Please turn with me for our scripture reading to Isaiah chapter 12, Isaiah chapter 12. When the Synod of Dort gathered for that concluding worship service on May 29th in the great church in Dortrecht, it was the pastor of that church who preached the sermon, Pastor Balthazar Lidius. Those of you of childbearing age may want to keep that in mind. Balthazar, it's not a name you hear all that much anymore. Balthazar Lidius, he was the pastor of the church. He had preached at the opening service of the synod from Acts 15 on the importance of synods. And now at the close of the synod, he preaches from Isaiah 12. He was a delegate to the synod. He had served all through those six and a half months. And it was typical of Dutch reform practice that they didn't ask a star from the synod to preach. They asked just the pastor of the church to preach. And we don't know exactly what he said, so I'm not claiming my sermon as much like his. But it's so interesting that he chose this text. It's not a text that highlights one of the five points of Calvinism that the Synod wrestled with for so many months. But it's a text that simply rejoices and celebrates the salvation of our God. So let us give careful attention to the reading of God's own word, Isaiah 12. You will say in that day, I will give thanks to you, O Lord, for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away, that you might comfort me. Behold, God is my salvation. I will trust and will not be afraid, for the Lord God is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation. With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation, and you will say in that day, Give thanks to the Lord. Call upon his name. Make known his deeds among the peoples. Proclaim that his name is exalted. Sing praises to the Lord, for he has done gloriously. Let this be made known in all the earth. Shout and sing for joy, O inhabitant of Zion, For great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel. So far the reading of God's word. Isaiah 12 really is a song. It's a song of salvation. I have to confess until I ran across the reference that the Synod of Dort had concluded with this text being preached on, I'd never really thought about Isaiah 12 very much. It's a short little chapter, and maybe many of us have sort of skipped over it in our reading, yet it's a beautiful chapter. It's a magnificent chapter. It's such a celebratory chapter. I'm really impressed with Pastor Lydias that he chose this. I don't think he really cares that I care, but I think it's wonderful that such a powerful passage was chosen, a passage that really concludes a very important section of Isaiah's prophecy. This section begins with a song and ends with a song. I'm talking about the section of Isaiah 6 through Isaiah 12. And the song early in Isaiah 6 is the song of the angels that Isaiah heard in his vision of the heavenly temple when the angels were crying holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. And that song of the holiness of God, that song of the glory of God filled Isaiah with sadness and fear because it made him think about his own sinfulness, his own lostness, his own need. And even more, it made him think about the terrible spiritual state of Israel to which he was going to be called to go and preach. And so the chapters that follow on chapter 6, that first song, are chapters in part of warning, of judgment to come. the judgment that would fall on sinners, and the judgment that would fall on sinful nations. But those chapters are also filled with a promise of future blessing, a promise of God's returning to his people to save them, the promise in particular that God would come in the person of the Messiah, to save his people from their sins. And these chapters that we have between 6 and 12 in Isaiah have some of the most wonderful prophecies of the coming of Jesus that we have anywhere in the Bible. They're very familiar to us. They're prophecies that are often turned to and remembered, particularly at Christmastime. Isaiah 7, verse 14. Behold, the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and you will call his name Immanuel. For Isaiah chapter 9, verses 6 and 7, For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. And of the increase of his government and of peace, there will be no end. On the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. And then in chapter 11, the opening verses. There will come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his root shall bear fruit. and the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord, and his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see or decide disputes by what his ears hear, but with righteousness he will judge the poor and decide with equity for the meek of the earth. And he will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth and with the breath of his lips. he will kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist, and faithfulness the belt of his loins. This is the anticipation of the coming of Messiah. And when Messiah comes, Isaiah 11 verse 9 says, They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. There's the great prophecy. There's the great promise. And Isaiah 12 is a song that is given by Isaiah to the people of God to sing, when that day comes. You notice how chapter 12 begins. You will say, in that day. What day? You see, this wasn't a song for the day of Isaiah 6. This was a song for the time after judgment, after loss, after suffering, when Messiah came, when Messiah redeemed his people. And in that day, this song says, you'll have a song of celebration. You'll have a song to sing to the Lord. And so this was a song given to the prophet Isaiah for us, because we are those who live in the day when Messiah has come. We're looking for his coming again, when he will fulfill in detail all the promises of this prophecy. But he's already come with blessing. He's already come with salvation. He's already come that we might join in the great song of salvation. And what particularly are we celebrating when we sing this song, when we think about the words of this song? Well, we're thinking about three things. I don't know if all 17th century sermons had three points. I do remember reading a Puritan once. Now, this was a book, not a sermon. And I do remember vividly when he said, and 64thly. Aren't you glad there are not 64 points to this sermon? But the first thing we see that we celebrate in this passage is what God has done for us. This celebrates what God has done for us. He has turned anger to acceptance. That's the first thing that he's done for us. He has turned anger, his anger, his wrath against sin, his wrath against unbelief and rejection, he has turned that anger into the acceptance of his people. Remember how Isaiah, contemplating the holiness of God, had cried out, Woe is me, I am undone, for I am a man of unclean lips and dwell amongst a people of unclean lips. The anger of God was a holy anger, a righteous anger, a just anger. It was an anger that the people could not deal with themselves. Only God could deal with his own anger. Through the gift of his own son for the atonement that would be made. You remember, we're told that in Isaiah 6, verse 7. When the angel came with the burning coal taken from the altar of incense and touched the prophet's mouth. And verse 7 says, and he touched my mouth and said, behold, this has touched your lips. Your guilt is taken away and your sin is atoned for. But, of course, the work of the angel and the vision of the coal from the altar of incense is only a symbol. A symbol of the saving work of Jesus, who was to come. Of Jesus, who would atone for his people. Jesus, who on the cross would bear the sins of all his own. That's how anger can be turned to acceptance. Not by us, but only by our Christ, only by our God. It is the cross of Jesus who takes the anger of God, who takes the wrath of God, who pays the penalty for our sin that stands at the very center of our song of salvation. That's what Isaiah foresaw. That's what we're able to celebrate. That's why one of the great cries of the Reformation and of the Synod of Dort was Christ alone. Christ alone is the Savior. He's the full Savior. He's the complete Savior. There is nothing lacking in the work that he does for us. And that's celebrated here in this song of salvation. Anger turned to acceptance. And then secondly, what God has done for us is he has turned our sin to salvation. We are rescued, we are delivered, we are caught up into God and into His strength. And that's being said here over and over again. Behold, verse 2, God is my salvation. For the Lord God is my strength and my song. He has become my salvation. God is my salvation. He has done it. He is the worker. He is the accomplisher. Israel, in its weakness, Israel in its sin, could not help itself at all. And that's true of us all individually as well. Left to ourselves, we cannot help ourselves. We cannot rescue ourselves. We cannot save ourselves. And even saved, we will not have the strength to keep ourselves. It is the work of God. He is our salvation. He is our hope. And so this reference here to the song of salvation in verse 2 is a quotation from Psalm 118. That's why we're going to sing part of Psalm 118 at the end of our service. Isaiah knew the Psalter. He knew the songs of Zion. He knew the promises of God's Word, and he's taking them up here to say, My song is that God is my salvation. He has done for me what I could never do for myself. And Psalm 118, of course, is the great psalm in the church of the resurrection of our Savior. The stone that was rejected, he has become the head of the corner. That's a celebration of Jesus Christ having passed through death on into life. Life not only for himself, but life for us. That's what this song celebrates, the life-giving strength of God to save his people, to bring them to victory over sin and death by the resurrection and salvation of our Lord Jesus Christ. And the celebration that sin is turned to salvation is very much a celebration that we are saved by grace alone. It is not our doing, but God's doing that saves us. That was a great theme of the Reformation. It was a great theme that the Synod of Dort protected and preserved for us. That God alone is the actor in salvation. God alone accomplishes what we could not accomplish for ourselves. And that grace of God that alone saves is a grace that was rooted in his plan in all eternity. He didn't just dream it up in time, but he had planned from eternity his gracious saving work that we would be rescued from sin and death and brought to life. What a wonderful song this is. A song celebrating what God has done for us. But secondly, it also celebrates what God has done in us. The work of God is not just outside of us, but the work of God is also in us to save us. And this song expresses that in a number of wonderful ways. It expresses how what God has done in us is to turn our sense of curse, when Isaiah cried out, woe is me. He's turned that curse into comfort, into a sense within ourselves that we are right with God, we are at peace with God. Look again at verse 1 of chapter 12 of Isaiah. You will say in that day, I will give thanks to you, O Lord, for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away that you might comfort me. Part of the reason that the Heidelberg Catechism has such powerful resonance with the hearts of God's people through the centuries is that it begins with that fundamental sense of our need. What is your only comfort in life and in death? We need consolation. We need comfort. We need reassurance in a world that too often seems sad and crazy and violent and wicked and terrible. We can feel ourselves reeling before the apparent absurdity of this world. And at the heart of it, we can turn to a God who comforts us. who, like a father, shelters us and protects us and turns our suffering, our cursedness, to comfort. He preserves us by his irresistible grace, that grace that accomplishes its purpose. What a wonderful thing to know that God will accomplish his purpose in us. We cannot thwart him. Now, I encourage you not to try. It's not a good thing to put him to the test. But the truth is we cannot thwart him. He will accomplish his purpose. And his purpose for his own is to preserve them and protect them. And to reassure them constantly that in the face of Jesus Christ, we see the comforting care of the Father for us, to preserve us and to protect us. He's turned curse to comfort. He's turned fear to faith. Isaiah trembled in fear before that vision of a holy God and the lostness of his people. But here we're encouraged that fear can be turned to faith by the salvation of God. Verse 2, Behold, God is my salvation. I will trust and not be afraid. I will trust and not be afraid. Trusting is putting our faith in God, resting in Him, having confidence in Him. Having confidence particularly that God will keep His promises. That's the very heart of faith. That God will keep His promises, trusting that. He's made us wonderful promises, hasn't he? He's promised to redeem us. He's promised to care for us. He's promised to love us. He's promised to give us eternal life. And sometimes those promises are hard to believe. Sometimes the pressures of life are so intense. Sometimes the pressures of doubt can be so severe that we have to return to those promises again and again and say to our God, no matter what I feel, no matter what the world says, I will trust you. I will rely on you. You are a God who keeps your promises. And so here, where fear is turned to faith, we have the Reformation doctrine of faith alone. Now, the canons of Dort don't have a separate head of doctrine on faith. But I counted once, this is a kind of crazy thing professors do, I counted once and 65% of the articles in the Canons of Dort have a reference to faith. Faith is all through the Canons of Dort. The faith of people in the promises of God. What a wonderful thing God has done in us to assure us we don't need to fear him. Because he'll keep his promises for us. He's also turned judgment to joy. He's turned judgment to joy for us. Look at that wonderful statement in verse 3. With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. The joy of the Lord in salvation is ever flowing. Remember Jesus said in John 7, He was the water of life and that out of his heart would flow rivers of living water. The water never runs dry. The aquifer is never empty. The wells are never without water. God had sent waters of judgment on his people. We read about that in Isaiah chapter 8, verse 5. The Lord spoke to me again, Isaiah said, because this people has refused the waters of Shiloh that flow gently and rejoice over Rezan and the son of Ramaliah. Therefore, behold, the Lord is bringing up against them waters of the river, mighty and many. The king of Assyria and all his glory, and will rise over its channels and go over its banks, and it will sweep on into Judah. It will overflow and pass on, reaching even to the neck, and its outspread wings will fill the breadth of your land, O Emmanuel. O water can represent judgment in flood and in destruction. But here water is the gentle waters of Shiloh or the wonderful water of the wells of salvation. The wells that Jesus talked about, I think, when he was meeting with the Samaritan woman in John 4. And he promised her water that would well up to eternal life, water that would mean she would never grow thirsty. And that sinner believed, and her heart was filled with joy, particularly the joy of thanksgiving. That's what we find here. Real joy is joy that leads to thanksgiving. the thanksgiving in the acknowledgement of how good, how gracious, how merciful, how wonderful God has been to us in Jesus Christ. And that joy, that thanksgiving leads us on to sing and shout. Well, maybe not shout. We're not very good at shouting. But we're good at singing and lifting our voice with enthusiasm. I don't know how you feel about these Genevan psalm tunes. There's kind of sometimes a mixed reception to Genevan psalm tunes. They're a little bit different. They have a different musical quality than what we're used to. But you've been singing them really well. I think they're very singable. They're actually rather simple and straightforward to sing. And underneath, there's tremendous power in them. There's tremendous strength in them, and therefore I think they really do express the joy of salvation. Maybe not in the medium we're most used to, but in a wonderful, strong way. These are not superficial songs. These are profound songs that carry the weight of the profound message of the Word of God. And so this is what God is doing in us for salvation. He's turning the curse to comfort. He's turning the fear to faith. He's turning the judgment to joy. What a wonderful God in what he's done for us and what he's done in us and what he does through us. That, too, is part of the song of salvation, what God is doing through us, and what is God doing through us? This song says he's speaking through us to the world about what he has done. Look at verse 4. Give thanks to the Lord. Call upon his name. Make known his deeds among the peoples. Proclaim that his name is exalted. Sing praises to the Lord, for he has done gloriously. Let this be made known in all the earth. Here's the calling of the salvation of the Lord in which we're to take part. We don't save ourselves. There's nothing we can contribute to our own salvation, but the Lord gloriously is saying here, He will use you to contribute to the salvation of others. Not in terms of the meritorious work of Jesus, of course, which is full and complete in itself, but that work of Jesus has to be taken out into the world. It has to be made known. It's made known by preachers. But it's also made known by Christians who sing the song of salvation, who live lives of joy and thanksgiving, who testify to the glory of God's name so that his name will be known all over the earth. The city of Dortrecht was a pretty small town by contemporary standards, by our standards. Heibert's giving me a dirty look. But it was a small town by what we think of as big cities today. But from that little place, just like Geneva, a little place. 10,000 people when Calvin went there. Like Wittenberg, a little place. God has blessed his truth to go all around the world. And we're really inheritors of that. And we're blessed to live in a day when we can see that indeed the knowledge of the Lord is covering the earth. There are few places left on the earth where the name of Jesus has not been sounded. What a wonderful thing. What a wonderful blessing. What a wonderful joy. And so we have two songs in Isaiah 6 and in Isaiah 12. In the song of Isaiah 6, we're told God is lifted up in his glory, so holy, so unapproachable, so fearful. But do you notice how this song ends? For great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel. He's not being seen any more at a distance with a holiness that is separating. But now he's seen right in the midst of his people. He's drawn near. And he calls us to draw near to him. And we do that in Jesus Christ. Jesus is the Holy One in our midst. Jesus is the one who enables us to draw near. Jesus is the one who shows us what God has done for us and in us and through us. And may God grant that every one of us today is filled with faith and joy and thanksgiving in all that our God has done and done alone to save us. Amen. Let us pray. O Lord, our God, how good you are, how great you are, how kind you are, and how gloriously you have spoken to us in your word, and how thankful we are for all of those who have labored through the whole history of your church to preserve that truth, the truth of your sovereign grace, of your saving purpose, of our Lord Jesus, who alone has borne your wrath on the cross for us. Fill us with hope, fill us with joy, fill us with faith, that we may truly enter in to the great songs of salvation. Hear us, for we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.