When the people turn back to God and he answers their cry—this is a glorious reunion! “He will surely be gracious” to Judah (Is 30:19). “He will no longer hide himself” but Judah will behold their God (Is 30:20 NASB). Notice how great a reward God himself is in this passage! When Judah returns to God, they will see him (Is 30:20) and hear him (Is 30:19,21); he will offer corrective advice so they can walk in the way again (Is 30:21). Another dramatic result of this reunion is the destruction of their idols (Is 30:22). How could an imitation ever hold a candle to the one true God they have now beheld?

Why are some of Jesus’s parables more popular than others? The story of the prodigal son, for example—why do we hear so much about it? The return of a wayward child strikes a deep chord. We all know friends, siblings, or church members who have turned away from God. We long for the joyful return described in Luke 15.
Isaiah 30 presents an Old Testament precursor to this story. This chapter describes the despicable idolatry of Judah and the lavish love of God the Father.
First, a bit of history: Isaiah prophesied to the kingdom of Judah from 740 BC until at least 681 BC. Assyria was the major political and military power of the time and the nations around Assyria lived in fear. These countries often negotiated alliances among themselves for protection. Judah, despite being commanded to the contrary, was not immune to this temptation.
Judah’s Alliance with Egypt
In Is 30:1–5, Isaiah lays out God’s displeasure with Judah. They are “stubborn children” (Is 30:1) who “set out to go down to Egypt without asking for my direction” (Is 30:2). They do this in order to “take refuge in the protection of Pharaoh” (Is 30:3).
Catch the irony—the dominant Old Testament story of deliverance (the exodus) is powerful because of how ruthless, bloodthirsty, and oppressive Pharaoh was toward God’s people. In the history of Israel, Egypt is a place of death! So how can Judah now seek life there?!
Isaiah tells us that Judah’s alliance with Egypt won’t even be successful. Notice the words “shame” and “humiliation” in Is 30:3 and Is 30:5. Why will they be ashamed? Because Egypt is “a people that cannot profit them” (Is 30:5).
The worthlessness of Egypt’s help reappears in Isaiah’s poem (Is 30:6–7). Notice especially in Is 30:7 where God says that “Egypt’s help is worthless and empty” and he refers to Egypt (“Rahab”) as a “Do-Nothing” (Is 30:7 NIV). There is more sad irony in this poem: God once led Israel out of Egypt full of treasure plundered from the Egyptians (Ex 12:35–36), but now Judah carries treasure back to Egypt (Is 30:6) as payment for protection.
A Rebellious People
Isaiah presented the basic accusation against Judah in Is 30:1–2; he now presents a deeper charge in Is 30:8–11. The children of God are not behaving like true children (Is 30:9), because they are “unwilling to hear the instruction of the Lord.” In this refusal, they don’t silence the prophets, they merely limit their speech. They don’t want to hear “what is right.” They only want to hear “pleasant words” and “illusions” (Is 30:10 NASB). And in a very revealing way, they want to hear “no more about the Holy One of Israel” (Is 30:11).
Note the clear connection between rejecting God and rejecting his word. The people realize that hearing a true prophetic word would mean being confronted with the Holy One, and they want no part of that. Since this Holy One is their father, they are acting like “lying children” indeed (Is 30:9).
A Word From God
As much as Judah didn’t want to hear from the “Holy One” (Is 30:11), they will hear from the Holy One (Is 30:12,15)! After summarizing Judah’s sin in Is 30:12, God details the consequences. Of the two violent metaphors used in Is 30:13 and Is 30:14, I found the smashing of the pottery particularly vivid. The jar will be shattered so completely that no useful piece will remain (Is 30:14).
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A church graveyard often means that the church has lasted for decades and decades as saints have labored there to preach the Gospel and build up the body…how much we lose when our church doesn’t have a graveyard.
Every couple of months, I go for a walk around our church graveyard. I have called it a cemetery for the longest time, but it’s actually a graveyard. Graveyards are connected to a church. Cemeteries are not.
As I walk through the graveyard, I visit the graves of saints that have passed on since I have been pastor and I remember them. I’m encouraged by their graves to keep pressing forward in pastoral ministry.
I once spoke with a pastor who told me, “I don’t like church graveyards. That’s just a picture that you are a dying church.” I thought that was quite silly. A church graveyard often means that the church has lasted for decades and decades as saints have labored there to preach the Gospel and build up the body.
It’s sad that many new churches that are started do not get to have a graveyard. Most of the time, I get it. If you plant a church in downtown Boston, you can’t really have a graveyard attached to it. But, how much we lose when our church doesn’t have a graveyard.
Here are five reasons I think there is glory in a church having a graveyard attached to it.
#1 It reminds us of our own death as we enter worship.
The fact is, we in America rarely think of our own mortality, especially if we are young. We kind of know in the back of our minds that we will die someday, but it’s still a long way off, right? Wrong. In our church graveyard, there are people of all ages. We have several babies buried in our graveyard that were only a few days old. We have kids buried there. We have people in our graveyard that were in their 40s and 50s when they died. Every person in the graveyard that died at old age were at one time my age. And now they are gone. And so will my life be. So every day when I see that graveyard, I am reminded I will die and that causes me to consider my life and value what is important. It causes me to make my life about the right things and not waste it.

Much contemporary preaching demands faith. This is right insofar as it goes, but it is not all. Preachers should not demand faith only. We are saved by faith in Christ, yes, but Christ saves us, through faith, from sin. He was called Jesus (literally, Savior) because he was going to save his people from their sins (Matt. 1:21). If the preaching of salvation through Christ has no reference to sin, then the people to whom we preach are robbed of the whole context of sin which gives penitent faith in Christ its significance. It is easier, even pleasant, to preach faith in Christ as the only necessary response to the proclamation of gospel truth, but it is sin to which sinners are attached.

True repentance grows in the gospel soil of God’s sovereign grace. Its roots comprise both biblically-informed grief over sin and biblically-informed apprehension of God’s mercy in Christ. Its trunk and branches are turning from sin and turning to God. Its fruit is the endeavor for new obedience in full dependence upon the Holy Spirit.
All this we have gleaned so far from looking at chapter 15 of the Second London Baptist Confession. The chapter now concludes by examining the necessity of preaching repentance in the light of what we know about sin:
Such is the provision which God hath made through Christ in the covenant of grace for the preservation of believers unto salvation; that although there is no sin so small but it deserves damnation; yet there is no sin so great that it shall bring damnation on them that repent; which makes the constant preaching of repentance necessary.
No Sin So Small
The Confession completes its treatment of repentance with some particular and searching counsel about the necessity of preaching repentance in the light of what we know about sin. As we noted when we began, every sin is grievous, and the “least” sin (as men perceive it) is sufficient for the condemnation of any man. However, that God is willing to forgive the sins of those who come to him in faith and repentance is the hope of the sinner, and must therefore be preached to sinners fully and freely.
Never underestimate sin. There is no sin so small but it deserves damnation. The wages of sin — all sin, each and every sin — is death (Rom. 6:23). In this sense, no sin should be considered small, as it brings so great a condemnation. The holy law of God is like a great and fragile object, perhaps a beautiful window or some other work of art, all made of one piece. If I make a crack in this great and fragile thing, no one accuses me of breaking only a part of it. The entire object is no longer whole. Thus it is with the law of God: to break it at all is to break it all (James 2.10). To stumble in any point is to become a lawbreaker, and therefore to be guilty, and deserving of punishment.
When David cries out for forgiveness in Psalm 51, there is a comprehensiveness in his desperate request. David is concerned for particular sins, yes, but with every particular sin also. He wants God to cleanse him from sin in its totality and sins in their plurality. He desires a complete cleansing (for example, Ps. 51:2, 7, 9), because he knows that one sin is fatal to peace with God. All this means that when we look at any man or woman, boy or girl, we are looking at someone who is a lawbreaker, who has offended the gracious and holy God, and is therefore liable to the just and fearful punishment of that God for the transgression of his revealed will. That proper and righteous punishment is death and hell. This is the horror of sin.
No Sin So Great
We should not underestimate sin, yet neither should we underestimate the Christ who saves us from sin. Here is cause for great praise and thanksgiving! Such is the provision which God has made through Christ in his covenant of grace for the preservation of believers unto salvation, that there is no sin so great that it shall bring damnation on them that repent.[1] The blood of Christ is sufficient to wash away the deepest stain of iniquity — his blood can make the foulest clean. The gospel offer, the gospel provision, for repenting sinners is that those whose sins are like scarlet shall be made as white as snow through the blood of the Lamb; though our sins are red like crimson, they shall be as pure new wool (Isa. 1:18).
All upon whom God has set his love are so provided for by the atoning blood of Christ in his propitiating sacrifice that each sin, all sin, and every sin can be covered, transgressions swept away as far as the east is from the west (Ps. 103:12). Again, this is no ground for sinning with impunity, but is rather the great motivation to holiness of life and fleeing every sin.
We should also be very clear in our minds and hearts, and in our preaching, about the certainty of forgiveness where true repentance is demonstrated. As we should ourselves repent with an “apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ,” so we should preach to others.
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