Many believers struggle with personal assurance but the scriptures tell us full assurance is God’s gift to those who see the efficacy of Christ’s sacrifice, receive the Holy Spirit’s ministry to our hearts and bodies, and understand God’s faithfulness. Our assurance is not based upon our feelings but upon God’s promises and He is dependably faithful and true.

Our Lord Jesus Christ promised His people that the Father's pleasure was to give them the kingdom of glory. Daniel, too, knew that the Saints would possess the kingdom of the Son of Man. God gives grace and glory to His people. Grace in salvation and glory in His everlasting kingdom. Those to whom He gives grace He will certainly preserve and bring into glory.

Quick means alive and Paul tells the Lord's people they have been made alive by the power of God when they were dead in their sins. Salvation is a sovereign work of God and quickening brings a new creation, spiritual occupation and life-long transformation. It begins a good work and God's mercies are new every morning.

The Lord Jesus Christ is a suitable Saviour for sinners like us. His perfect life and willing death was crowned by resurrection and glory. He is also a selective Saviour for He bought with His death and brought to salvation all those placed into His hand by elective decree. He is also a successful Saviour; all for whom He died are justified, redeemed, reconciled and heirs of glory by the merits of His precious blood.

The Biblical doctrine of unconditional election to salvation is denied and misrepresented by many but it is the foundation of God's covenant purposes of grace and truth. Believers rejoice to know that their great God and loving Saviour has accomplished and supplied a full, free and complete salvation according to His good will and sovereign purpose.

If we are to have a proper estimation of our condition as sinners before God we ought to hear what God says about it. The verdict is not good. We are fallen, contrary and rebellious people opposed to God. It takes a work of grace to make the change our hearts and that work is sovereignly God’s alone.

Isaiah served God as a prophet and as a watchman. Preachers are watchmen, too. They watch for danger from without the church and trouble from within. Let every watchman answer the earnest enquiry, ‘Watchman, what of the night?’ Let every believer ask that question with humble honesty. Let us all remember the principal Watchman over our souls is our Saviour Jesus Christ.

The Lord Jesus Christ has provided a way of escape for sinners like us. Isaiah warned his age not to rely upon the strength of flesh and spiritually all believers must learn the same lesson both for salvation and in their pilgrim journey. The Lord teaches us to trust not in our own abilities but in Him.

The Lord Jesus Christ is the Saviour who was sent to Egypt; what a great Saviour He is! Isaiah’s audience must have been filled with amazement to hear the prophet speak of Egypt’s salvation and Assyria’s deliverance. These are the blessings of gospel days when God’s elect shall be redeemed to God by Christ’s blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation.

Here Isaiah teaches us about the Lord’s elect, a scattered and peeled people. He shows us how the Lord Jesus Christ is an ensign and a trumpet to call God’s remnant people from amongst the nations. He teaches us how to interpret enduring trials and he confirms the promises that we shall be presented to God as a holy, perfect people in Christ.

The Lord Jesus Christ is the Holy One of Israel and the eyes of His people discern and discover Him by faith to be the giver of grace and bringer of peace. In Christ we have complete redemption, complete pardon and the perfect justifying righteousness of God. Christ is our full, free and sufficient salvation.

The Lord Jesus Christ is the subject of Isaiah’s prophecy. It is He whose kingdom is established in mercy, who sits on a throne of truth and who dispenses righteousness to His people. May the burden of Moab continue to speak to lead the Lord’s little ones under the protection of His wings.

In his pride the King of Babylon set himself up as God, claiming divinity and personifying the religion of man’s fallen, sinful heart. Our Lord Jesus Christ is the true morning star. Salvation and healing are to be found only in the power of Christ’s death and resurrection.

Isaiah records a series of ‘burdens’. These burdens reveal the character of God; His holiness, sovereignty and distinguishing love. They also teach us how we should understand the unfolding of world events. They also point us to the Lord Jesus Christ. Isaiah's message is still relevant today for the people of God!

It is our privilege to praise God for the excellence of the Lord Jesus Christ and the greatness of all His accomplishments. It is also our privilege to declare His doings to those around us in the world. May God give us grace and opportunity, with comfort and joy as we worship Him and serve His cause.

Isaiah rejoiced in the glorious person of the Messiah seeing in Him many wonderful pictures of divine salvation and spiritual life. Here are seven names and roles explained by Isaiah to the people of his day by which the loveliness of the Lord Jesus Christ is explained, and by which Isaiah shows he grasped the worldwide effect and success of the gospel.

The Lord’s elect people are a remnant people who have escaped from judgment and death through the sacrifice and deliverance of their Saviour. The remnant stay upon the Lord in truth, they return to the Lord, and they prove the Lord faithful. These lessons Isaiah taught to the encouragement and comfort of the Lord’s elect then, and they shall remain and encouragement for all time for the Lord’s church from every nation. The elect are be saved because of the appointing and anointing of our Saviour to His task.

The Lord’s people of Isaiah’s day and during the following years waited patiently for the coming of the promised child, the Son of God. Today we are blessed to have seen in all its glory the wonderful work of redemption and grace by the Lord Jesus Christ. Both they, and we, look to Christ by faith, trusting in the power and efficacy of His blood.

Our Saviour, Jesus Christ, comforted the Lord’s elect people, His children, in the Old Testament as well as He comforts us today. Then He gave signs, made promises and sometimes showed Himself to His people to encourage them through their trials. In today’s service we consider Immanuel’s land, Christ our Sanctuary, and a wonderful revelation of Christ and His gathered people to a waiting, watching prophet.

When God sent Isaiah and his son with good news to wicked king Ahaz, the king mocked the message and the messenger. Ahaz denied God’s goodness and determined to save himself by his own means. There is a judgment coming for all who reject God’s gospel. Yet all through the difficult years ahead the Lord’s elect were comforted by the fact that sooner or later a remnant will return, Immanuel would be born of a virgin and God’s way of salvation fulfilled.