. 15:1-9----------they worshiped God so meticulously but so legalistically, that they totally missed Him standing right in front of them. They were saying all the right things and doing all the right things, but they were only following doctrine that had been taught to them by human instruction. Worship and faith and God were just concepts in their minds, not a spirit-filled life-changing transformation of their hearts. Underneath their regimented observance, they were using their worship of God as a mechanism for avoiding God----they were using their worship as a way to control just how much control they were willing to let God have in their lives.
We can deceive ourselves, we can think that we have real faith, if we try as hard as we can to avoid sin-----but just avoiding sin, doesn’t lead to true repentance and worship-----to be truly repentant so that we can worship God in the right way, we have to strip away everything in our sight, except Jesus-----we have to choose to understand that the heart of worship is having an intimate relationship with the Lord Jesus------the trappings of religion are just window dressing, if the Lord isn’t living in our hearts.
The scripture warns us that some people will profess their belief in God, but then they will deny His power. They will go to the church and do everything that they are “supposed” to do, but you won’t be able to see any victory or any joy or any growth in their lives. We need the Lord-----We need the power and the intimacy of Him, in our hearts and in our lives. (Older people need Him because they have so little time left to get ready for eternity. Middle-age people need Him because they are strongly tempted to coast along for the rest of their lives, resting on their past spiritual successes and becoming dull and mediocre. Young families need Him and his power in their hearts because they are forging the convictions that will shape their homes for a lifetime. Singles need Him because they can either gain or forfeit single-minded devotion to Jesus. Students and teen-agers need Him because they are being targeted by the world with brilliant and attractive seductions. Children need Him in their hearts while they are young and open and are able to be set apart to God, forever. Different denominations need Him, because way too often, we settle for the doctrine, of the power of God, rather than the experience, through faith, of the power of God.
Apparently, after all of Isaiah’s words and warnings and prophecies, the rulers of Judah still believed that they were wiser than God. They reversed God’s intended order of things and they put man at the top of the scales, as though the clay was telling the potter what to do. They wanted the right to dictate the terms of their relationship with God. (the story is told of a missionary, preaching to a group of military men overseas. At the end of the service, a young man arrogantly asked, “if God is as almighty, as you say, why did He allow sin to come into the world, in the 1st place? Answer that and maybe I can believe what you just told us.” Smiling, the missionary said, “Suppose a man was on top of a 12 story hotel when a fire alarm sounded? Suppose he ignored the alarm until flames burst into the room? He dashes to the window where firemen are ready to help him. The man shouts, “I won’t come down until you tell me how this fire started!”  What would you think of that man?” asked the missionary. “I’d say he was a fool!” Then the young man suddenly realized, that he by his own conclusion, had condemned his own argument. )
Mankind, whose position is one of guilt before a Holy God, has no right to question God or to dictate terms to Him. Job says in 33: 12-13, “God is greater than man, why would you fight against Him because He doesn’t give account to you of what He does?” In this day of advanced technology, satan is quick to trap people into believing that man is superior in knowledge and doesn’t need God. But 1st Peter 5:6 tells us that the Lord’s way, is for us to “humble ourselves before Him and He will lift us up.”

2. Our One Security: God’s Sure Foundation   28:1-29; 30:1-31:9

Only God can save sinners and that begs us to ask the question----“What is our part in salvation?” The answer can be explained in 2 simple words: Trust God! That is all He really wants from us----He wants us to trust Him because He’s trustworthy. We keep running off to other salvations, even though God has made it clear over and over again, that there is only one Salvation and His name is Jesus.
Trusting God isn’t easy. Living by faith in Him, means that we have to follow Him, forsaking our own ways and embracing His. And that’s hard—we like to do things our way--------and there is not much of anything in our modern culture, which encourages us to live by the belief, that God’s salvation is what our hearts are deeply longing for. We try to put God in a box. We try to visualize and conceptualize Him with the same emotions and reactions and behaviors that we humans have. We think small, dark thoughts about God-----we limit His power and His wisdom and His abilities to our stunted human understanding. We are controlled too much by our own fear, so we keep looking back, instead of walking faithfully, forward through today, on our way to tomorrow.
We have to ask ourselves the question, “Do we feel safe with God alone?” “Do we trust God enough, to feel safe, with just Him alone?” Every one of us struggles to answer that question and each one of us is making a statement about it, by the way that we live. God wants us to be able to say what Isaiah said in 26:8, “yes Lord, walking in the way of your laws, we wait for you; your name and renown are the desire of our hearts.” That’s the faith that He wants us to have. He wants us to come to the end of ourselves, so that He can turn around and fill us up with Himself.  (Legend has it that a man was lost in the desert, just dying for a drink of water. He stumbled upon an old shack----a ram-shackled, roofless, windowless, weather-beaten old shack. He looked around the old place and found a little shade from the heat of the desert sun. As he glanced around he saw a pump about 15 feet away----old, rusty water pump. He stumbled over to it, grabbed the handle and began to pump up and down, up and down, nothing came out. Disappointed, he staggered back. He noticed off to the side an old jug. He looked at it, wiped away the dirt and dust, and read a message that said, “”you have to prime the pump with all the water in this jug, my friend. P.S.: be sure that you fill the jug again before you leave.” He popped the cork out of the jug and sure enough, it was almost full of water! Suddenly, he was faced with a decision. If he drank the water, he could live. Ah, but if he poured all the water in the old rusty pump, maybe it would yield fresh, cool water from deep down in the well, all the water that he wanted. He studied the possibility of both options. What should he do, pour it into the old pump and take a chance on fresh, cool water, or drink what was in the old jug and ignore its message? Should he waste all the water on the hope of those flimsy instructions written, no telling how long ago? Reluctantly, he poured all the water into the pump. Then he grabbed the handle and began to pump, squeak, squeak, and squeak. Still nothing came out! Squeak, squeak and squeak! A little bit began to dribble out, then a small stream, and finally, it gushed! To his relief fresh, cool water poured out of the rusty pump. Eagerly, he filled the jug and drank from it. He filled it another time and once again drank its refreshing contents. Then he filled the jug for the next traveler. He filled it to the top, popped the cork back on, and added this little note: “Believe me, it really works. You have to give it all away before you can get anything back.)
God has the power to fulfill every single promise that He has made in His word. God looks us right in the eye and promises that He can and will deliver on every single promise in the Gospel. The only thing that we have to do, is to just believe Him.  
What Isaiah sees in Ephraim, (Israel, the northern kingdom) is the script that has played out 1000 times in history. Kingdoms rise and fall; wealth is accumulated and then stolen or lost; egos climb up onto a pedestal and then fall down and break, like Humpty Dumpty. (Raymond Ortlund, Jr. says, “Can this really be what life is about, as the media insists? Surely not! I can’t believe it! If this were all, then the cynics would be right. But as Christians, we know, that here, we have no continuing city; crowns roll in the dust and every earthly kingdom must sometime flounder, whereas we acknowledge a king that men did not crown and cannot dethrone , because we are citizens of a city of God, that man did not build and cannot destroy.”) The truth is, it is a mercy of God, to live in the troubled times that we do live in. The world is falling apart and we have no clever answers for our needs, so we’re less likely to be taken in by satan and the world’s lies. It makes it easier for us to believe, that God is our only salvation. In the very day that the drinks, that Isaiah is talking about, run out, and the lights dim and all false crowns roll in the mud-------that’s  the day when we should  turn our backs on everything but God. That’s when we will come to the end of ourselves and we will reach out for God and we will find Him to be, all that we’ve ever longed for. He is our “crown of glory”. When God is our treasure, then we can see through the world’s deception and nothingness, and our hearts can prize Jesus, above anything else.
Isaiah makes the point that Israel and Judah have lost the sense of God in their hearts. He accused them of having fallen into spiritual drunkenness. He saw that the prophets and priests, of his generation, were drunk, with their own trendy wisdom. He knew that He alone, was teaching God’s wisdom, and it pained him to have to endure their mocking of him. There were 2 things that the prophets and priests just could not stomach about Isaiah: 1st---it was the content of Isaiah’s ministry----they thought that his faith in God was childish and simplistic. The truth is that Isaiah’s message was simple-----his whole intent, the whole foundation of his message, was to encourage people to trust God and God alone. He wanted people to find their rest in God through their faith. But the priests and prophets thought, that that message was beneath them. They didn’t think it was sophisticated enough or deep enough. They said that they didn’t feel fed when Isaiah preached.
There are always people who can’t be satisfied with the preaching that they hear-----they complain about it and hop from church to church or from book to book or from speaker to speaker---it never dawns on them that maybe, it isn’t the message that they’re hearing, that’s causing the problem------ that maybe the problem lies, with their own proud attitudes.
Isaiah’s naysayers were whining, “Who does he thing we are? Does he thing we are babies? Does he thing we have no spiritual training? Does he thing we’re wet behind the ears? Does he think that we don’t know what we’re talking about? It annoyed them that everywhere they turned they encountered Isaiah’s prophecies and pronouncements. Unfortunately for them, they had no understanding and no clear idea of the meaning of his words. The truth was, that they didn’t want to hear; they didn’t want to understand that it was God who was speaking to them through Isaiah’s words, because the truth hurt, and they wanted it to go away. And 2nd----it was the style of his ministry that they couldn’t tolerate. They used a sing-songy baby talk to heap scorn on Isaiah’s way of preaching. Basically, they were saying, blah, blah, blah; yada, yada, yada, while sticking their fingers in their ears. They had no comprehension of the depth and the profoundness of Isaiah’s preaching. The people disregarded God’s word. They yawned and claimed that it was boring. The truth stings! Those people didn’t like Isaiah holding them accountable. We don’t like it either, when our spiritual leaders hold us accountable, if our toes get stepped on. But regardless of how they received it or how we receive it, God’s word will never return void. It is the truth and it will always be the truth.
What Isaiah was saying, is as relevant today, as it was then. We don’t mind hearing messages that are comfortable and speak of God’s love and His mercy and His blessing----but we don’t like to hear about our sin and God’s justice. (When our children were little and they got upset about something and pouted, we would make them look in the mirror----- at first they would resist and twist and turn, but when they finally looked they would wind up laughing and it would restore their faces, to their sweet innocence.) God’s word is our mirror and making us laugh isn’t its main intent, but it is designed to take us back to an innocence, which we lost, when sin came into the world. There can be one person sitting in the pew, hearing the gospel and thinking, “I never knew the Bible had so much to say to me. This is so meaningful, and I can’t wait until next Sunday!” while the person right next to them in the pew, is thinking, “This is dumb, I’m bored; why doesn’t the Bible say something that is impressive and lofty, something on my intellectual level?” Same message----totally different impact! Which person in the pew are we? When the Bible is opened up, are we delighted or annoyed?
The prophets and the priests made fun of Isaiah because of how he taught God’s word, precept upon precept, but that is how we are supposed to be taught the scripture, precept upon precept, because that’s the only way that we can understand it’s continuity. It is all true and it interprets itself, because it is the breathing, living Word of God.
The whole issue of turning to Egypt for help against the Assyrian invasion, by Judah, was a big mistake. This was disobedience on the part of Judah, because the Lord had declared, long before that time, that getting aid and protection from Egypt, had been forbidden, ever since God had demonstrated his superiority, over Egypt and its gods, during the Exodus. God was known to the people in Isaiah’s day “as the God who brought you out of Egypt”. So the Judeans knew better than to get tangled up with Egypt.  
Isaiah was also looking beyond the day he was living in, to a time, when Judah would turn to the ultimate wrong ally. In that day, they will accept the antichrist as their Messiah, until midway through the tribulation, when he will finally reveal himself as evil, and they will recognize their heartbreaking mistake.
God doesn’t want us to get into a habit of trusting anyone or anything who isn’t Him.  He will judge anyone, even his own children, if they turn to outside help, instead of to Him.  Horses and chariots are powerful, but in the end they will always fail--------only God can save us. Materialistic philosophy says that it’s smart to trust in the stock market, and in our friends, and in our spouses, and in our abilities, and in our bank balances, and in our families, and in our educations—these are all Egypts.
The real source of Judah’s difficulty was that they didn’t look to God, or if they did glance his way—they didn’t trust Him enough to do what He said. God’s desire was for the Leaders of Judah to seek God’s advice and trust Him to defend them against the Assyrians. Human nature, being what it is, the Leaders were looking for physical security more than they were spiritual security. They were looking for something that they could see and hear. They knew in their minds, that God was there, but He just seemed distant and vague to them. Trusting Him was like trusting thin air. They couldn’t see Him and they couldn’t hear Him and they couldn’t touch Him. Are we the same way? In the face of physical crisis, do we trust God or do we trust the various Egypts in our lives? Our strength can only be found in quietness and confidence in the Lord. He is the only source that will provide our security. We have to lean on His understanding, not on our own. The impulse to work out problems on our own is natural-----but the test comes when the Holy Spirit prompts us to trust Him, and we do it.
Isaiah prophesied the Lord’s justice, but he never failed to remind the people of God’s goodness, too. God never stops reminding His children of His love for them. God has always had an ultimate intention. His plan has always stipulated that there would be, a restored and justified nation, when Jesus, as the chief cornerstone of the Kingdom, comes to rule it, in righteousness. The restoration of Israel will, in itself, exalt the Lord. His discipline, no matter what it is, is never an end, in itself. His ultimate aim is always restoration.
In the Millennial Kingdom:

1. The nation’s leaders will no longer be silent or ignored or mocked like Isaiah was---the people will hear God’s guidance and will follow it, because their hearts will be changed and they will have an insatiable desire to hear it.
2. Idolatry will be put away forever-only God will be worshiped-----the thought of worshiping anything but God will be out of the question.
3. There will be an abundance of crops- Rain in the Holy Land is a precious commodity, they get some but not very much. Drought and famine will be a thing of the past. They will be plenty of rain to grow grain and pasture land.
4. There will be an abundance of water, rivers will flow all over the land.
5. Even animals will be well-fed and taken care of. Eastern culture has never been known for its good treatment of animals. But in the 1000 year kingdom, the donkeys and oxen will be given good grain with no impurities and seasoned mash.
6. There will be a new and delightful intimacy with God ----30:21 says “that we will be walking down the road to the left or to the right and we will hear a voice behind us saying, ‘this is the way, walk in it.’” We will never again wonder which way we are supposed to go.

We have a glorious future—we need to praise God every moment of every day that we have been saved.

Amazing grace, How sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me, I once was lost, but now I’m found, was blind, but now I see, ‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved, How precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed, my chains are gone, I’ve been set free, My God, my Savior has ransomed me, and like a flood His mercy rains, unending love, amazing grace----The Lord has promised good to me, His word my hope secures, He will my shield and portion be, as long as life endures, my chains are gone, I’ve been set free, My God, my Savior has ransomed me, and like a flood, His mercy rains, unending love, amazing grace-----The earth shall soon dissolve like snow, the sun forbear to shine, But God who called me hear below will be forever mine, my chains are gone, I’ve been set free, My God, my savior has ransomed me, and like a flood, His mercy rains, unending love, amazing grace.   (Chris Tomlin Lyrics)