October 20, 2010
“The Son of David”
Isaiah 9:1-10:34
• The Coming Messiah: 9:1-7
• The Judgment of Israel: 9:8-10:4
• The Destruction of Assyria: 10:5-34
Hal Haralson, Texas author, speaker and master storyteller has written about an episode in his own life, where God revealed just a little glimpse, of the lengths that He had to go to, in order to show us His love. He tells the story this way, “After military police school, in Ft. Gordon, Georgia, Judy and I went through Abilene, Texas, on my way to my permanent duty station in New Mexico. En route, we stopped in Abilene and visited my friend and mentor, Dr. George Graham, vice-president of Hardin-Simmons University.
When we told him that we were headed for White Sands Proving Grounds, (One of the largest military installations in the US), he said, “look up Ray and Laura, my son and daughter-in-law, they are the kind of folks that you will enjoy knowing.” Dr. Graham was obviously proud of them and his two grandsons.
After we found a place to live—not much on a private’s pay-----I gave Ray a call. He and Laura invited us over for dinner. They had a 3 bedroom, 2 bath house with a fireplace! We thought they were rich. They shared generously with us and a close friendship began.
Ray was a scientist at White Sands, where most, of the armed forces’ missile testing, used to be done. He was also a fun-loving practical joker. Their 2 sons, Kelly and Kyle, loved our baby daughter, Jill, who was born during that year that we were there.
Eventually Ray and Laura left New Mexico and moved back to Abilene, where Ray taught math at Hardin-Simmons. After my discharge in June of 1959, we moved to Abilene, too, where I was on the public-relations staff at the university. Our friendship grew. Laura gave birth to a baby girl that was the center of that family’s attention. Her big brothers adored her.
Then Ray was offered a job, teaching math, at Appalachian State University, in Boone, NC. Our friends moved, to a forested site, on a mountainside, in the Smokey Mts., with a trout stream flowing by their house, into the pond, in front of the property. The pictures we saw, made us West Texas flatlanders envious.
About 6 months after their move, a call came to my office from Judy. Dr. Graham had called and said that Ray and Laura’s little daughter had drowned in the pond, in front of their house.
I was stunned. I started a letter, but the words couldn’t express my feelings. I picked up the phone and made reservations, on the first plane to Atlanta. After spending all night in the airport, I caught a Piedmont- Airlines puddle-jumper to Waynesborough, NC. I finally found a cab and paid $50, for the 40 mile ride to Boone. We found the cabin and I knocked on the door.
The door opened and Ray stood there, with a shocked look on his face. He said nothing, at first, and then tears began to roll down his cheeks. ‘No one could care that much’, he said.
Hal goes on to say, ‘that 2000 years ago, God must have realized that all of His attempts to get through to His people had fallen short. So God decided, ‘that the only way that we could ever really know His love, would be, for Him to come and be with us, and show it to us Himself------so He sent Jesus.’”
• “The Coming of the Messiah”: 9:1-7
What a blessing it is to read about this prophecy of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Messiah, who would come to earth to be the “Great Light”, after reading about the dismal darkness of occultist paganism and the practice of empty religious tradition, that was in last week’s lesson.
In Isaiah’s day, most of his prophecies were still in the future, especially this one about Jesus. But,God knew that His people wouldn’t stop rebelling against Him, and that there was still going to have to be a time of suffering for them, (that Warren Wiersbe says, has lasted for over 2000 years), so that’s why, God, in His infinite mercy, tried to make it clear to them, that there would come a day, when the gloom, for those who were in heartache and distress, would come to an end. Some of it would begin to come true in their lifetimes; and when the special child was born, there would be some of His children who would see a greater revelation of it; and the total fulfillment of the prophecy will be seen by the whole world, on some great day, in the future, when Jesus’ 2nd Coming to this earth, becomes a reality.
More and more in this study of Isaiah, I have begun to understand, just what a blessing it is, that we live on this side of the cross. We should be so grateful that we have the Bible in its entirety, for us to study and live by, and that we have the Holy Spirit to direct and guide us—because those 2 things give us all the proof that we need, that God’s word, spoken by the prophet Isaiah, is truer than anything that we can see with our eyes or anything that we can touch with our hands. (When I was young bride----I burned the macula of my eyes----it apparently was very severe, so I couldn’t see the center of anything, for several months, until the swelling went down-------being a nurse, I needed to be able to see the center of things-----especially sticking a needle into a patient’s vein to draw their blood----we were a small office, I was the only nurse, I had to be able to draw blood----so I had to learn how to do everything by feel. I got so good at it, that when I could see again, I didn’t trust what I saw---- I still had to close my eyes and feel for the veins, before I could draw the patient’s blood, and I rarely missed-----what I could feel, became more real to me, than what I could see.)
In this passage, once again, Isaiah intertwined the two Comings of Jesus Christ, in the same prophecy. Isaiah didn’t get to see it, but He believed, with all of his heart, that it would come true. He believed that God’s promise of salvation, would be fulfilled first in the birth of a child, and then it would be fulfilled in the reign of a king. The scripture, “for unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given…” reveals the two natures of Jesus; His humanity and His deity. He came into the world, totally human----spirit, soul and body, a son, born to His virgin mother, Mary, in the normal way, that all babies are born and He grew up, to be a man, in the same way, that all little boys ,grow to manhood. He was 100% humanity. But, He was without a human father—He is the son of Almighty God; He was present with God, when the world and everything in it was spoken into existence; He was given by God the Father, in His grace, for our redemption-----He was 100% divine. Jesus joined His humanity and His deity together, without any sin-------He was 100% perfect. He is fully God and fully man. He came as a child so that He could show us the way to the Father----and when He comes again, it will be as a man, ready to reign on the throne of David, as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, for all eternity. Praise God!
The geographical areas that Isaiah names in this passage of scripture were going to be especially devastated when the Assyrian army moved in-----but these same areas were the ones that were especially honored by Jesus’ ministry on this earth and they will be especially honored again, when He comes back to earth to dwell and establish His millennial kingdom in Jerusalem. God sent Jesus to Galilee, the place where His people had suffered the most----- the Galileans, Jew and Gentile, have always known slavery and despair—---so how precious is it, that it was from that place, that He launched salvation, to the whole world?
This area has always been and still is, the 1st one to be attacked by invading armies. We know that after Israel was destroyed and Judah had been taken into captivity---------a large part of the area, logically, became inhabited by Gentiles, which is an eternal blessing for us, because God’s great love and mercy and His absolute provision and inclusion of us, as His children, from the very beginning, is clearly evident in the fact, that He allowed Gentiles to be the first people to see and understand who He was. The people in Isaiah’s day had no idea or comprehension of the church, but since Jesus came---the church has been revealed and we can walk out of the darkness and into His great light. That is God’s wonderful mercy!
Isaiah used the metaphors of darkness and light to symbolize oppression and liberation. The people were walking in the darkness of sin and God sent “the Light of the World” to rescue them. That is how God ushered in the new era of His triumphant grace and His presence with us. The ones stumbling in the darkness suddenly found themselves blinking in the brightness of a light that they had never seen before. Because of their disobedience, those people deserved the judgment, that Isaiah said was going to happen to them and so do we-----but thank goodness, God doesn’t desire to leave people in their punishment, it doesn’t make Him happy; He isn’t out to get us-------He loves us; He wants us to be unified with Him, so in His great compassion, He sent the Savior. When was the last time, that somebody didn’t deserve mercy from us, and we gave it to them anyway? And When was the last time that someone did deserve mercy, and we didn’t give it to them?
Isaiah prophesied that God would spread the light of Jesus to more and more people, and He has------ in the last days and at His 2nd Coming, the Lord will enlarge His nation beyond human comprehension. It says in Rev. 7:9-10, “He multiplied the remnant “into a great multitude” that no one could number from every nation; from all tribes and peoples and languages…crying out with a loud voice ,’salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.” And the joy of the people will be immeasurable--------Isaiah compared it to the joy of workers at the end of a great harvest; soldiers after a great victory; prisoners of war, after being released from their bondage-----and in our modern world----- it would be the joy we feel after a huge unexpected bonus on payday or the excitement in the delivery room of the birth of a baby after long and arduous labor or the relief that is in the heart of a parent when they find out that their child doesn’t have cancer. The triumph of God’s grace over our depressing failures should fill our hearts with unspeakable joy-------not just in the future, but in the life that we’ve been given to live, right now.
Our great God is our liberator and He is fighting for us. He is a freedom fighter, fighting for us like Gideon was for the ancient Israelites. True liberation from satan and sin, and the oppression that we find in this world, comes from beyond ourselves. God has and can and will break the power that sin has over us. Gideon is the example that Isaiah used, to get the people’s attention, because he was a much-loved, but unlikely hero. The story is, that God deliberately reduced the size of Gideon’s army from 32,000 to 300 men and then God had him use a strategy that was an audacious bluff------Gideon’s men blew trumpets and broke jars and held up torches in the night; which threw the combined forces of Midian and Amalek into a panic, and they wound up slaughtering their own men. It was an incredible victory! God wanted Isaiah to help the people understand that one day, a liberator, even greater than Gideon, would provide a way, not only to defeat the forces of evil, but He would put a final end to all conflict and God’s people would live in eternal security and complete and perfect peace, forever.
Isaiah was, to his people, what we would call, a “home missionary”---he ministered to the people that were right in his own neighborhood; right in his own backyard; in his own country------they were his people and he loved them; they were his friends and his neighbors and his family----he was burdened for their souls----he didn’t want anyone to perish. It is important for us to go around the world and tell people about Jesus, as short term or long term foreign missionaries-------- but it is equally important, for the people that we come in contact with on a daily basis, right where we live, to hear the truth about Jesus from us, first!
The most incredible truth about all of this, is that the power of God is far more superior, than the power of any nation that has ever been, or is, or will ever be; and its more powerful than any discouragement or heartache or worry that we can ever face. His answer to the bullies, who savage their way across the pages of history, is not to become an even bigger bully. God’s answer, is Jesus. ( I want to say, “Take that Osama bin Laden; take that Afghanistan and the Taliban, take that Ahmadinejad and Iran------but that is the wrong attitude-----the right thing for us to do is to pray that these cruel leaders will find Jesus and accept Him as their Savior.)
In the days of His earthly ministry, the Lord Jesus didn’t preside over any government and He didn’t sit on the throne of David. Even though He is the Mighty God and the everlasting Father and the Prince of Peace, He didn’t reveal Himself publically, with those titles. The first time that He came, it was to carry out the Father’s will, by atoning for sin and opening the door to salvation. This didn’t require a king; it required an humble servant who was willing to lay down His life for mankind. When He comes again at the end of the Great Tribulation and sets up the Millennial Kingdom------then------He will reveal Himself in all His power and glory. The names that Isaiah gave Jesus reveal His unique character, completely human and completely divine, in the same way that each facet of a diamond reflects its beauty.
He is:
Wonderful-----this isn’t an adjective-this is His name. When He comes to earth to reign, He will end all rebellion. Even as believers, who have been blessed with His presence in our hearts and our salvation; we can’t even begin to understand how wonderful He is.
Counselor-----He has a divine plan that defies human imagination. He has all wisdom to be able to rule fairly. He is omniscient, so He knows everything that ever was and everything that ever will be. He is the only person that we can go to, who will always have the right answer.
Mighty God------He is omnipotent. How mind-boggling is it, that a tiny baby cradled in His mother’s arms, had the power to create and then hold the universe together, just with His words-------He can defeat any enemy. He will defeat all enemies in that last day. In Matt. 28:18, Jesus said, “All authority (power) in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”
Everlasting Father----This doesn’t suggest that the son is also the Father, because each person in the Godhead is a distinct and separate person. “Father of eternity” is a better translation. To the Jews, the word, father, means originator or source. He is the source of all things created. All things were created by Him and for Him. Anything that has an eternal value comes from Him.
Prince of Peace----Jesus reconciles us to Himself by giving us peace in our hearts right now and when He comes back to reign, He will create everlasting peace in the world. He will occupy the literal throne of David. Justice will be the dominate feature under His rule. God’s love and zeal will accomplish this, not man’s finite abilities.
Jesus is the king to end all kings--------He will save us from our failure; He will lift us up, into His own justice and righteousness. He is Jesus Christ, our Lord----our crucified, risen, reigning and coming Savior. When He comes back, it won’t be to tweak a little problem here and correct a little problem there-------it will be to rid the universe of sin and evil forever. There will never be any more problems. That’s the best part of it all! And, of the increase of His government and of peace, there will be no end. His empire of grace will expand forever. If we will live by faith in Him now and accept His strength and wisdom; then we can trust and rest assured, that the everlasting reign of the Lord Jesus Christ, will certainly take place.
• The Judgment of Israel : 9:8-10:4
The rest of this chapter focuses on the local situation of Isaiah’s day and was partially fulfilled at that time.
Even though Isaiah’s prophecies were directed mainly at Judah, God had also sent prophets to Israel, warning them, of what was going to happen, if they didn’t repent. God didn’t want Israel to perish. He wanted them to see their sin and turn back to Him. But He knew that they weren’t going to. He knew that they were a stubborn and stiff-necked people, who were more self-dependent than they were God-dependant. Throughout this whole passage there is a refrain of “yet, for all this, His anger is not turned away, His hand is still upraised.” God gave them chance after chance after chance, because He loved them, no matter what, but He was only going to bless them with privilege, if they obeyed Him. (we have always told our children-----we love you because you’re ours------and because of that love, we will always provide everything you need----clothing, food, shelter, education, physical, emotional and spiritual nurturing—but the special privileges that you receive from us, we will give you because you are obedient to our instruction, (whether you agree with it or not)-----love deserves necessities; and obedience deserves blessing.)
Raymond Ortland says in his commentary on Isaiah “that this text is about sinners in the hands of an angry God. He says that God is the most loving person in the Bible, but that He is also the angriest one.” The wrath of God doesn’t show us cruelty; it shows us humility. God is willing to get involved with His creation---a creation that has thumbed their noses or shaken their fists at Him, since the very beginning. God’s wrath, more than His love, can bring us closer into His grace, than we could ever get on our own. What actually is the wrath of God? His wrath is His active, resolute opposition to all evil. His wrath is provoked by our defiance. God’s wrath is every bit as perfect as His love but God’s love, will never make peace with our evil, so His wrath has to. His wrath is not moody vindictiveness; it is the solemn determination of a doctor, cutting away the cancer that’s killing his patient. And for God, the anger is personal, not detached and clinical. God, as the doctor, hates the cancer, because He loves the one who is afflicted by the disease and He will do whatever it takes to get rid of every single cell of it. God’s wrath works in 2 ways, with opposite results. On one hand, His anger will condemn anyone who rejects Him---and on the other hand, His anger will purify anyone who turns to Him in repentance. God disciplines us, so that our self-will can be brought into line with His God-will, and then, we can dwell in a sweet relationship of peace with Him. Just like the ancient Israelites, the people of our generation don’t like to hear about God’s anger----we only want to hear about His love. But you can’t have one without the other. Without God’s wrath, there would have been no need for Jesus to go to the cross----We think of the cross as the ultimate picture of God’s love, but it was also the ultimate outpouring of His anger and with it, He eradicated sin, once and for all.
Hebrews 10:31 says “that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God…” But the people of the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah could not see beyond themselves, to recognize and heed Isaiah’s warning---- that God would not overlook their sin forever; and that His longsuffering patience would come to an end. (The Assyrians were nothing but tools in the hands of a mighty God, who chose to use them so that He could teach His children a vital lesson. God promised that He would use Assyria, to judge the northern kingdom of Israel and we know that He used that destruction, as an object lesson, to warn the Southern kingdom of Judah, that if they didn’t turn from their wicked ways, they would face the same fate.)
God’s hand was outstretched against Israel for their pride in assuming, that the danger they were in, was only temporary, and that when it was over they would just be able to rebuild and be bigger and better than ever. God’s hand was outstretched against them because of the hardness of their hearts in their refusal to repent and turn to Him. God’s hand was outstretched against them, because the judges and the leaders and the ruling class were exploiting the poor and needy and the orphans and the widows. (James 4:6 says that, “God opposes the proud but He gives grace to the humble.”) Isaiah prophesied that their stubbornness would result in civil war and starvation and exile and death----- and that the awfulness of it, would spread like a wildfire in the forest.
God, through Isaiah, asked 3 questions: “What will you do on the day of reckoning, when disaster comes from afar? Who will you run to for help? Where will you leave your riches? These questions should speak volumes to all of us. (Chuck Swindoll tells the story about a lesson he learned when he was working at his first job. He had a paper route and one day he was so tired from folding and throwing 200 papers that he decided to take a shortcut across the beautifully manicured yard, of his neighbor, across the street. He says, that he did feel a little twinge of guilt ,as he rode across the plush grass, but he figured that just that once, it wouldn’t hurt anything. When he came home from school, later that afternoon, he took the shortcut again, with less guilt-----he rationalized that he wasn’t really hurting anything or anybody.
It didn’t take even 2 weeks, for his bicycle tires to wear a narrow path across the yard---every time he saw it gave him pause for thought, but he just kept shoving the guilt further and further down. One day, at the end of 3 weeks, of this short-cut taking-----a small but very obvious sign appeared on the sidewalk, blocking the path that he had made, that said, “keep off the grass---no bikes!” Everything but Chuck’s name was on that sign. And what do you think he did?------what would we do? he ignored it---------He went a around it and rode right down that path. He says, that he did look at the sign and it made him feel guilty, because it pointed out his sin, but it didn’t make him stop----he said that in some strange way, it just made him feel more defiant.) That is what happened with Israel, the northern kingdom-------they saw the warning sign-----but instead of it pulling them up short, and prompting repentance and obedience, it just made them more defiant.
The bottom line is------if God’s word doesn’t bring us to repentance, God will judge and punish us. Yes, God is long-suffering, but to tempt Him with an indifferent, careless attitude or one, that is elitist and holier-than-thou, is playing with fire. When God raises His hand of discipline against us; or when we find ourselves in a place that we got ourselves into and we don’t know how to get out of; or when we feel pressed in on every side, through no fault of our own---the only thing for us to do, is to look up and wait, for God to open a path for us to run to Him, not away from Him.
• The Destruction of Assyria: 10:5-34
God promised Israel and Judah that they would be judged if they continued to disobey Him-----but He never failed to make it clear to His people, that there was always hope for them----- because, He would always preserve a remnant. ( The remnant of God will come from the 12 tribes of Israel----Isaiah 10:20-21 clearly says that the house of Jacob will be included in the remnant—this is referring to the northern kingdom of Israel—and over and over again God has promised Judah, the southern kingdom, that they will be included in the remnant-Jesus will come from Judah ----the 12 tribes had split into 2 nations 200 years before Isaiah’s day----they had constantly warred with each other—the Northern kingdom had to be destroyed and the people scattered, 100 years before the southern one was----all because of their disobedience to the Lord God. They are still scattered----even though over the centuries there have been remnants of Jews who have migrated back to their homeland---it won’t be until after the tribulation and the Millennial kingdom is set up, that the remnant of all 12 tribes will be brought back together again. (Acts 26:7, “this is the promise that our 12 tribes are hoping to see fulfilled as they earnestly serve God day and night.”; James 1:1 “James a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ to the 12 tribes scattered among the nations”; Revelation 21:12 …”on the gates were written the names of the 12 tribes of Israel…”); “the civil war-the north and the south---the confederate states were defeated and destroyed-----the remnant joined with the northern states and once again became the United States” )
God also wanted His children to understand, that as bad as it was going to be for them, that would be nothing, like it was going to be for the wicked, wicked Assyria. God used Assyria as a tool of judgment, but things got out of hand, as they always do, when pride takes over a person’s heart. Assyria’s great war machine would become a rod and a club and an axe and a saw in the hands of God, but its cruelty would be beyond God’s desire----it would treat the Jews like they were mud in the streets and it would plunder the land like they were farmer’s gathering eggs. God’s purpose, was to discipline, but the godless Assyrians were out to destroy. The Assyrians would become boastful and the king would begin to believe that their impressive victories were a result of his wisdom and his skill and He would never acknowledge God in any way----but God wouldn’t permit His tool to exact more punishment than was necessary-----so He would have to cut them down. (God will never allow more to come into our lives than we can bear-----He will always stop it before it can break us in two. Corrie Ten Boom said, “There is no pit so deep, that He is not deeper still”) We just have to trust Him.
The mighty Assyria, which struck such fear into the hearts of both Israel and Judah and which tried it’s best, to trample them underfoot, was under God’s control, in spite of its military strength and power. Isaiah used the metaphors of sickness and fire to describe just how effectively God would cut the armies of Assyria down to nothing, there would be so few of them left, that a child would be able to count how many there were, on two hands. When we recognize that sickness can suddenly destroy people on the inside and that fire can suddenly destroy people on the outside------we can rest assured, that that is proof- positive, that God is sovereign over everything and that He can do whatever He wants to, to anyone or anything, that opposes His grace.
(From history, we learn that in 1812, Napoleon, the emperor of France, proudly boasted of his military strength as he was confidently planning to invade Russia. He said, “I have observed that God is usually on the side of the strongest battalions.” He prepared to launch his first battle with 600,000 men. From his past record and from man’s viewpoint, it is easy to imagine that he would have been victorious, winning one battle after another on his way to Moscow. However, before they could even get started, Napoleon and His men were in for a big surprise. God sent a snowstorm, in which 1000s of French soldiers died. Whether they had a strong battalion or not, France lost the battle, Russia was the victor. Alexander, the Tsar of Russia, was well aware, before and after the battle, that he and all of his people, needed to give glory to God, for their amazing victory. It is reported that Alexander had the words of Psalm115:1 inscribed on a commemorative plaque, that was displayed for everyone to see-----it read, “Not to us, Oh Lord, not to us, but to your name be the glory, because of your love and faithfulness.”)
Every great nation has eventually fallen because they have forsaken God. The United States is a great nation!----but in how many areas of our nation’s life are we not just forgetting Him but are actually turning our backs on Him. How many things does God have to use to get our attention------Aids, cancer, 9-11, mass shootings and natural disasters-----all these things happen because of sin in the world—but God will use good things and bad things, in our world, to get our attention. Are we listening? Are we paying attention? How can we as individual believers, do our part?
Well, we start right where we are------we stand up and we take hold of the standards that God has outlined in the scripture and we live by them, no matter whom we’re talking to or where we are. And, most importantly, we make sure that everybody that we know has heard the truth of the Gospel. II Chronicles 7:14 says, “If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” That was spoken for the Children of Israel all those 100s of years ago but it still applies to us today. America has a chance, just like Israel did, just like Assyria did and just like Judah did-to turn from their wicked ways and turn back to God. They didn’t do it but we need to. We need to learn from their mistakes and we need to do what we can to change the course that our nation is headed down.
In the last part of this passage, Isaiah traced the route that the Assyrian army would take as it invaded Judah and advanced toward Jerusalem. He told the Judeans that they didn’t have anything to fear from the Assyrians, though, because God was going to cut them down to size. God may use unbelievers to accomplish His will in the lives of His children, but we need to never forget that He is always in complete control. As His children, we don’t ever have to fear the disciplining hand of God; we can trust it, because His discipline is always done with love and it is always designed to bring us back into a right relationship with Him.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Thursday, October 14, 2010
JOY "Facing Danger" October 13
October 13, 2010
Facing Danger
Isaiah 7:1-8:22
• Fear Man and all is Lost 7:1- 8:8
• Fear God and all is Gained 8:9-22
In our lesson today, there was a warm-up question that asked us to think of some situation when we have been faced with a threat to our homes or our jobs or our security and to talk about how we felt and how we dealt with the danger. Dale and I have been married for 31 years and I can think of a lot of different times when we were fearful for our children -----sending them into new and uncomfortable situations and experiences or allowing them to go into them; times when we have been fearful for our extended family-----because of illness or death or bad choices; times when we have been fearful for our home--------we have experienced hurricanes and tornadoes and floods and ice and snow storms and power outages in Raleigh; times when we have been fearful for our financial security-------job changes and retirement(for me) and house building and location changes, good and bad investments and how to balance giving and saving; times when we have been fearful for the peace in our marriage and in our home-------- because we don’t always see eye to eye and we run the risk of pushing each other too far; and times when we’ve been fearful for our church and our church family---------because of growing pains or leadership changes or misunderstandings between people; and times when we have been fearful for our country---------911 has made us all aware of the real and present danger of terrorism and we worry as we see gang violence spread from our big cities into tiny towns across the nation and we agonize over the bills and laws that are discussed and passed –and we can’t do a thing to stop them, I am even concerned about the bed-bug epidemic that is spreading across the country----- I’ve got 2 in NYC, the bed-bug capitol of the nation and one in college, that is seeing rooms all around her being fumigated for them—and she is coming home tomorrow with her roommate, I ‘m scared to death, to let them in the house!
And I can tell you—with all of these things my heart and my mind has and still will, it is right now, running the gamut of emotions. I can get fired up in a flat jack-rabbit minute when I feel like something that I love, is being threatened-----like most women will, especially mothers—God created us to be nurturers---so when we sense a threat to what we hold precious, we come out growling and snarling like a mother bear defending her cubs.
But I have learned, like King Ahaz never did, no matter what Isaiah said to him---------that God is in control----regardless of the circumstances----He will always be in control and He will always work all things for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. (Romans 8:28) We need to learn to take our focus off of the circumstances that we find ourselves in and put our focus on the Lord---------when we do that, the circumstances still may not change, but our attitude about them will definitely change------and then we will be able to walk forward, no matter what we might have to face-------in the confidence and strength and peace that only comes from trusting and walking in and with, the Lord Jesus.
Bringing our focus back to the Lord when we are faced with fear is not easy-------it’s hard! But I will tell you how I do it---a lot of you know what I am talking about because you have heard me talk about it before or you discovered it in the same place I did, or you were a part of the Experiencing God class we had here at church, a few years ago, where it was the primary focus of the study. The way I do it is through prayer----very intentional prayer. Anne Lotz, Billy Graham’s daughter, called it lining up the Runway Lights. Prayer is a trusting communication with God, it isn’t a lack of faith and it isn’t a wish list or a bargaining tool. God wants His children to know His will. He told Isaiah exactly where Ahaz was (He knew where he was, that jumped out at me in this passage, God knew exactly where Ahaz was, that means that He knows exactly where we are too; physically, emotionally and spiritually and that He’ll come to us and that He will give us the answer that we are seeking, that will comfort the fear that we are feeling and guide us in the direction that we are supposed to go.) God told Ahaz to ask Him for a sign, any kind of sign, it didn’t matter what it was, it could be fantastic or simple-------cause God’s desire was to grow Ahaz’s trust in Him and He was willing to do whatever it took, to do that.
Lining up the Runway Lights (like an airplane coming in from a landing and being guided by the lights on the runway, to safety) is a very intentional way to pray:
• Inner Conviction----gut feeling-can’t get it out of your mind—a peace that is comforting but it is more than comforting----it is that you know that you know that you know
• Godly counsel of Christian friend----someone that you know will pray for you and will not just give you experiential advice, but will earnestly seek the Lord on your behalf------
• Practical circumstances-----everything from a practical perspective either falls into place or it doesn’t fall into place, one or the other, without you forcing it or engineering it-----
• Scriptural confirmation-----the Lord speaks to you directly from the scripture------ when you read a verse or a passage---you know in your heart that the Lord is talking to you. It jumps out at you. This is not picking up the Bible and closing your eyes and pointing your finger and where the Bible falls open is your answer---this is where you are already studying or where the preacher is preaching or where a friend is studying and they send you to it and the Holy Spirit prompts your heart to know that the Lord is speaking to you.
And you bathe it all, with constant prayer.
It isn’t a magic formula--------- but what it does do, is that it helps me to keep my focus where my focus is supposed to be –on the Lord--- and off of the circumstances. We need help keeping our focus on the Lord—and God knows that’s true, cause He created us----------so for me, it has become a very real way, to walk with Him. It gives me peace, and I promise you, that the Lord has answered me over and over again and 10 times out of 10, the prayer process has been a way, to line my will up with His.
Ahaz should have listened to what God had to say through Isaiah---- he could have been spared so much fear and heartache ---but instead, He went his own way and quickly lost his temporal kingdom and ultimately (according to what we read in II Kings 16 about his evil deeds) might have lost his eternal soul.
• Fear Man and all is Lost: 7:1- 8:8
Up until this point in time, King Uzziah and King Jotham had been good kings who sought after the Lord and tried to heed what Isaiah told them to do and tried to lead the nation with an awareness of God as their great provider and protector----but when they died, Ahaz came to the throne. And according to 2Kings 16 he was a very evil man who didn’t do what was right in the eyes of the Lord: he burned his own son on the altar of sacrifice to the god Baal; he stole the gold and silver from the temple and gave them as a tithe to the king of Assyria; he dismantled part of the temple furnishings and rearranged them, in deference to the King of Assyria, ignoring the fact that God had given very explicit instructions to Moses, as to how the furniture was to be placed and used; he burned incense to other gods in their holy places and on the altar in God’s own temple; but I think his worst crime of all, was, that when he was given the opportunity to trust God and receive His grace, he turned his back on it.
This was a frightening time for the nation of Judah.--------Assyria was growing stronger and threatening the smaller nations, whose individual security depended on a very delicate political balance. Syria and Israel (the northern kingdom, also known as Ephraim) tried to pressure Judah into an alliance with them against Assyria------they had already launched several attacks on Judah thinking that they would get rid of Ahaz and then set a king on the Judean throne that they could intimidate and manipulate, who would help them stand firm against any Assyrian invasion. Ahaz was scared to death and under his leadership a sense of panic gripped the nation. But God had a plan and He wanted to use the crisis as a way of bringing Ahaz into a trusting relationship with Himself, so He sent Isaiah and his son, Shear-jashub, out to talk to him.
King Ahaz was out inspecting the city’s water supply, preparing for the next attack from Syria and Israel. When Isaiah and his son walked up----just their names should have been enough to comfort Ahaz and to give him courage-Isaiah means “the Lord saves” and Shear-jashub means a remnant will return”. This is God’s way of assuring Ahaz, right off the bat, that even if the worst happened, and people were killed and the nation was taken into captivity------- God would still save a remnant of his people and they would return in victory. God wanted to give Ahaz the opportunity to be saved. God wanted Ahaz to trust Him. God told him to stay calm and not to fear because Syria and Israel were already just smoldering stumps of firewood. That they might seem fierce and mighty but the reality was that they were just being led by mere men who wouldn’t be able to succeed. And God kept His promise, within 3 years, Syria was crushed into oblivion and within 10 years, Israel was totally gone.
God offered Ahaz an opportunity of a lifetime----------the same one He offers us-----the opportunity for salvation. This passage in Isaiah makes faith in God, the central, unavoidable question of our lives. Faith has 3 integral parts that all work together-----1st, there is the knowledge of God, which 2nd, persuades us, to agree with God, which 3rd , motivates us, to embrace God. We were created with a God –sized hole to fill, in our hearts---and only faith can fill up that hole. God gives us the faith that we need to believe in Him. We can’t manufacture that ourselves. God created us with an intrinsic, built-in knowledge, that He is more real than the earthly things that we can feel and touch and that He is more desirable than any worldly attractions and that He, Himself, is more faithful than any human being can even imagine, and that we should live our lives based on what is promised rather than on what is right in front of us------ and------ that our hearts have to be grounded by the truth of all of this, or we will never be able to go the distance. God offers Himself to us as our greatest ally, all the time----with Him, we can face anything! (“I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.” Eph. 4:13) God told Ahaz that all he had to do was lean on Him and He would stand firm, but Ahaz refused. How many times do we refuse God when He comes to help us in a situation and we turn away from Him because we think we have a better plan? Ahaz thought he had a better plan. But he was dead wrong.
It is true that living by faith in God, rather than by faith in ourselves, is hard, especially for women----because we think we have cornered the market, in being able to work out difficult situations. I am quick to offer advice to people---when I really should offer to pray for them and direct them to the words of scripture. We need to understand that we learn so much more in times of crisis than we do when life is good, because during a crisis, is when God will take the training wheels off of our bikes and He will hold onto the back of them and He will teach us how to ride like the big kids do. It is always after a crisis that our faith will grow, because that’s the time, that we can clearly see that we can trust God, to always keep His promises.
God was so gracious to Ahaz------God told him, through Isaiah, that he could ask for any sign that he wanted to, as an assurance that He would do exactly what He said He would do. But Ahaz decided to trust himself and the king of Assyria instead and wound up sealing his own fate and the fate of his nation by his unbelief. And to top off his irreverence for God, he pretended that his reason for not asking for a sign was because he didn’t want to tempt God. What a snotty attitude he had. God offered him wisdom and understanding and support and Ahaz threw it back in His face. When we go our own way, we do the same thing! (Thursday night I tried to give Lizzie some wise counsel about her old boyfriend----she didn’t want to hear it, so her response was, “I don’t want to talk about it…”)----that is the way Ahaz was----he didn’t want to hear what God had to say, because he might have to admit that God was right----he knew that if he let God in that God would take control. Ahaz proved in his encounter with God, that a person can, by their own free will, refuse to accept God’s free gift of faith. And if they are smart enough and articulate enough they can make their unbelief sound plausible, even pious—people that say things like “I am a spiritual person but I don’t participate in any organized religion” or “I’m a Christian, I go to church…” or I “don’t go to church, but I’m a good, moral person,” or “I read and read the scripture, but God doesn’t ever speak to me,” or “ I know the Bible says so and so, but I don’t think what its saying is relevant in our generation” need to be held at arm’s length. A statement like that is a red flag to me, which says that the person, either doesn’t know the Lord or they are hiding from Him, for some reason----when we come across a person like this, we have to ask the Lord to give us an opportunity to delve deeper into conversation with them so that we can tell them the truth of the Gospel.
When Ahaz refused His offer, God gave him a sign anyway. 7:14 says, “…the virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son and will call his name Immanuel.” (God with us) This is one of the outstanding verses in the Bible that explains the truth of Christianity, at its core. But theologians, through the centuries, have studied and studied this verse and have a hard time with it. Matthew tells us in his book, that this promise was fulfilled by Jesus, 700 years after it was spoken---which is true, but the context of the way that it is written in Isaiah, links it to Isaiah’s own day, too. So the question is, were there 2 babies? I have 9 different Isaiah commentaries and they all say something a little different, but the general consensus is, that the prophecy came true in 2 ways. 1st, it predicted the birth of Maher-shalal-hashbaz, Isaiah’s own son, whose name means “quick to plunder, swift to spoil”, which was linked to the downfall of Syria and Israel----because by the time that that boy reached the age of accountability or the age of manhood which is 13, in Jewish culture; those two kingdoms would be just memories and Assyria would be knocking at Judah’s door. The message of his unusual name was the same as Immanuel’s, “God with us”-----God was present, with His people Judah, in their time of emergency, He made sure that their enemies were destroyed-----all enemies against God’s children are doomed, because God is with His people. And 2nd, Isaiah’s prophecy pointed the way to a child being born that would be our ultimate salvation. In this world we face the alliance of sin and death, with satan being the instigator and the perpetrator---------they never go away and in our own strength, we are no match for them-------but the birth of the baby Jesus, was the truest fulfillment of God ‘s plan for His children, Jew and Gentile------He is Immanuel, “God with us” and He dwells not just with us, but in us-------to protect us from all our enemies.
Isaiah used word- pictures to show Ahaz and the rulers of Judah the danger of their wrong choices. Instead of trusting the Lord, who was described as “the gently flowing waters of Shiloh”, they chose to trust Assyria, which was depicted as the mighty floodwaters of the Euphrates. Isaiah tried to paint the picture in their minds that, even though, humanly- speaking, the army of Assyria was a force to be reckoned with, the reality was; that Assyria was no more than a swarm of bees that God could whistle for, and it would obey Him. In the end, God stood by His promise to Ahaz, and the 2 nations threatening him did fall. But Ahaz’ unbelief was costly to himself and to the people he was responsible for. It’s always that way------when we disobey God, we never just hurt ourselves, we always hurt people we love, in the process.
Ahaz’ crisis was resolved, unfortunately, by an even more terrifying enemy--------- Assyria did rise up, like a flood and sweep Israel and Syria away, but in the process, Judah had to stand on its tiptoes, just to keep its head above water. (Someone has said, that the whole episode was like a mouse being attacked by two rats and calling for the cat to come and save him------ well the cat came, but the mouse wound up being the dessert.)
Trusting God to save us when we are assaulted by sin or confronted with a difficult situation, has no downside; but not trusting Him and only Him to save us, always turns out to be a big mistake that leaves us with regret and heartache and undesired consequences.
II. Fear God and all is Gained: 8:9-22
Influenced by Ahaz, the people of Judah, in Isaiah’s day rejected God in the defining moment of their time, and God passed them by. But their unbelief didn’t shake Him, because God has enough love and passion in Himself to bring salvation to the whole world, for all time.
You and I will never be able to achieve the victory of God in this world. We don’t trust God enough. We don’t live completely for Him, every moment of every day. We don’t claim the fullness of the inheritance that He has promised us. None of us do---not even the most righteous among us. But thank goodness, God can solve our problems for us because He doesn’t have a divided heart. He is our salvation. Someday we will be with Him in heaven, worshiping and enjoying Him perfectly and there, we will finally give Him all the glory that He deserves and we will live in the beauty of the way that we were created to be.
In this passage, Isaiah is giving us a little glimpse of what it means to be a remnant. God told him to look for the remnant of real believers among the many who pretended to be believers. A remnant of God is not characterized by a super-spiritual, elitist group of people, looking down on others-----a remnant is a group of people who dare to live by faith in God, no matter what is going on around them and no matter who is bombarding them with information. ( the story about Marybeth being asked if her daddy’s church was a bible-believing church…it was an elitist remark.)
The true remnant will be willing to give up everything in order to live for the Lord----the pretenders are very careful not to risk any more than they have to on Him. If you are looking, you can see the difference clearly. Jonathan Edwards says that a true Christian “has more holy boldness, so he has less self-confidence; he is more sure than others about his deliverance from hell, so this makes him realize just how much he really deserves it; he is less apt than others to be shaken in his faith, but he is more apt to be moved by solemn warnings, God’s frowns and the calamities of others. He has the firmest conviction, but the softest heart; richer than others, but poorest of all in spirit. He is the tallest and strongest saint, but the least and the most tender child among them.”
Being a part of the remnant isn’t as simple as belonging to a church or professing to be a believer, not now and it won’t be, for the Jewish remnant, in the last days— Being a part of God’s remnant is characterized by having 3 things imbedded in your heart: 1.) the presence of God, 2.) the fear of God, and 3.) the truth of God.
• The presence of God: When Ahaz and the people were told about Syria and Israel coming against them, they were terrified, but the remnant stood up with a bold confidence. They looked at the same crisis and said, you can do anything you want to us, but you will never defeat us, because God is with us. In 1 John 5:4, John says, “our faith is the victory, that overcomes the world.” (“Richard Williams, a young surgeon and Methodist lay preacher and an Anglican minister named Allen Gardiner went as missionaries to Terra del Fuego. In 1851, their ship was forced to winter in a cold and bitter and bay, and the supply vessel never arrived. Everyone on board their ship died of cold and starvation. Even as they were suffering, on Good Friday, April 18. 1851, Williams wrote in his journal, ‘poor and weak though we are, our abode is a very Bethel to our souls, and God we feel and know is here.’ Then on Wednesday, May 7, he wrote, ‘should anything prevent my ever adding to this, let all my beloved ones at home rest assured that I was happy beyond description when I wrote these lines and would not have changed situations with any man living.’”) At Bethel, in Genesis 28, Jacob saw God in an unexpected place like he had never seen Him before. A crisis in a believer’s life can turn out to be the sweetest Bethel to their souls because they can experience the presence of God in a way that defies human understanding—they can find joy, in the midst of heartache.
• The fear of God: Ahaz and Judah were wringing their hands over the impending invasion of Syria and Israel, kind of like we fear the threat of terrorists today. God’s remnant is not without fear---------it is just that they fear God more than they fear man—and the fear of God is generated by the understanding that God is all-powerful, all-knowing and all-present. This fear of God is not being scared------it is knowing that God is to be revered and worshiped for His holiness and His goodness. God wanted Isaiah to have absolute faith and trust in His sovereignty, and His protection and His salvation; He didn’t want Isaiah to put his trust in men and their weapons.
Fearing God, for a believer, means that we understand that God is the starting point for having true wisdom. This includes knowing how to conduct ourselves in the practical circumstances of everyday life-------making wise choices; doing the right thing in our relationships with other people; having spiritual insight into the true nature of what happens in the world and having a deep and abiding relationship with the Lord Jesus. This kind of wisdom can only grow out of an awareness of God and His purpose in the world. Luke 12:4-12 says that, “there is nothing to fear but fear itself, because when Jesus is for us, who can be against us?” The Holy Spirit will defend us and assist us to be witnesses and will seal us safely until the end, no matter what kind of hurt we experience.
How we treat fear God determines how we experience Him—He will either be a sanctuary or a snare------He will either be the rock that supports us -----the foundation that we can stand on or He will be the rock that will trip us or fall on us. God will either be our salvation or our destruction. It is easy to be swayed by the opinions and voices of the crowd, when big issues crop up. That’s why God’s words to Isaiah in 8:13 are as important for us to hear today as it was for the people of Judah to hear, “Do not fear anything, except the Lord Almighty, if you fear Him, then you need fear nothing else.”
• The Truth of God: In Isaiah’s day----the people didn’t value God’s Word---so God told Isaiah to preserve the neglected wisdom for another generation who would listen to it. Treasuring God’s word and finding hope in it is the most important thing that we can do, every day. In spite of all of Isaiah’s warnings and his pleadings to cling to the Lord----many of the people turned to the occult for guidance. Instead of shedding any light on their paths, this just pushed them even further into darkness. They sought light among the dead and ignored the living God. This pattern of turning to the occult, when the future seems uncertain, is rampant in our world today. There is nothing new under the sun. Why people would still consult horoscopes and mediums and palmreaders and mystics and gurus and channelers and life coaches in the world that we live in, when the gospel is going out through more media and technological venues than ever before, is just evidence that satan, the father of lies, is a very real and present danger. That is why Isaiah told the people to run away from darkness and run to the only safety that we have –-------the light of God’s truth. Ephesians 1:17 and 18 says, that grace imparts to the believer, “a spirit of wisdom and revelation so that you will know Him better, so that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which He has called you , the riches if His glorious inheritance in the saints and His incomparably great power for those who believe.”
It was evident that Isaiah and his children and his disciples were God’s witnesses to a lost and dying world-------We are also called, to be God’s witnesses to a lost and dying world-----are we following that calling? Is it evident by our behavior and our lifestyles and our words that we are living up to that calling?
The way to be sure that we are living witnesses to the Lord’s glory is for us to understand that we need to stop trying to save ourselves and to trust God to save us. “God with us” is more than a name. He is a reality. And when we lean on Him as our reality, we don’t need anything else.
Facing Danger
Isaiah 7:1-8:22
• Fear Man and all is Lost 7:1- 8:8
• Fear God and all is Gained 8:9-22
In our lesson today, there was a warm-up question that asked us to think of some situation when we have been faced with a threat to our homes or our jobs or our security and to talk about how we felt and how we dealt with the danger. Dale and I have been married for 31 years and I can think of a lot of different times when we were fearful for our children -----sending them into new and uncomfortable situations and experiences or allowing them to go into them; times when we have been fearful for our extended family-----because of illness or death or bad choices; times when we have been fearful for our home--------we have experienced hurricanes and tornadoes and floods and ice and snow storms and power outages in Raleigh; times when we have been fearful for our financial security-------job changes and retirement(for me) and house building and location changes, good and bad investments and how to balance giving and saving; times when we have been fearful for the peace in our marriage and in our home-------- because we don’t always see eye to eye and we run the risk of pushing each other too far; and times when we’ve been fearful for our church and our church family---------because of growing pains or leadership changes or misunderstandings between people; and times when we have been fearful for our country---------911 has made us all aware of the real and present danger of terrorism and we worry as we see gang violence spread from our big cities into tiny towns across the nation and we agonize over the bills and laws that are discussed and passed –and we can’t do a thing to stop them, I am even concerned about the bed-bug epidemic that is spreading across the country----- I’ve got 2 in NYC, the bed-bug capitol of the nation and one in college, that is seeing rooms all around her being fumigated for them—and she is coming home tomorrow with her roommate, I ‘m scared to death, to let them in the house!
And I can tell you—with all of these things my heart and my mind has and still will, it is right now, running the gamut of emotions. I can get fired up in a flat jack-rabbit minute when I feel like something that I love, is being threatened-----like most women will, especially mothers—God created us to be nurturers---so when we sense a threat to what we hold precious, we come out growling and snarling like a mother bear defending her cubs.
But I have learned, like King Ahaz never did, no matter what Isaiah said to him---------that God is in control----regardless of the circumstances----He will always be in control and He will always work all things for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. (Romans 8:28) We need to learn to take our focus off of the circumstances that we find ourselves in and put our focus on the Lord---------when we do that, the circumstances still may not change, but our attitude about them will definitely change------and then we will be able to walk forward, no matter what we might have to face-------in the confidence and strength and peace that only comes from trusting and walking in and with, the Lord Jesus.
Bringing our focus back to the Lord when we are faced with fear is not easy-------it’s hard! But I will tell you how I do it---a lot of you know what I am talking about because you have heard me talk about it before or you discovered it in the same place I did, or you were a part of the Experiencing God class we had here at church, a few years ago, where it was the primary focus of the study. The way I do it is through prayer----very intentional prayer. Anne Lotz, Billy Graham’s daughter, called it lining up the Runway Lights. Prayer is a trusting communication with God, it isn’t a lack of faith and it isn’t a wish list or a bargaining tool. God wants His children to know His will. He told Isaiah exactly where Ahaz was (He knew where he was, that jumped out at me in this passage, God knew exactly where Ahaz was, that means that He knows exactly where we are too; physically, emotionally and spiritually and that He’ll come to us and that He will give us the answer that we are seeking, that will comfort the fear that we are feeling and guide us in the direction that we are supposed to go.) God told Ahaz to ask Him for a sign, any kind of sign, it didn’t matter what it was, it could be fantastic or simple-------cause God’s desire was to grow Ahaz’s trust in Him and He was willing to do whatever it took, to do that.
Lining up the Runway Lights (like an airplane coming in from a landing and being guided by the lights on the runway, to safety) is a very intentional way to pray:
• Inner Conviction----gut feeling-can’t get it out of your mind—a peace that is comforting but it is more than comforting----it is that you know that you know that you know
• Godly counsel of Christian friend----someone that you know will pray for you and will not just give you experiential advice, but will earnestly seek the Lord on your behalf------
• Practical circumstances-----everything from a practical perspective either falls into place or it doesn’t fall into place, one or the other, without you forcing it or engineering it-----
• Scriptural confirmation-----the Lord speaks to you directly from the scripture------ when you read a verse or a passage---you know in your heart that the Lord is talking to you. It jumps out at you. This is not picking up the Bible and closing your eyes and pointing your finger and where the Bible falls open is your answer---this is where you are already studying or where the preacher is preaching or where a friend is studying and they send you to it and the Holy Spirit prompts your heart to know that the Lord is speaking to you.
And you bathe it all, with constant prayer.
It isn’t a magic formula--------- but what it does do, is that it helps me to keep my focus where my focus is supposed to be –on the Lord--- and off of the circumstances. We need help keeping our focus on the Lord—and God knows that’s true, cause He created us----------so for me, it has become a very real way, to walk with Him. It gives me peace, and I promise you, that the Lord has answered me over and over again and 10 times out of 10, the prayer process has been a way, to line my will up with His.
Ahaz should have listened to what God had to say through Isaiah---- he could have been spared so much fear and heartache ---but instead, He went his own way and quickly lost his temporal kingdom and ultimately (according to what we read in II Kings 16 about his evil deeds) might have lost his eternal soul.
• Fear Man and all is Lost: 7:1- 8:8
Up until this point in time, King Uzziah and King Jotham had been good kings who sought after the Lord and tried to heed what Isaiah told them to do and tried to lead the nation with an awareness of God as their great provider and protector----but when they died, Ahaz came to the throne. And according to 2Kings 16 he was a very evil man who didn’t do what was right in the eyes of the Lord: he burned his own son on the altar of sacrifice to the god Baal; he stole the gold and silver from the temple and gave them as a tithe to the king of Assyria; he dismantled part of the temple furnishings and rearranged them, in deference to the King of Assyria, ignoring the fact that God had given very explicit instructions to Moses, as to how the furniture was to be placed and used; he burned incense to other gods in their holy places and on the altar in God’s own temple; but I think his worst crime of all, was, that when he was given the opportunity to trust God and receive His grace, he turned his back on it.
This was a frightening time for the nation of Judah.--------Assyria was growing stronger and threatening the smaller nations, whose individual security depended on a very delicate political balance. Syria and Israel (the northern kingdom, also known as Ephraim) tried to pressure Judah into an alliance with them against Assyria------they had already launched several attacks on Judah thinking that they would get rid of Ahaz and then set a king on the Judean throne that they could intimidate and manipulate, who would help them stand firm against any Assyrian invasion. Ahaz was scared to death and under his leadership a sense of panic gripped the nation. But God had a plan and He wanted to use the crisis as a way of bringing Ahaz into a trusting relationship with Himself, so He sent Isaiah and his son, Shear-jashub, out to talk to him.
King Ahaz was out inspecting the city’s water supply, preparing for the next attack from Syria and Israel. When Isaiah and his son walked up----just their names should have been enough to comfort Ahaz and to give him courage-Isaiah means “the Lord saves” and Shear-jashub means a remnant will return”. This is God’s way of assuring Ahaz, right off the bat, that even if the worst happened, and people were killed and the nation was taken into captivity------- God would still save a remnant of his people and they would return in victory. God wanted to give Ahaz the opportunity to be saved. God wanted Ahaz to trust Him. God told him to stay calm and not to fear because Syria and Israel were already just smoldering stumps of firewood. That they might seem fierce and mighty but the reality was that they were just being led by mere men who wouldn’t be able to succeed. And God kept His promise, within 3 years, Syria was crushed into oblivion and within 10 years, Israel was totally gone.
God offered Ahaz an opportunity of a lifetime----------the same one He offers us-----the opportunity for salvation. This passage in Isaiah makes faith in God, the central, unavoidable question of our lives. Faith has 3 integral parts that all work together-----1st, there is the knowledge of God, which 2nd, persuades us, to agree with God, which 3rd , motivates us, to embrace God. We were created with a God –sized hole to fill, in our hearts---and only faith can fill up that hole. God gives us the faith that we need to believe in Him. We can’t manufacture that ourselves. God created us with an intrinsic, built-in knowledge, that He is more real than the earthly things that we can feel and touch and that He is more desirable than any worldly attractions and that He, Himself, is more faithful than any human being can even imagine, and that we should live our lives based on what is promised rather than on what is right in front of us------ and------ that our hearts have to be grounded by the truth of all of this, or we will never be able to go the distance. God offers Himself to us as our greatest ally, all the time----with Him, we can face anything! (“I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.” Eph. 4:13) God told Ahaz that all he had to do was lean on Him and He would stand firm, but Ahaz refused. How many times do we refuse God when He comes to help us in a situation and we turn away from Him because we think we have a better plan? Ahaz thought he had a better plan. But he was dead wrong.
It is true that living by faith in God, rather than by faith in ourselves, is hard, especially for women----because we think we have cornered the market, in being able to work out difficult situations. I am quick to offer advice to people---when I really should offer to pray for them and direct them to the words of scripture. We need to understand that we learn so much more in times of crisis than we do when life is good, because during a crisis, is when God will take the training wheels off of our bikes and He will hold onto the back of them and He will teach us how to ride like the big kids do. It is always after a crisis that our faith will grow, because that’s the time, that we can clearly see that we can trust God, to always keep His promises.
God was so gracious to Ahaz------God told him, through Isaiah, that he could ask for any sign that he wanted to, as an assurance that He would do exactly what He said He would do. But Ahaz decided to trust himself and the king of Assyria instead and wound up sealing his own fate and the fate of his nation by his unbelief. And to top off his irreverence for God, he pretended that his reason for not asking for a sign was because he didn’t want to tempt God. What a snotty attitude he had. God offered him wisdom and understanding and support and Ahaz threw it back in His face. When we go our own way, we do the same thing! (Thursday night I tried to give Lizzie some wise counsel about her old boyfriend----she didn’t want to hear it, so her response was, “I don’t want to talk about it…”)----that is the way Ahaz was----he didn’t want to hear what God had to say, because he might have to admit that God was right----he knew that if he let God in that God would take control. Ahaz proved in his encounter with God, that a person can, by their own free will, refuse to accept God’s free gift of faith. And if they are smart enough and articulate enough they can make their unbelief sound plausible, even pious—people that say things like “I am a spiritual person but I don’t participate in any organized religion” or “I’m a Christian, I go to church…” or I “don’t go to church, but I’m a good, moral person,” or “I read and read the scripture, but God doesn’t ever speak to me,” or “ I know the Bible says so and so, but I don’t think what its saying is relevant in our generation” need to be held at arm’s length. A statement like that is a red flag to me, which says that the person, either doesn’t know the Lord or they are hiding from Him, for some reason----when we come across a person like this, we have to ask the Lord to give us an opportunity to delve deeper into conversation with them so that we can tell them the truth of the Gospel.
When Ahaz refused His offer, God gave him a sign anyway. 7:14 says, “…the virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son and will call his name Immanuel.” (God with us) This is one of the outstanding verses in the Bible that explains the truth of Christianity, at its core. But theologians, through the centuries, have studied and studied this verse and have a hard time with it. Matthew tells us in his book, that this promise was fulfilled by Jesus, 700 years after it was spoken---which is true, but the context of the way that it is written in Isaiah, links it to Isaiah’s own day, too. So the question is, were there 2 babies? I have 9 different Isaiah commentaries and they all say something a little different, but the general consensus is, that the prophecy came true in 2 ways. 1st, it predicted the birth of Maher-shalal-hashbaz, Isaiah’s own son, whose name means “quick to plunder, swift to spoil”, which was linked to the downfall of Syria and Israel----because by the time that that boy reached the age of accountability or the age of manhood which is 13, in Jewish culture; those two kingdoms would be just memories and Assyria would be knocking at Judah’s door. The message of his unusual name was the same as Immanuel’s, “God with us”-----God was present, with His people Judah, in their time of emergency, He made sure that their enemies were destroyed-----all enemies against God’s children are doomed, because God is with His people. And 2nd, Isaiah’s prophecy pointed the way to a child being born that would be our ultimate salvation. In this world we face the alliance of sin and death, with satan being the instigator and the perpetrator---------they never go away and in our own strength, we are no match for them-------but the birth of the baby Jesus, was the truest fulfillment of God ‘s plan for His children, Jew and Gentile------He is Immanuel, “God with us” and He dwells not just with us, but in us-------to protect us from all our enemies.
Isaiah used word- pictures to show Ahaz and the rulers of Judah the danger of their wrong choices. Instead of trusting the Lord, who was described as “the gently flowing waters of Shiloh”, they chose to trust Assyria, which was depicted as the mighty floodwaters of the Euphrates. Isaiah tried to paint the picture in their minds that, even though, humanly- speaking, the army of Assyria was a force to be reckoned with, the reality was; that Assyria was no more than a swarm of bees that God could whistle for, and it would obey Him. In the end, God stood by His promise to Ahaz, and the 2 nations threatening him did fall. But Ahaz’ unbelief was costly to himself and to the people he was responsible for. It’s always that way------when we disobey God, we never just hurt ourselves, we always hurt people we love, in the process.
Ahaz’ crisis was resolved, unfortunately, by an even more terrifying enemy--------- Assyria did rise up, like a flood and sweep Israel and Syria away, but in the process, Judah had to stand on its tiptoes, just to keep its head above water. (Someone has said, that the whole episode was like a mouse being attacked by two rats and calling for the cat to come and save him------ well the cat came, but the mouse wound up being the dessert.)
Trusting God to save us when we are assaulted by sin or confronted with a difficult situation, has no downside; but not trusting Him and only Him to save us, always turns out to be a big mistake that leaves us with regret and heartache and undesired consequences.
II. Fear God and all is Gained: 8:9-22
Influenced by Ahaz, the people of Judah, in Isaiah’s day rejected God in the defining moment of their time, and God passed them by. But their unbelief didn’t shake Him, because God has enough love and passion in Himself to bring salvation to the whole world, for all time.
You and I will never be able to achieve the victory of God in this world. We don’t trust God enough. We don’t live completely for Him, every moment of every day. We don’t claim the fullness of the inheritance that He has promised us. None of us do---not even the most righteous among us. But thank goodness, God can solve our problems for us because He doesn’t have a divided heart. He is our salvation. Someday we will be with Him in heaven, worshiping and enjoying Him perfectly and there, we will finally give Him all the glory that He deserves and we will live in the beauty of the way that we were created to be.
In this passage, Isaiah is giving us a little glimpse of what it means to be a remnant. God told him to look for the remnant of real believers among the many who pretended to be believers. A remnant of God is not characterized by a super-spiritual, elitist group of people, looking down on others-----a remnant is a group of people who dare to live by faith in God, no matter what is going on around them and no matter who is bombarding them with information. ( the story about Marybeth being asked if her daddy’s church was a bible-believing church…it was an elitist remark.)
The true remnant will be willing to give up everything in order to live for the Lord----the pretenders are very careful not to risk any more than they have to on Him. If you are looking, you can see the difference clearly. Jonathan Edwards says that a true Christian “has more holy boldness, so he has less self-confidence; he is more sure than others about his deliverance from hell, so this makes him realize just how much he really deserves it; he is less apt than others to be shaken in his faith, but he is more apt to be moved by solemn warnings, God’s frowns and the calamities of others. He has the firmest conviction, but the softest heart; richer than others, but poorest of all in spirit. He is the tallest and strongest saint, but the least and the most tender child among them.”
Being a part of the remnant isn’t as simple as belonging to a church or professing to be a believer, not now and it won’t be, for the Jewish remnant, in the last days— Being a part of God’s remnant is characterized by having 3 things imbedded in your heart: 1.) the presence of God, 2.) the fear of God, and 3.) the truth of God.
• The presence of God: When Ahaz and the people were told about Syria and Israel coming against them, they were terrified, but the remnant stood up with a bold confidence. They looked at the same crisis and said, you can do anything you want to us, but you will never defeat us, because God is with us. In 1 John 5:4, John says, “our faith is the victory, that overcomes the world.” (“Richard Williams, a young surgeon and Methodist lay preacher and an Anglican minister named Allen Gardiner went as missionaries to Terra del Fuego. In 1851, their ship was forced to winter in a cold and bitter and bay, and the supply vessel never arrived. Everyone on board their ship died of cold and starvation. Even as they were suffering, on Good Friday, April 18. 1851, Williams wrote in his journal, ‘poor and weak though we are, our abode is a very Bethel to our souls, and God we feel and know is here.’ Then on Wednesday, May 7, he wrote, ‘should anything prevent my ever adding to this, let all my beloved ones at home rest assured that I was happy beyond description when I wrote these lines and would not have changed situations with any man living.’”) At Bethel, in Genesis 28, Jacob saw God in an unexpected place like he had never seen Him before. A crisis in a believer’s life can turn out to be the sweetest Bethel to their souls because they can experience the presence of God in a way that defies human understanding—they can find joy, in the midst of heartache.
• The fear of God: Ahaz and Judah were wringing their hands over the impending invasion of Syria and Israel, kind of like we fear the threat of terrorists today. God’s remnant is not without fear---------it is just that they fear God more than they fear man—and the fear of God is generated by the understanding that God is all-powerful, all-knowing and all-present. This fear of God is not being scared------it is knowing that God is to be revered and worshiped for His holiness and His goodness. God wanted Isaiah to have absolute faith and trust in His sovereignty, and His protection and His salvation; He didn’t want Isaiah to put his trust in men and their weapons.
Fearing God, for a believer, means that we understand that God is the starting point for having true wisdom. This includes knowing how to conduct ourselves in the practical circumstances of everyday life-------making wise choices; doing the right thing in our relationships with other people; having spiritual insight into the true nature of what happens in the world and having a deep and abiding relationship with the Lord Jesus. This kind of wisdom can only grow out of an awareness of God and His purpose in the world. Luke 12:4-12 says that, “there is nothing to fear but fear itself, because when Jesus is for us, who can be against us?” The Holy Spirit will defend us and assist us to be witnesses and will seal us safely until the end, no matter what kind of hurt we experience.
How we treat fear God determines how we experience Him—He will either be a sanctuary or a snare------He will either be the rock that supports us -----the foundation that we can stand on or He will be the rock that will trip us or fall on us. God will either be our salvation or our destruction. It is easy to be swayed by the opinions and voices of the crowd, when big issues crop up. That’s why God’s words to Isaiah in 8:13 are as important for us to hear today as it was for the people of Judah to hear, “Do not fear anything, except the Lord Almighty, if you fear Him, then you need fear nothing else.”
• The Truth of God: In Isaiah’s day----the people didn’t value God’s Word---so God told Isaiah to preserve the neglected wisdom for another generation who would listen to it. Treasuring God’s word and finding hope in it is the most important thing that we can do, every day. In spite of all of Isaiah’s warnings and his pleadings to cling to the Lord----many of the people turned to the occult for guidance. Instead of shedding any light on their paths, this just pushed them even further into darkness. They sought light among the dead and ignored the living God. This pattern of turning to the occult, when the future seems uncertain, is rampant in our world today. There is nothing new under the sun. Why people would still consult horoscopes and mediums and palmreaders and mystics and gurus and channelers and life coaches in the world that we live in, when the gospel is going out through more media and technological venues than ever before, is just evidence that satan, the father of lies, is a very real and present danger. That is why Isaiah told the people to run away from darkness and run to the only safety that we have –-------the light of God’s truth. Ephesians 1:17 and 18 says, that grace imparts to the believer, “a spirit of wisdom and revelation so that you will know Him better, so that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which He has called you , the riches if His glorious inheritance in the saints and His incomparably great power for those who believe.”
It was evident that Isaiah and his children and his disciples were God’s witnesses to a lost and dying world-------We are also called, to be God’s witnesses to a lost and dying world-----are we following that calling? Is it evident by our behavior and our lifestyles and our words that we are living up to that calling?
The way to be sure that we are living witnesses to the Lord’s glory is for us to understand that we need to stop trying to save ourselves and to trust God to save us. “God with us” is more than a name. He is a reality. And when we lean on Him as our reality, we don’t need anything else.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
JOY "The Prophet Sent" October 6
October 6, 2010
The Prophet Sent
Isaiah 5:1-6:13
• The Vineyard 5:1-7
• The Woes and Judgments 5:8-30
• Isaiah’s Call and Response 6:1-13
Max Lucado tells a folk tale from India, that is a perfect beginning for the wrap-up of our scripture passage, this week. It goes like this: “A mouse lived his poor life terrified of cats. One day he persuaded a magician to help him, so the magician turned the mouse into a cat. But the mouse- who- had- turned- into- a- cat, then met a ferocious dog and insisted that he couldn’t live as cat any more, since his every moment was consumed with fear of the dog. Again the musician accommodated him, and turned him into a dog. Things went ok until the mouse-turned-cat-become-dog, chanced upon a tiger. One more time, the magician did his stuff, resulting in a new member of the tiger family. But, the tiger inevitably met a hunter. Again the –mouse-turned-cat-become-dog-morphed-into tiger, came running to the magician. He was totally consumed by his fear. But this time, the magician adamantly refused to change him into a hunter. And he said, ‘I can only make you into a mouse again, for even though you have the body of a tiger you still have the heart of a mouse.’”
In this passage of scripture, it is easy for us to tell that Isaiah feels the same way about his fellow Judeans that the magician does about the mouse. God had done everything that He possibly could for the people that he loved. He had given them the most beautiful, special place to live and had made sure that it was the most productive environment possible, for them to become exactly what He wanted them to be. ( when a biblical prophet foretold the future he was using it as a warning, in hopes that he could convince the people to stop their sinful behavior and to start obeying God.) But sadly, the nation of Israel turned their backs on God’s provision, and stubbornly went their own way. So, God forewarned them, through Isaiah, that His judgment would have to come and that they would be left to their own pitiful devices, just like the mouse was left to his-----when the foreign armies, that God would use as His instruments of punishment, invaded their land.
And this was not just a prophecy of the future Babylonian take-over and exile or even the far-in-the-future days of the Great Tribulation;--------it started right then, because in Isaiah’s day, the armies of Assyria were already knocking at Jerusalem’s city gates.
But--------- even though God’s wrath against His people had to happen, because God is a holy God and He has to punish sin, if we pay very careful attention, we will see that God’s precious thread of grace is never broken and that it winds like a scarlet ribbon through every word that Isaiah preaches. This prophecy in Chap. 5 and 6 has already been fulfilled, and-------- God’s chosen people, as a nation, are still living in the days of this prophecy,------- it isn’t over yet and I don’t believe it will be, until after The Great Tribulation. This passage is important for us because, in it, we can see that Israel and Judah’s rejection of God, opened up the way for us to be grafted on to the vine-that too is God’s grace and is according to His purpose. But with that being said and with the understanding, that, as it says in 2 Timothy 3:16-17, “All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work”, there is so much that we can glean from this passage to apply to our own lives, individually, and to apply to the life of the Church, collectively, and to apply to our nation, generally.
• The Vineyard: 5:1-7
J. Vernon McGee says that in Hebrew, “The song of the Vineyard” is without a doubt, one of the most beautiful songs that’s ever been written. He says that it’s comparable to any of the psalms, but is such a musical symphony that it’s impossible to reproduce it in English. The translations that we have, apparently, pale, in comparison, to hearing it sung in Hebrew. God is the farmer who owns the vineyard; Israel, God’s chosen ones are the vineyard; the Lord Jesus is the beloved and Israel’s sinful behavior is wild grape after wild grape. The image of the vineyard would have had special meaning for Isaiah’s audience, because the crop that grew the best in Judah, was grapes. But, the illustration makes it very clear that a grape crop requires a huge amount of preparation and care. The Judeans would have known how much work was required to get land ready to produce a good harvest. They knew that in the 1st year, that the land had to be cleared of other plants and then it had to be cleared of all the rocks, (which the Judean hillside still produces in great abundance.) They knew that that it had to be done before the vines could be carefully planted. During the 2nd year, the vines would have been set out and the cleared rocks would have had to have been built into fences and watchtowers in order to keep out two-footed and four-footed thieves. Finally, in the 3rd year, the vines would have been ready to produce fruit. It was a long and arduous process. So, it’s easy to imagine the Judean farmers hearing Isaiah’s words and anticipating the sweetness of a harvest that had been lovingly prepared for, with great deliberation and diligence. It’s also easy to imagine their disbelief and even outrage when the outcome of all that effort turned out to be bitter, wild grapes. You would think that they would have seen themselves in Isaiah’s illustration and would have been ashamed and remorseful and repentant, Isaiah even told them that they were the vineyard--------but they didn’t care --- they refused to turn from their wicked ways----- their sin and apostasy just got worse and worse.
God had taken the nation of Israel out of Egypt; He had given them the Law so that they could see their sin; and He had placed them in the Promised Land; He had given them the opportunity to get rid of all their enemies and He had given them a Holy City where He promised that they could always find Him, if they looked for Him, on the mercy seat. And in return, God expected something from them------He expected them to produce the fruits of righteousness that would glorify His name and would draw them close to Him in an intimate and joy-filled relationship--------but we know that they failed utterly and completely.
Through Isaiah, God asked His children to tell Him what more could He have done to make things right for them. The truth is, there was nothing else He could have done for them----He had already done it all. God’s plan is absolutely perfect and complete. When the Lord Jesus hung on the cross and cried out, “It is finished!” that is exactly what He meant! It is finished! Salvation is open to everyone, from the most wicked among us to the most innocent. The shed blood of Jesus, satisfied the perfect justice of God and every sin that was ever committed or ever will be committed was covered forever. The only thing that isn’t covered is blasphemy, the sin of unbelief, itself. We do not belong to ourselves—we are God’s workmanship and He had a purpose in mind for us, when He created us and He has every right to expect us, to give Him the results that He expects. And if we don’t, God has the right to do anything that He wants to with us. Almighty God is Sovereign and we have to fundamentally believe that, before we can truly live in one accord with His purposes and His character. Way too often, when we look at our own lives, we can’t see the big picture and we are too quick to complain against God. We harbor resentment toward Him and we grumble about things being unfair. (I have always told my children that unfair is not a word that they should have in their vocabulary, because the only thing that is unfair in this world is that Jesus Christ died on a cross for you and me—everything else is just life.) God is never wrong—we are wrong and we need to face up to that fact. We need to understand that God will never do anything that is wrong or unjust-----------it’s us; it’s our perspectives, our attitudes, and our behavior that’s wrong. God is always good-----whether our lives are smooth or rough-----God is still good all the time!
For over 500 years, God had kept the great nations of the world out of Palestine, which was a natural land bridge to 3 continents/ God wouldn’t let anyone touch them, but He could have--------God could have judged them many times but He waited because He wanted to give them every opportunity to stop living for themselves and to start living for Him. But, eventually God reached the time that He had decided was right for judgment-------He broke down the hedge(wall) that He had placed around them and He allowed Syria and Assyria and then Babylon to come into Israel’s Promised Land and take it!----and the Jewish people are still fighting to get it back. It had also always been the land that was flowing with milk and honey------meaning that it was overflowing with the goodness of God’s blessings-----but with God’s judgment of no rain, that all changed-------it began a famine that has continued right up till today----there is a struggle to make the land fertile, even with modern irrigation techniques.
God made every provision for His vineyard to grow and flourish. He wanted them to produce the fruit of His righteousness and He made sure that they had everything that they needed to accomplish that goal. The fruit of the Spirit is “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and gentleness and self-control.” It is His fruit; it isn’t ours. Jesus is the vine, and we are the branches. He doesn’t expect us to produce our own fruit. He does the producing; we do the bearing. But the bearing can only take place if we allow Him to take control of our lives; if we hear and obey Him.
Are we being productive for the Lord? When He gives us the equipment to obey Him, we need to realize that we will be held accountable for producing either good grapes or bad, wild grapes. God gives us natural talent and He gives us the good gifts that the Holy Spirit creates within us, when we become believers. But there are strings attached------we have to be fruitful or we will be pruned----we will be disciplined for disobedience -------we will be set aside and someone else will be raised to serve in our place. It says in 2Corinthians 5:10, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for all things done while in the body, whether good or bad.” As Believers, we aren’t allowed to come out neutral----------good fruit will deserve a crown and bad fruit will be burned up like the wheat hay and stubble that we talked about last week. Everything we do has the potential, to benefit the kingdom of God. (John Wesley, the wonderful, godly founder of the Methodist Church, went to visit the debtor’s prison. He discovered that a debtor could get out of prison if they could pay their way out. The price was only a pittance, less than 5 cents. He decided that he was going to sacrifice the excess of his salary, for as many debtors as he could, to help them get out of prison. Anything above his baseline salary, any raise, any benefit, any bonus that could have been used for anything that he wanted, he chose to use to help the poor---and He said, “I value all things, only by the price, that they shall gain in eternity.”) If Israel and Judah had recognized this and embraced it, they would have been spared generations of heartache. If we would recognize and embrace it, I think we would be astounded by the overflow of God’s goodness and His blessing, that He’ll lavish us with.
• Woes and Judgments: 5:8-30
6 specific behaviors of the people of Judah and Israel are condemned in this passage and they are all introduced with the word “woe.” This is a word that is associated with funerals. It is a word that carries with it a feeling of sorrow, regret and anger. It has the idea of a death that is a tragic one, because it is unnecessary-----it could have been prevented. The woes describe the sins of the people, in relation to the way that God had called for them to live, when He gave the Law to Moses, on Mt. Sinai.
God, through Isaiah, didn’t mince words--------He spelled out the woes very clearly and then, just as clearly, He spelled out the punishment that fit the crime. He left no doubt about the cause and the effect of His judgment. God will let us know what we need to know and what we want to know if we will diligently seek Him. 1st Chronicles 28:9 says, “And you my son Solomon, acknowledge the God of your father and serve Him with a wholehearted devotion and with a willing mind, for the Lord searches every heart and understands every motive behind the thoughts. If you seek Him, he will be found by you; but if you forsake Him, He will reject you forever.” In this case, the people of God didn’t have to seek Him-------He made it very clear what was going to happen and why. God, in His grace and mercy wanted to spare His children what He knew was going to come in their future---He wanted to give them every chance, to repent and to turn back to walking with Him, in right-living. Isaiah listed the 6 woes that needed to be dealt with; He held up 6 clusters, of wild grapes, which we can see, every single day, as we walk through our lives.
• Lust of the eye (greed and covetousness). Covetousness is idolatry. These people looked around themselves and saw what their neighbors had and wanted it for themselves. They were agricultural people and they were grabbing up land and forming big farming complexes. They began to expand their own property at the expense of the little man. It was done, so that great fortunes could be amassed by individuals. It was driven by an insatiable greed for more property and possessions. The rich were getting richer and the poor were getting squeezed out. But there was more to it than that, though; God had said that the land was His in Leviticus 25, and that the people were only living there with His gracious permission. He wanted the land to be passed down through the generations of families------that is why He had very specifically and intentionally parceled out the territories to the different tribes, when they had come with Joshua into the Promised Land. Their real sin, was that they were living as if God was worthless and hadn’t provided His perfect portion for them. They were depending on themselves and not on Him. The judgment for this would be that their greed would come back to haunt them—there would be a lengthy famine; and their farms would be unable to produce the expected bumper crops; and their future, would be the equivalency of our bankruptcy. They would lose it all.
• Self-Indulgence (on a personal and national scale). This woe points to drunken carousers, who live only for pleasure and entertainment. This sin led to, a lack of or a deadening of, spiritual perception. The people had reached a place where they didn’t think anymore, they just did. If it felt good they did it! If it seemed right, they did it! Their passion was not for the Holy Spirit, it was for anything that could satisfy their personal desires. (I think about the Nike check----and its logo-----just do it! That is scary). Romans 8:5-6 explains to us that there are basically 2 kinds of people in the world---sensate and spiritual. The sensate mentality is drawn to entertainment while the spiritual mentality is drawn to worship. Isaiah condemned Judah’s obsession for living from thrill to thrill. A spiritual approach to life will fill us up with the Holy Spirit –----and a sensate one will fill us up with everything else.
An example of this is drinking to get drunk. Ephesians 5:18 says, “Do not get drunk with wine…but be filled with the Spirit.” Wine isn’t the problem; wine isn’t condemned in the scriptures----the problem is drunkenness and it is condemned. We all know that excessive alcohol dulls our senses and lowers our inhibitions and wreaks havoc with our reaction time, and it prevents us from thinking logically. (Dale and I made the decision, right after we got married and started teaching youth SS, that we were going to have an (alcohol-drinking)-free home—we didn’t want to cause any of our young people to see it as a stumbling block.) We’ve never been sorry.
Let me give you a few statistics about why this wild grape is such a problem in our country -------and why Isaiah’s words should still be heeded, all these hundreds of years later----------
*# 1 drug problem in the US.
*12 million alcoholics in the US.
*3/4 of all adults drink alcohol and 6% of them are alcoholics.
*Americans spend 197 million dollars every day on alcohol.
*A person is killed in the US, in alcohol –related car accidents every 30 mins.
*In 2000, a study was done that says 7 million people from ages 12-20 are binge drinkers.
*Adolescents who begin drinking before the age of 15 are 4 times more likely to become alcoholics than their counterparts who don’t begin drinking till age 21.
*Most college students drink alcohol to get drunk, on the average, at least 3-4 times a week.
*People with a higher education and with higher incomes are more likely to drink excessively than their counterparts.
Alcohol is a factor in 73% of all felonies; 73 % of all child abuse cases; 41 % of all rape cases; 81% of all wife-beating cases; 72% of all stabbings; 83% of all homicides.
We need to fill ourselves with great gulps of the Holy Spirit-----because that kind of excess won’t dull our minds; in fact, it will sharpen our awareness so that God can become more and more real to us and worship can become a way of life. The judgment for this woe would be exile. The people would be taken into captivity and it would be worse than death and they would hunger and thirst, not just for food and drink but for the way things used to be, before they were brought so low by drunkenness and pleasure. They would long for a second chance.
• Cynicism (lying, pride and unbelief, hypocrisy). The people, as a nation, were giving themselves over to sin, with wild abandon, without any shame or conscience. They were defiant to God, by their lifestyles and their words; shaking their fists in His face, daring Him to do anything about their sin. They lied to themselves and said, “if what we are doing is so bad, then why doesn’t God do something to stop it?” Meanwhile we will just keep on doing what we want to do.” This is the height of arrogance. The people were outwardly going through the motions of worship and ignoring their heart relationship with God. They were trying to get God to prove Himself. This is unbelief. Throughout their national history He had proven Himself over and over again, but the people had chosen to forget who God was---they were pretending that they knew Him, but their heart attitudes showed that it was lie.
There was no judgment given after this woe---------there was only silence---which was worse—it meant that the penalty for this sin was too awful to mention. If you read Psalm 137:9, you get a little glimpse of the horror that Judah experienced during the Babylonian captivity. The Psalm says that Israel prayed for Babylon to get done to them what they had done to Israel. You can tell how awful it was because, they prayed for “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and they said ‘Happy shall he be, that takes and dashes the little ones against the stones.’” That sounds horrible beyond words, but we know that is what happened to Israel and Judah. It was judgment for their sin------------and in His grace, God tried to spare them from it, by sending Isaiah to warn them----if they had only listened to him! This is a lesson to us-----we need to sit up and take notice when we hear God speaking to our hearts.
• Moral perversion ( making wrong right and right wrong) We find ways to rationalize sin. We redefine it. We change the labels. It is possible to lose our sense of taste----I’m not talking about a physical sense of taste-----I am talking about a spiritual sense of taste—when we reject the law of the Lord and ignore the scripture, we are choosing to lose our spiritual taste buds. (I have tried and tried and tried to like coffee-------but I just don’t --------there is no amount of sugar or cream that can make it taste good and sweet to me-----Beverly says it is because I have too many bitter taste buds.) The nice thing about it, is that helps me to discern the differences between bitter and sweet--------and I won’t ever get them confused. When we add sugar to something that is bitter—we can disguise it and lull ourselves into a false sense of security with it. )That is what the people of Judah were doing------------they had told themselves so many times that their sin was sweet, that they actually believed it. They justified evil by putting a new face on it. They couldn’t tell the difference between something that pleased God and something that angered Him. This sin destroys God’s standards of right and wrong, by substituting man’s values for them. This is the kind of confused thinking that can result when a nation or individual people, turn their backs on God after He has blessed them beyond measure. This kind of reasoning is rampant in our world today. The people in Isaiah’s day had reached the place where they didn’t just dare God to condemn sin; they had decided that there was no such thing as sin. What had been right was actually wrong and what had been wrong was actually right. They saw themselves as wise and all-knowing. They thought that they could create their own morality. But the truth is------sin is still sin; adultery is still adultery; lying is still lying; prejudice is still prejudice; defying God is still defying God-and it is all level at the cross. God hasn’t changed and neither has man. It has been said, “that wrong is wrong, from the moment that it happens, till the crack of doom, and all the angels in heaven, working overtime, cannot make it different or less, by a hair. Wrong is still wrong.” (The Great Divide----- a play ---1906)
5.) Pride: Proverbs 6:16-17 says, “that God hates a proud look and a lying tongue and hands that shed innocent blood.” Pride is the oldest of all sins. It was the cause of Lucifer’s downfall and it has been the cause of countless other tragedies, too numerous to count. Pride is a distortion of the truth. In 1st Corinthians 4:7 Paul asked the question, “What do you have that you didn’t receive?” The answer is “nothing.” We are what we are by God’s grace. We had no so say in where we were born or when we were born or who our parents were. We had no say as to what intelligence that we possess or to what opportunities that we are given along the way. If we are successful, in anything, we should thank God for His grace and if we are well, we should thank Him for our health. If we live to grow old, we should thank Him for our longevity. Everything is in His hands. There is really no such thing as a “self-made man”. Without the grace of God giving us our abilities and opportunities we would be nothing. Pride usurps God’s place and authority; it puts the created in the place of the Creator------and our Almighty Sovereign God will not accept that arrogance.
• Social Injustice (bribery and corruption; link the 6 sins together). This woe is against the Judges in Judah, who because of their drinking habits were incapable of being fair and honest in their courtrooms. Instead of handling trials with integrity they were accepting bribes to acquit the guilty and to frame the innocent. All the while they were thinking that it was all ok with God. This behavior had filtered down to the people, as well, because people will follow any person or any whim that strikes their fancy, if their focus is not on the Lord Jesus and they aren’t grounded in His word.
How we treat each other is the most significant indicator of how healthy our relationship with God, is. We need to treat each other with fundamental respect, because we have, each one, been created in God’s image. When we abuse someone or curse them or shame them or slander them, it is the same as if we are doing all of those things to God. There will never be social justice until people decide, that having their personal needs and wants met, should take second place to other people, who need just their basic needs met. And this will never happen, until we realize that God and God alone is sufficient to supply, not just some of our needs, but all of them. When we come to that realization, then we will be able to lay our selfishness down at His feet, and go out and take care of somebody else.
The judgment that is pronounced after the last woe is directed at all of the woes, but especially the last 3---------it is an explicit summation of what the Jewish exile was going to be, and really, still is. The vineyard had produced nothing but wild, bitter grapes and so after the clusters were held up and examined—Isaiah said that there would be nothing left to do, but to tear down the walls and let the animals come in to trample the useless vines.
So, the bottom line of all of this------John 15:5 “that Jesus is the vine and we are the branches---if we abide in Him, then He will abide in us and we will bear fruit that will last.” If we aren’t bearing fruit or if we are bearing wild grapes, then there is a problem with our relationship with the Lord Jesus and we need to fix it. And that is God’s grace------- that He gives us the opportunity to fix our relationship with Him and that He forgives us for whatever it is that we messed up and that He never brings it up again. What a good God we have!
3.) Isaiah’s Call and Response; 6:1-13 Chapter 6, details the call and the commissioning of Isaiah in a wonderful way. Like all the other great men of God, in the scripture, Isaiah accepted His call to serve, after he had had a personal encounter with God. God was the initiator---He called him and Isaiah followed Him. That has always been God’s pattern. People don’t call themselves and they don’t ordain themselves. We have a personal encounter with God and then, we are individually called and commissioned by Him to do the work that He has chosen for us to do. Every believer is gifted and equipped for some work in the Lord’s kingdom. Romans 8:28 tells us that we “…..are called according to His purpose”. His purpose is to build up the body of Christ by using our unique and specific gifts. 1st Corinthians 12:18 says that “God has set each member in the body as it has pleased Him.” He has set you and me in the body of believers for a purpose. He has set each one of us in the specific church family that we belong to, for a purpose. God has set each one of us to a specific task for a purpose. We aren’t there by accident. We are placed there to serve Him and to serve each other. Before we can be called and placed though, we have to have had an encounter with the Lord, not necessarily as dramatic as Isaiah’s, but just as real.
Uzziah had been a good King. He had reigned for 52 years and then he passed away. He was the last great king of the Southern kingdom of Judah. The nation had been blessed materially during his reign. He had brought the Philistines, the Arabians and the Ammonites into subjection. Those were glory days for Judah and they have never been recovered since.
Isaiah was just a young man when Uzziah died and he must have been scared for His country and his people------------afraid that things would fall to pieces and that their prosperity would end. So, Isaiah did, what we should all do when we are scared and faced with uncertainties about our futures, or even about tomorrow--------he went to the temple. He went to the exact right place-he went to find God and in the process He discovered 2 things--------that in his own strength, he was nothing and that the true King of his nation was not dead but was very much alive and was sitting high and lifted up, on His throne. And that He was Holy, Holy Holy!
We forget, when we get bogged down in the minutiae and chaos of life, that God is on His throne and that we don’t have to put our trust in anything or anyone, but Him.
We need to remember Isaiah’s vision today We need to let it fill our hearts and our minds, like it did Isaiah’s, as we go about our Father’s business. The truth of God’s glory was permanently inscribed on Isaiah’s heart---he never forgot it. Regardless of the troubles that he had to prophecy about later and the ones that he saw come to fruition---------he never doubted that God was holy and that He was in perfect control of all things.
Although some people would disagree with me, I think we are living in the greatest time in the history of the world. I would rather live right now than in any other time. So many people say, “look at the condition of our world; look at the jadedness of our nation; look at the deteriorating infrastructure in our cities.” Well I can see all of those things, but I believe that we don’t have to worry about them. We can be serene and peaceful because the Lord said that it would be that way.
Jesus said that the tares were going to be sown among the wheat and that He was going to let them grow up together. The good news is that the Gospel is going out to more people all over the world than ever before. ----we have never had so many forms of communication, before. We need to use them for the good of the kingdom ,so that satan can’t get his control of them. We have the radio and the internet and the television and satellites and cell phones and twittering and texting and kindles and ipads------we have more technology than we can keep up with. We have short-term missionaries and long-term missionaries that are going faster and further than we ever have before. I know that the world is a confusing place and that conditions are chaotic and alarming and that the tares are growing at a record pace---but I also know that God’s wheat is growing steadily right along with the tares and that in the end; the wheat will outgrow the tares. It is exciting to be sowing God’s word in today’s world,—we are to sow the seed and God will reap the harvest. As Chad Hood, one of our pastors, said this past Sunday, When we realize that God is Sovereign -----then, all of a sudden the chaos of the world begins to make sense----and we can trust our good God “to work all things together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.”
When Isaiah went into the temple He didn’t expect to see what he did. He should have, but He was like we are---we go to church, to worship and to study and to have fellowship, but we don’t often go, expecting to encounter the Lord in a new and fresh and real way. Way too frequently, when we come face to face with the Lord, it’s when we least expect it. We forget that He is still on the throne and that He still hears and answers our prayers. (I have a had a fresh encounter with Him in this class we are teaching on Sunday night------the sweetness and the conviction and the vulnerability before the Lord and before their peers is precious to me-it has been a real blessing----)
Isaiah saw Seraphim around God’s throne----they were protecting and proclaiming the Holiness of God. God is holy; He is high and lifted up; He won’t compromise with evil because evil and sin have brought all the sorrow into the world. Sin can turn your hair gray; it can make your steps falter and your shoulders stoop; it can break up marriages and destroy families and it can fill up graves. I am glad that He won’t compromise with it. Even if it’s me that He has to discipline, because of it. God says that He hates sin and that He intends to destroy it and to remove it from the universe. When Isaiah saw God on the throne, he was moved to bow so low, that his face touched the floor. We need to see that same vision of God-------not just His love but His holiness. We need to see Him as the Holy One of Israel---------------We should be cautious as we approach Him in any way that is less reverent than he deserves. We shouldn’t approach Him like He’s a buddy and that we can speak to Him in any way that we please-we don’t come into God’s presence because of who we are; we come into His presence because of who He is in us. We are His children—we can come to Him with boldness, but we need to come with a healthy, righteous fear of His holiness.
The voices of the Seraphim shook the house of God as they proclaimed His holiness. Isaiah was God’s man before he had this experience, but it still had a tremendous effect on Him. Isaiah saw Himself as he really was in God’s presence-------he saw himself as a sinner. Seeing God helped him see himself. Our problem, way too often, is that we don’t see ourselves in the light of God’s word, so that it can expose our sin. If we did, we would fall on our faces too. 1 John 1:7says, “if we walk in the light of His word, we are going to see exactly what Isaiah saw----that we are “undone and are people with unclean lips.” If we walk in the light of the word of God, we will see ourselves---------and we will know----that nothing can save us but the blood of Jesus.
The live coal that the seraphim put to Isaiah’s lips came from the altar of burnt offerings---the altar symbolized Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. The living coal represented Jesus’ blood that will continually cleanse us. The condition for cleansing from sin is confession. It says in 1 John 1:9 “If we confess our sin, He is faithful and just, to forgive our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Putting the coal to his lips was an outward symbol of the cleansing that had taken place in his heart.
In Roman’s 7:24, Paul cried out, “O wretched man that I am; who shall deliver me from the body of this death.” When Paul said that, he wasn’t a lost sinner---he was a saint of God---- already a believer, learning that the only way that he could live for God, was to walk in the Spirit constantly, not in his own strength. The way we walk in the Spirit is to confess our sinfulness to God and to confess our inability to please him. When we do this, God will apply cleansing to our lives, and will use us for His glory and for our blessing. God can use anyone, but He prefers to use a clean vessel.
After the coal was applied to his lips, Isaiah heard God’s call for the 1st time and he responded with a freedom that only a cleansed person can do. “Here am I, send me”, no hesitation and no deliberation—He was ready for the call. Too many of us try to do the Lord’s work without being cleansed and we wind up being frustrated and overwhelmed------because we try to do it in our own strength. Every day, we need to wake up and confess our sin and ask the Lord to cleanse us so that we will be ready in an instant, when He gives us a task to do. (Many years ago, the governor of Texas was invited to speak in one of the jails in his state. After his talk he said that he would be available to meet with anybody who wanted to speak to him. A number of the inmates approached him. One by one, they each had a similar story. They everyone, had been unjustly sentenced-they were innocent and wanted the governor to issue a pardon for their freedom. Only one man’s story was different. He admitted his guilt for the crime and said, “Sir, I have been here many years and I believe that I have paid my debt to society. I sincerely believe that if I were to be released, I would be able to live an upright life and show myself worthy of your mercy.” He was the one pardoned. )
God gave Isaiah a very difficult assignment. God who can see past, present and future, told Isaiah that he was to keep preaching faithfully and fearlessly and for a long time, in spite of the people’s indifference and lack of response----because there would be a tenth of the people who would survive and would turn from their sin and who would turn back to God. God’s grace is that He will never take His hand off of Israel. The servant of God is to proclaim God’s word—regardless of how people respond. We are to be obedient to the job that God has called us to-no matter how people react!
We never know when we share the Gospel with someone, if they are going to respond or not--------we never know when we share our testimony of God’s provision in our daily lives, if it will spark the desire for someone else to know Him-----we never know if the prayer that we pray for someone, when they are in trouble, will turn them toward a life with the Lord Jesus---but what we do know, is that we are supposed to tell them and we need to keep telling them, until there is no one left to hear.
The Prophet Sent
Isaiah 5:1-6:13
• The Vineyard 5:1-7
• The Woes and Judgments 5:8-30
• Isaiah’s Call and Response 6:1-13
Max Lucado tells a folk tale from India, that is a perfect beginning for the wrap-up of our scripture passage, this week. It goes like this: “A mouse lived his poor life terrified of cats. One day he persuaded a magician to help him, so the magician turned the mouse into a cat. But the mouse- who- had- turned- into- a- cat, then met a ferocious dog and insisted that he couldn’t live as cat any more, since his every moment was consumed with fear of the dog. Again the musician accommodated him, and turned him into a dog. Things went ok until the mouse-turned-cat-become-dog, chanced upon a tiger. One more time, the magician did his stuff, resulting in a new member of the tiger family. But, the tiger inevitably met a hunter. Again the –mouse-turned-cat-become-dog-morphed-into tiger, came running to the magician. He was totally consumed by his fear. But this time, the magician adamantly refused to change him into a hunter. And he said, ‘I can only make you into a mouse again, for even though you have the body of a tiger you still have the heart of a mouse.’”
In this passage of scripture, it is easy for us to tell that Isaiah feels the same way about his fellow Judeans that the magician does about the mouse. God had done everything that He possibly could for the people that he loved. He had given them the most beautiful, special place to live and had made sure that it was the most productive environment possible, for them to become exactly what He wanted them to be. ( when a biblical prophet foretold the future he was using it as a warning, in hopes that he could convince the people to stop their sinful behavior and to start obeying God.) But sadly, the nation of Israel turned their backs on God’s provision, and stubbornly went their own way. So, God forewarned them, through Isaiah, that His judgment would have to come and that they would be left to their own pitiful devices, just like the mouse was left to his-----when the foreign armies, that God would use as His instruments of punishment, invaded their land.
And this was not just a prophecy of the future Babylonian take-over and exile or even the far-in-the-future days of the Great Tribulation;--------it started right then, because in Isaiah’s day, the armies of Assyria were already knocking at Jerusalem’s city gates.
But--------- even though God’s wrath against His people had to happen, because God is a holy God and He has to punish sin, if we pay very careful attention, we will see that God’s precious thread of grace is never broken and that it winds like a scarlet ribbon through every word that Isaiah preaches. This prophecy in Chap. 5 and 6 has already been fulfilled, and-------- God’s chosen people, as a nation, are still living in the days of this prophecy,------- it isn’t over yet and I don’t believe it will be, until after The Great Tribulation. This passage is important for us because, in it, we can see that Israel and Judah’s rejection of God, opened up the way for us to be grafted on to the vine-that too is God’s grace and is according to His purpose. But with that being said and with the understanding, that, as it says in 2 Timothy 3:16-17, “All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work”, there is so much that we can glean from this passage to apply to our own lives, individually, and to apply to the life of the Church, collectively, and to apply to our nation, generally.
• The Vineyard: 5:1-7
J. Vernon McGee says that in Hebrew, “The song of the Vineyard” is without a doubt, one of the most beautiful songs that’s ever been written. He says that it’s comparable to any of the psalms, but is such a musical symphony that it’s impossible to reproduce it in English. The translations that we have, apparently, pale, in comparison, to hearing it sung in Hebrew. God is the farmer who owns the vineyard; Israel, God’s chosen ones are the vineyard; the Lord Jesus is the beloved and Israel’s sinful behavior is wild grape after wild grape. The image of the vineyard would have had special meaning for Isaiah’s audience, because the crop that grew the best in Judah, was grapes. But, the illustration makes it very clear that a grape crop requires a huge amount of preparation and care. The Judeans would have known how much work was required to get land ready to produce a good harvest. They knew that in the 1st year, that the land had to be cleared of other plants and then it had to be cleared of all the rocks, (which the Judean hillside still produces in great abundance.) They knew that that it had to be done before the vines could be carefully planted. During the 2nd year, the vines would have been set out and the cleared rocks would have had to have been built into fences and watchtowers in order to keep out two-footed and four-footed thieves. Finally, in the 3rd year, the vines would have been ready to produce fruit. It was a long and arduous process. So, it’s easy to imagine the Judean farmers hearing Isaiah’s words and anticipating the sweetness of a harvest that had been lovingly prepared for, with great deliberation and diligence. It’s also easy to imagine their disbelief and even outrage when the outcome of all that effort turned out to be bitter, wild grapes. You would think that they would have seen themselves in Isaiah’s illustration and would have been ashamed and remorseful and repentant, Isaiah even told them that they were the vineyard--------but they didn’t care --- they refused to turn from their wicked ways----- their sin and apostasy just got worse and worse.
God had taken the nation of Israel out of Egypt; He had given them the Law so that they could see their sin; and He had placed them in the Promised Land; He had given them the opportunity to get rid of all their enemies and He had given them a Holy City where He promised that they could always find Him, if they looked for Him, on the mercy seat. And in return, God expected something from them------He expected them to produce the fruits of righteousness that would glorify His name and would draw them close to Him in an intimate and joy-filled relationship--------but we know that they failed utterly and completely.
Through Isaiah, God asked His children to tell Him what more could He have done to make things right for them. The truth is, there was nothing else He could have done for them----He had already done it all. God’s plan is absolutely perfect and complete. When the Lord Jesus hung on the cross and cried out, “It is finished!” that is exactly what He meant! It is finished! Salvation is open to everyone, from the most wicked among us to the most innocent. The shed blood of Jesus, satisfied the perfect justice of God and every sin that was ever committed or ever will be committed was covered forever. The only thing that isn’t covered is blasphemy, the sin of unbelief, itself. We do not belong to ourselves—we are God’s workmanship and He had a purpose in mind for us, when He created us and He has every right to expect us, to give Him the results that He expects. And if we don’t, God has the right to do anything that He wants to with us. Almighty God is Sovereign and we have to fundamentally believe that, before we can truly live in one accord with His purposes and His character. Way too often, when we look at our own lives, we can’t see the big picture and we are too quick to complain against God. We harbor resentment toward Him and we grumble about things being unfair. (I have always told my children that unfair is not a word that they should have in their vocabulary, because the only thing that is unfair in this world is that Jesus Christ died on a cross for you and me—everything else is just life.) God is never wrong—we are wrong and we need to face up to that fact. We need to understand that God will never do anything that is wrong or unjust-----------it’s us; it’s our perspectives, our attitudes, and our behavior that’s wrong. God is always good-----whether our lives are smooth or rough-----God is still good all the time!
For over 500 years, God had kept the great nations of the world out of Palestine, which was a natural land bridge to 3 continents/ God wouldn’t let anyone touch them, but He could have--------God could have judged them many times but He waited because He wanted to give them every opportunity to stop living for themselves and to start living for Him. But, eventually God reached the time that He had decided was right for judgment-------He broke down the hedge(wall) that He had placed around them and He allowed Syria and Assyria and then Babylon to come into Israel’s Promised Land and take it!----and the Jewish people are still fighting to get it back. It had also always been the land that was flowing with milk and honey------meaning that it was overflowing with the goodness of God’s blessings-----but with God’s judgment of no rain, that all changed-------it began a famine that has continued right up till today----there is a struggle to make the land fertile, even with modern irrigation techniques.
God made every provision for His vineyard to grow and flourish. He wanted them to produce the fruit of His righteousness and He made sure that they had everything that they needed to accomplish that goal. The fruit of the Spirit is “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and gentleness and self-control.” It is His fruit; it isn’t ours. Jesus is the vine, and we are the branches. He doesn’t expect us to produce our own fruit. He does the producing; we do the bearing. But the bearing can only take place if we allow Him to take control of our lives; if we hear and obey Him.
Are we being productive for the Lord? When He gives us the equipment to obey Him, we need to realize that we will be held accountable for producing either good grapes or bad, wild grapes. God gives us natural talent and He gives us the good gifts that the Holy Spirit creates within us, when we become believers. But there are strings attached------we have to be fruitful or we will be pruned----we will be disciplined for disobedience -------we will be set aside and someone else will be raised to serve in our place. It says in 2Corinthians 5:10, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for all things done while in the body, whether good or bad.” As Believers, we aren’t allowed to come out neutral----------good fruit will deserve a crown and bad fruit will be burned up like the wheat hay and stubble that we talked about last week. Everything we do has the potential, to benefit the kingdom of God. (John Wesley, the wonderful, godly founder of the Methodist Church, went to visit the debtor’s prison. He discovered that a debtor could get out of prison if they could pay their way out. The price was only a pittance, less than 5 cents. He decided that he was going to sacrifice the excess of his salary, for as many debtors as he could, to help them get out of prison. Anything above his baseline salary, any raise, any benefit, any bonus that could have been used for anything that he wanted, he chose to use to help the poor---and He said, “I value all things, only by the price, that they shall gain in eternity.”) If Israel and Judah had recognized this and embraced it, they would have been spared generations of heartache. If we would recognize and embrace it, I think we would be astounded by the overflow of God’s goodness and His blessing, that He’ll lavish us with.
• Woes and Judgments: 5:8-30
6 specific behaviors of the people of Judah and Israel are condemned in this passage and they are all introduced with the word “woe.” This is a word that is associated with funerals. It is a word that carries with it a feeling of sorrow, regret and anger. It has the idea of a death that is a tragic one, because it is unnecessary-----it could have been prevented. The woes describe the sins of the people, in relation to the way that God had called for them to live, when He gave the Law to Moses, on Mt. Sinai.
God, through Isaiah, didn’t mince words--------He spelled out the woes very clearly and then, just as clearly, He spelled out the punishment that fit the crime. He left no doubt about the cause and the effect of His judgment. God will let us know what we need to know and what we want to know if we will diligently seek Him. 1st Chronicles 28:9 says, “And you my son Solomon, acknowledge the God of your father and serve Him with a wholehearted devotion and with a willing mind, for the Lord searches every heart and understands every motive behind the thoughts. If you seek Him, he will be found by you; but if you forsake Him, He will reject you forever.” In this case, the people of God didn’t have to seek Him-------He made it very clear what was going to happen and why. God, in His grace and mercy wanted to spare His children what He knew was going to come in their future---He wanted to give them every chance, to repent and to turn back to walking with Him, in right-living. Isaiah listed the 6 woes that needed to be dealt with; He held up 6 clusters, of wild grapes, which we can see, every single day, as we walk through our lives.
• Lust of the eye (greed and covetousness). Covetousness is idolatry. These people looked around themselves and saw what their neighbors had and wanted it for themselves. They were agricultural people and they were grabbing up land and forming big farming complexes. They began to expand their own property at the expense of the little man. It was done, so that great fortunes could be amassed by individuals. It was driven by an insatiable greed for more property and possessions. The rich were getting richer and the poor were getting squeezed out. But there was more to it than that, though; God had said that the land was His in Leviticus 25, and that the people were only living there with His gracious permission. He wanted the land to be passed down through the generations of families------that is why He had very specifically and intentionally parceled out the territories to the different tribes, when they had come with Joshua into the Promised Land. Their real sin, was that they were living as if God was worthless and hadn’t provided His perfect portion for them. They were depending on themselves and not on Him. The judgment for this would be that their greed would come back to haunt them—there would be a lengthy famine; and their farms would be unable to produce the expected bumper crops; and their future, would be the equivalency of our bankruptcy. They would lose it all.
• Self-Indulgence (on a personal and national scale). This woe points to drunken carousers, who live only for pleasure and entertainment. This sin led to, a lack of or a deadening of, spiritual perception. The people had reached a place where they didn’t think anymore, they just did. If it felt good they did it! If it seemed right, they did it! Their passion was not for the Holy Spirit, it was for anything that could satisfy their personal desires. (I think about the Nike check----and its logo-----just do it! That is scary). Romans 8:5-6 explains to us that there are basically 2 kinds of people in the world---sensate and spiritual. The sensate mentality is drawn to entertainment while the spiritual mentality is drawn to worship. Isaiah condemned Judah’s obsession for living from thrill to thrill. A spiritual approach to life will fill us up with the Holy Spirit –----and a sensate one will fill us up with everything else.
An example of this is drinking to get drunk. Ephesians 5:18 says, “Do not get drunk with wine…but be filled with the Spirit.” Wine isn’t the problem; wine isn’t condemned in the scriptures----the problem is drunkenness and it is condemned. We all know that excessive alcohol dulls our senses and lowers our inhibitions and wreaks havoc with our reaction time, and it prevents us from thinking logically. (Dale and I made the decision, right after we got married and started teaching youth SS, that we were going to have an (alcohol-drinking)-free home—we didn’t want to cause any of our young people to see it as a stumbling block.) We’ve never been sorry.
Let me give you a few statistics about why this wild grape is such a problem in our country -------and why Isaiah’s words should still be heeded, all these hundreds of years later----------
*# 1 drug problem in the US.
*12 million alcoholics in the US.
*3/4 of all adults drink alcohol and 6% of them are alcoholics.
*Americans spend 197 million dollars every day on alcohol.
*A person is killed in the US, in alcohol –related car accidents every 30 mins.
*In 2000, a study was done that says 7 million people from ages 12-20 are binge drinkers.
*Adolescents who begin drinking before the age of 15 are 4 times more likely to become alcoholics than their counterparts who don’t begin drinking till age 21.
*Most college students drink alcohol to get drunk, on the average, at least 3-4 times a week.
*People with a higher education and with higher incomes are more likely to drink excessively than their counterparts.
Alcohol is a factor in 73% of all felonies; 73 % of all child abuse cases; 41 % of all rape cases; 81% of all wife-beating cases; 72% of all stabbings; 83% of all homicides.
We need to fill ourselves with great gulps of the Holy Spirit-----because that kind of excess won’t dull our minds; in fact, it will sharpen our awareness so that God can become more and more real to us and worship can become a way of life. The judgment for this woe would be exile. The people would be taken into captivity and it would be worse than death and they would hunger and thirst, not just for food and drink but for the way things used to be, before they were brought so low by drunkenness and pleasure. They would long for a second chance.
• Cynicism (lying, pride and unbelief, hypocrisy). The people, as a nation, were giving themselves over to sin, with wild abandon, without any shame or conscience. They were defiant to God, by their lifestyles and their words; shaking their fists in His face, daring Him to do anything about their sin. They lied to themselves and said, “if what we are doing is so bad, then why doesn’t God do something to stop it?” Meanwhile we will just keep on doing what we want to do.” This is the height of arrogance. The people were outwardly going through the motions of worship and ignoring their heart relationship with God. They were trying to get God to prove Himself. This is unbelief. Throughout their national history He had proven Himself over and over again, but the people had chosen to forget who God was---they were pretending that they knew Him, but their heart attitudes showed that it was lie.
There was no judgment given after this woe---------there was only silence---which was worse—it meant that the penalty for this sin was too awful to mention. If you read Psalm 137:9, you get a little glimpse of the horror that Judah experienced during the Babylonian captivity. The Psalm says that Israel prayed for Babylon to get done to them what they had done to Israel. You can tell how awful it was because, they prayed for “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and they said ‘Happy shall he be, that takes and dashes the little ones against the stones.’” That sounds horrible beyond words, but we know that is what happened to Israel and Judah. It was judgment for their sin------------and in His grace, God tried to spare them from it, by sending Isaiah to warn them----if they had only listened to him! This is a lesson to us-----we need to sit up and take notice when we hear God speaking to our hearts.
• Moral perversion ( making wrong right and right wrong) We find ways to rationalize sin. We redefine it. We change the labels. It is possible to lose our sense of taste----I’m not talking about a physical sense of taste-----I am talking about a spiritual sense of taste—when we reject the law of the Lord and ignore the scripture, we are choosing to lose our spiritual taste buds. (I have tried and tried and tried to like coffee-------but I just don’t --------there is no amount of sugar or cream that can make it taste good and sweet to me-----Beverly says it is because I have too many bitter taste buds.) The nice thing about it, is that helps me to discern the differences between bitter and sweet--------and I won’t ever get them confused. When we add sugar to something that is bitter—we can disguise it and lull ourselves into a false sense of security with it. )That is what the people of Judah were doing------------they had told themselves so many times that their sin was sweet, that they actually believed it. They justified evil by putting a new face on it. They couldn’t tell the difference between something that pleased God and something that angered Him. This sin destroys God’s standards of right and wrong, by substituting man’s values for them. This is the kind of confused thinking that can result when a nation or individual people, turn their backs on God after He has blessed them beyond measure. This kind of reasoning is rampant in our world today. The people in Isaiah’s day had reached the place where they didn’t just dare God to condemn sin; they had decided that there was no such thing as sin. What had been right was actually wrong and what had been wrong was actually right. They saw themselves as wise and all-knowing. They thought that they could create their own morality. But the truth is------sin is still sin; adultery is still adultery; lying is still lying; prejudice is still prejudice; defying God is still defying God-and it is all level at the cross. God hasn’t changed and neither has man. It has been said, “that wrong is wrong, from the moment that it happens, till the crack of doom, and all the angels in heaven, working overtime, cannot make it different or less, by a hair. Wrong is still wrong.” (The Great Divide----- a play ---1906)
5.) Pride: Proverbs 6:16-17 says, “that God hates a proud look and a lying tongue and hands that shed innocent blood.” Pride is the oldest of all sins. It was the cause of Lucifer’s downfall and it has been the cause of countless other tragedies, too numerous to count. Pride is a distortion of the truth. In 1st Corinthians 4:7 Paul asked the question, “What do you have that you didn’t receive?” The answer is “nothing.” We are what we are by God’s grace. We had no so say in where we were born or when we were born or who our parents were. We had no say as to what intelligence that we possess or to what opportunities that we are given along the way. If we are successful, in anything, we should thank God for His grace and if we are well, we should thank Him for our health. If we live to grow old, we should thank Him for our longevity. Everything is in His hands. There is really no such thing as a “self-made man”. Without the grace of God giving us our abilities and opportunities we would be nothing. Pride usurps God’s place and authority; it puts the created in the place of the Creator------and our Almighty Sovereign God will not accept that arrogance.
• Social Injustice (bribery and corruption; link the 6 sins together). This woe is against the Judges in Judah, who because of their drinking habits were incapable of being fair and honest in their courtrooms. Instead of handling trials with integrity they were accepting bribes to acquit the guilty and to frame the innocent. All the while they were thinking that it was all ok with God. This behavior had filtered down to the people, as well, because people will follow any person or any whim that strikes their fancy, if their focus is not on the Lord Jesus and they aren’t grounded in His word.
How we treat each other is the most significant indicator of how healthy our relationship with God, is. We need to treat each other with fundamental respect, because we have, each one, been created in God’s image. When we abuse someone or curse them or shame them or slander them, it is the same as if we are doing all of those things to God. There will never be social justice until people decide, that having their personal needs and wants met, should take second place to other people, who need just their basic needs met. And this will never happen, until we realize that God and God alone is sufficient to supply, not just some of our needs, but all of them. When we come to that realization, then we will be able to lay our selfishness down at His feet, and go out and take care of somebody else.
The judgment that is pronounced after the last woe is directed at all of the woes, but especially the last 3---------it is an explicit summation of what the Jewish exile was going to be, and really, still is. The vineyard had produced nothing but wild, bitter grapes and so after the clusters were held up and examined—Isaiah said that there would be nothing left to do, but to tear down the walls and let the animals come in to trample the useless vines.
So, the bottom line of all of this------John 15:5 “that Jesus is the vine and we are the branches---if we abide in Him, then He will abide in us and we will bear fruit that will last.” If we aren’t bearing fruit or if we are bearing wild grapes, then there is a problem with our relationship with the Lord Jesus and we need to fix it. And that is God’s grace------- that He gives us the opportunity to fix our relationship with Him and that He forgives us for whatever it is that we messed up and that He never brings it up again. What a good God we have!
3.) Isaiah’s Call and Response; 6:1-13 Chapter 6, details the call and the commissioning of Isaiah in a wonderful way. Like all the other great men of God, in the scripture, Isaiah accepted His call to serve, after he had had a personal encounter with God. God was the initiator---He called him and Isaiah followed Him. That has always been God’s pattern. People don’t call themselves and they don’t ordain themselves. We have a personal encounter with God and then, we are individually called and commissioned by Him to do the work that He has chosen for us to do. Every believer is gifted and equipped for some work in the Lord’s kingdom. Romans 8:28 tells us that we “…..are called according to His purpose”. His purpose is to build up the body of Christ by using our unique and specific gifts. 1st Corinthians 12:18 says that “God has set each member in the body as it has pleased Him.” He has set you and me in the body of believers for a purpose. He has set each one of us in the specific church family that we belong to, for a purpose. God has set each one of us to a specific task for a purpose. We aren’t there by accident. We are placed there to serve Him and to serve each other. Before we can be called and placed though, we have to have had an encounter with the Lord, not necessarily as dramatic as Isaiah’s, but just as real.
Uzziah had been a good King. He had reigned for 52 years and then he passed away. He was the last great king of the Southern kingdom of Judah. The nation had been blessed materially during his reign. He had brought the Philistines, the Arabians and the Ammonites into subjection. Those were glory days for Judah and they have never been recovered since.
Isaiah was just a young man when Uzziah died and he must have been scared for His country and his people------------afraid that things would fall to pieces and that their prosperity would end. So, Isaiah did, what we should all do when we are scared and faced with uncertainties about our futures, or even about tomorrow--------he went to the temple. He went to the exact right place-he went to find God and in the process He discovered 2 things--------that in his own strength, he was nothing and that the true King of his nation was not dead but was very much alive and was sitting high and lifted up, on His throne. And that He was Holy, Holy Holy!
We forget, when we get bogged down in the minutiae and chaos of life, that God is on His throne and that we don’t have to put our trust in anything or anyone, but Him.
We need to remember Isaiah’s vision today We need to let it fill our hearts and our minds, like it did Isaiah’s, as we go about our Father’s business. The truth of God’s glory was permanently inscribed on Isaiah’s heart---he never forgot it. Regardless of the troubles that he had to prophecy about later and the ones that he saw come to fruition---------he never doubted that God was holy and that He was in perfect control of all things.
Although some people would disagree with me, I think we are living in the greatest time in the history of the world. I would rather live right now than in any other time. So many people say, “look at the condition of our world; look at the jadedness of our nation; look at the deteriorating infrastructure in our cities.” Well I can see all of those things, but I believe that we don’t have to worry about them. We can be serene and peaceful because the Lord said that it would be that way.
Jesus said that the tares were going to be sown among the wheat and that He was going to let them grow up together. The good news is that the Gospel is going out to more people all over the world than ever before. ----we have never had so many forms of communication, before. We need to use them for the good of the kingdom ,so that satan can’t get his control of them. We have the radio and the internet and the television and satellites and cell phones and twittering and texting and kindles and ipads------we have more technology than we can keep up with. We have short-term missionaries and long-term missionaries that are going faster and further than we ever have before. I know that the world is a confusing place and that conditions are chaotic and alarming and that the tares are growing at a record pace---but I also know that God’s wheat is growing steadily right along with the tares and that in the end; the wheat will outgrow the tares. It is exciting to be sowing God’s word in today’s world,—we are to sow the seed and God will reap the harvest. As Chad Hood, one of our pastors, said this past Sunday, When we realize that God is Sovereign -----then, all of a sudden the chaos of the world begins to make sense----and we can trust our good God “to work all things together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.”
When Isaiah went into the temple He didn’t expect to see what he did. He should have, but He was like we are---we go to church, to worship and to study and to have fellowship, but we don’t often go, expecting to encounter the Lord in a new and fresh and real way. Way too frequently, when we come face to face with the Lord, it’s when we least expect it. We forget that He is still on the throne and that He still hears and answers our prayers. (I have a had a fresh encounter with Him in this class we are teaching on Sunday night------the sweetness and the conviction and the vulnerability before the Lord and before their peers is precious to me-it has been a real blessing----)
Isaiah saw Seraphim around God’s throne----they were protecting and proclaiming the Holiness of God. God is holy; He is high and lifted up; He won’t compromise with evil because evil and sin have brought all the sorrow into the world. Sin can turn your hair gray; it can make your steps falter and your shoulders stoop; it can break up marriages and destroy families and it can fill up graves. I am glad that He won’t compromise with it. Even if it’s me that He has to discipline, because of it. God says that He hates sin and that He intends to destroy it and to remove it from the universe. When Isaiah saw God on the throne, he was moved to bow so low, that his face touched the floor. We need to see that same vision of God-------not just His love but His holiness. We need to see Him as the Holy One of Israel---------------We should be cautious as we approach Him in any way that is less reverent than he deserves. We shouldn’t approach Him like He’s a buddy and that we can speak to Him in any way that we please-we don’t come into God’s presence because of who we are; we come into His presence because of who He is in us. We are His children—we can come to Him with boldness, but we need to come with a healthy, righteous fear of His holiness.
The voices of the Seraphim shook the house of God as they proclaimed His holiness. Isaiah was God’s man before he had this experience, but it still had a tremendous effect on Him. Isaiah saw Himself as he really was in God’s presence-------he saw himself as a sinner. Seeing God helped him see himself. Our problem, way too often, is that we don’t see ourselves in the light of God’s word, so that it can expose our sin. If we did, we would fall on our faces too. 1 John 1:7says, “if we walk in the light of His word, we are going to see exactly what Isaiah saw----that we are “undone and are people with unclean lips.” If we walk in the light of the word of God, we will see ourselves---------and we will know----that nothing can save us but the blood of Jesus.
The live coal that the seraphim put to Isaiah’s lips came from the altar of burnt offerings---the altar symbolized Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. The living coal represented Jesus’ blood that will continually cleanse us. The condition for cleansing from sin is confession. It says in 1 John 1:9 “If we confess our sin, He is faithful and just, to forgive our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Putting the coal to his lips was an outward symbol of the cleansing that had taken place in his heart.
In Roman’s 7:24, Paul cried out, “O wretched man that I am; who shall deliver me from the body of this death.” When Paul said that, he wasn’t a lost sinner---he was a saint of God---- already a believer, learning that the only way that he could live for God, was to walk in the Spirit constantly, not in his own strength. The way we walk in the Spirit is to confess our sinfulness to God and to confess our inability to please him. When we do this, God will apply cleansing to our lives, and will use us for His glory and for our blessing. God can use anyone, but He prefers to use a clean vessel.
After the coal was applied to his lips, Isaiah heard God’s call for the 1st time and he responded with a freedom that only a cleansed person can do. “Here am I, send me”, no hesitation and no deliberation—He was ready for the call. Too many of us try to do the Lord’s work without being cleansed and we wind up being frustrated and overwhelmed------because we try to do it in our own strength. Every day, we need to wake up and confess our sin and ask the Lord to cleanse us so that we will be ready in an instant, when He gives us a task to do. (Many years ago, the governor of Texas was invited to speak in one of the jails in his state. After his talk he said that he would be available to meet with anybody who wanted to speak to him. A number of the inmates approached him. One by one, they each had a similar story. They everyone, had been unjustly sentenced-they were innocent and wanted the governor to issue a pardon for their freedom. Only one man’s story was different. He admitted his guilt for the crime and said, “Sir, I have been here many years and I believe that I have paid my debt to society. I sincerely believe that if I were to be released, I would be able to live an upright life and show myself worthy of your mercy.” He was the one pardoned. )
God gave Isaiah a very difficult assignment. God who can see past, present and future, told Isaiah that he was to keep preaching faithfully and fearlessly and for a long time, in spite of the people’s indifference and lack of response----because there would be a tenth of the people who would survive and would turn from their sin and who would turn back to God. God’s grace is that He will never take His hand off of Israel. The servant of God is to proclaim God’s word—regardless of how people respond. We are to be obedient to the job that God has called us to-no matter how people react!
We never know when we share the Gospel with someone, if they are going to respond or not--------we never know when we share our testimony of God’s provision in our daily lives, if it will spark the desire for someone else to know Him-----we never know if the prayer that we pray for someone, when they are in trouble, will turn them toward a life with the Lord Jesus---but what we do know, is that we are supposed to tell them and we need to keep telling them, until there is no one left to hear.
Monday, October 4, 2010
JOY "Pride" September 29
September 29, 2010
Pride
Isaiah--- 2:1-4:6
• Joy--- 2:1-5 (Temple of the Lord)
• Wrath ---2:6-4:1 (Day of the Lord)
• Joy---4:2-6 (Branch of the Lord)
I love to read. In our home there are bookshelves in every room, except maybe the dining room. I like all kinds of books; fiction and non-fiction; spiritual and non-spiritual; biographical and historical; children’s’ books, teen-age books and classic literature. I love them all and I am seldom without one in my possession-------so, when I sat down to write this lesson this week I was struck by the number of books that were in my line of vision and it made me think about how talented and gifted and creative human beings are. It is no wonder that we look at everything we’ve accomplished, down through the centuries, and pat each other on the back and say to ourselves, “wow, we are good, we are really good!”
It’s so easy to go to work and church and even to spend time with friends and become a mutual admiration society, where we tell each other how wonderful we are and how blessed we are that we have each other and how smart and kind and benevolent and special we are. Especially at church, we self congratulate ourselves for our giving and our presence in the community and our numbers and our missions endeavors and our children’s programs and our music and our Bible Studies. Basically, everywhere we go, temptation reaches out, in such an insidious, pervasive way, to tell us what good girls we are.
Then we pick up the scripture and turn to Isaiah, and hear the Lord speaking through him, telling us, that our hope rests in God and what He has already done and what He’s going to do, not in us and what we try to do. It makes us realize that all the effort that we expend on human endeavor, often brings with it, huge amounts of angst, fretting, worry, frustration, stress and long hours of hard work. Way too often, we focus on our human inventions and our incredible technology, and our knowledge, and our children, and our ability to love and forgive and to discern and to control, and our husbands (even if it is just looking for one), and our wants, and our feelings, and our belief and trust in the Lord and our service to others, in His name----but its’ all pride, because it all centers around us, and it leaves us empty. It makes us wonder if that is really what life is all about and if that’s what we really want out of it (life)? It makes us ask the question “is there something better that we should be seeking or expecting?”
Isaiah used one, Jewish word to describe what we want, what we really, really want----and that word, is shalom, which means peace, wholeness and fulfillment. We want it, but we don’t know how to achieve it. The truth is, we can’t do anything to achieve it in our own strength; we just have to accept it as God’s free gift to us; rest in it and praise Him for such a marvelous present. Devotion to the Lord and worship of Him brings us shalom, which is what we want, and most importantly, it’s what we need, even if we don’t even realize it. Devotion to human work and achievement, in the end, will bring us nothing. There is a chorus from a hymn that I love, that seems to be a fitting introduction to this week’s lesson of Joy, Wrath, Joy-------it is “turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face and the things of this world will grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace.
• Joy----- 2:1-5 Temple of the Lord
We have to look at Chapters 2-5 of Isaiah as one long prophecy, although we aren’t going to include chapter 5 in today’s lesson----that will be next week.
One thing we need to remind ourselves of, is that time is irrelevant to God; but He knows that humans have to have some sort of context to frame their lives around, so He gave us 24 hour days----which have beginnings and endings. And, He has given us the scripture, so that we would have some idea of the timeline that He has laid out, to span the history of mankind. Isaiah’s words look beyond the day he was living in; and they look beyond the days of the church, to a day in the future, that only God is sure of. But, we need to remember that even though Isaiah was speaking prophecy about the future, there was a lot that the people of his generation could apply to their lives and there is a lot that we can glean from it and apply to ours.
We have to take what Isaiah says here, and line it up with the Book of Revelation, which explains to us, that there will come a day when God’s present work of grace will come to an end and that the church, as the bride of Christ, will be raptured--------the church will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air and will spend 7 years at the marriage feast of the Lamb, with Him. This will be a reward to the Gentiles, for having accepted the call of Christ, to take His Gospel to the world. Meanwhile, during those 7 years, there will be The Great Tribulation happening on the earth----Satan will be unleashed and will roam the earth---------it will be a time of terrible judgment, for Judah in particular, because of the special privilege that they have been given by God, as His chosen people and their rejection of It and Him, and for the unbelieving world, in general. But God will end those terrible days and He will bind Satan and his minions for a time-------- and there will be a remnant of Jews and Gentiles who will survive---------- and when God establishes the Millennial Kingdom they and the raptured church, will rule with Him, as His viceroys, for 1000 years.
Isaiah’s message is a soul-stirring one that is addressed to Judah and Jerusalem/Zion and he begins it with a description of the millennial kingdom, in a language, that is too plain to be misunderstood; then He gives them a little insight into the specifics of why the Great Tribulation will be necessary and a description of what it’s going to be like----and then He takes his readers back--- to a further description of the glories of the Millennial kingdom.
He says that in the last days, of the history of this world, God will take up the remnant of his ancient people, Israel, and restore them to their land. And He will make Jerusalem/Zion (which will, at long last, be forever perfect) His throne-city; it will be the capitol of the world, and God’s laws will go forth, from it, to the ends of the earth. Christ will rule the nations from the throne of David and there will be a universal acknowledgement of Jerusalem/Zion as the center, of all of earth’s religious, political and social activities. Jesus will rule the nations in perfect righteousness. He will walk among the nations and hand out judgment to everyone. 1st Corinthians 3:12 says “that even believers will be judged for our works, that we have done in the name of the Lord and our works will either be hay, wood and stubble, which will be burned up, or they will be precious jewels and gold and silver, which we will lay at Jesus’ feet.” One of the primary concerns of all the people during this time will be to discover and do the will of God. They will seek to learn His ways and walk in His paths. Weapons of war, will be melted down into tools of commerce and blessing--------- and war will be a thing of the past---until, (as it says the book of Revelation) the final great battle of Armageddon, between God and His army and Satan and his----where Satan will be destroyed and thrown into a lake of fire and God will establish the new heaven and the new earth for all eternity.
During His Millennial reign, Jesus will compel the nations to practice justice and fairness with each other. For the 1st time in the history of the world, countries will dwell together in peace. Even though it may be well-intentioned and a wonderful thought, it’s really a futile idea, for any man or any nation to promise world peace. People aren’t capable of establishing peace, because of the sin in their hearts and their overwhelming ambition to rule over other people. That is why we can rest assured, that there will never be world peace until Jesus comes back to earth, the 2nd time, and establishes that peace, Himself. Isaiah is able to see that peace will only become a reality when the nations are willing to submit to the Word that goes forth from Zion, where the one true God will reveal Himself. Peace, on any other terms is a cruel delusion----this is a truth that we need to remember constantly, as we seek to be faithful to God’s word in our own modern world, when we get bombarded with religious propaganda from very good but very spiritually, misguided people-------(Baccalaureate----Christian or ecumenical-the decision had to be made…)
Isaiah called Jerusalem/Zion, the Mountain of the Lord and even though it was not the highest physical mountain in the area, it was the mountain that the temple had originally been built on and was still standing on, in Isaiah’s day, and would be the mountain that it would be built on again, in the Millennial Kingdom. This elevated it to a status in the eyes of the Jews, which made it higher than any mountain they could conceive of. Mountains played an important part in the various religions of Judah’s neighbors. Mountains were considered to be the points where heaven and earth meet each other, so they were the favorite sites for altars and temples. (Back a few years ago---------we went to Seattle, Washington and I can honestly tell you that it is one of the most spectacular places I have ever seen----where the mountains meet the sea----------the magnificent grandeur of it is breath-taking--------I can understand why they thought a mountain was a sacred place to meet God.) But, the Canaanites worshiped their gods in “high places” too and this had become a snare for God’s people because there was a mystique about the mountains that made them just seem more spiritual and more holy and they thought that they were places where they could worship better. Isaiah explained that the day was coming when 1 holy mountain would stand supreme, reducing all the others into insignificance. It reminds me of how we think we can worship in certain places today better than in others--------it might be a cathedral that is beautiful and huge with a spire that looks like it can reach the sky, furnished with beautiful paintings and rich tapestries and velvet curtains or it might be a little white church, nestled in a valley with a small little belfry and simple wooden pews and clear windows or it might be a big-city seeker church that meets in a school or auditorium with folding metal seats and a stage that has to double as an altar. The point is that we can worship anywhere, if God is there. He is the Mountain of Zion.
The Mountain of the Lord/Zion is a symbol of the very real coming, of the Kingdom of God, that already exists in our hearts but will one day exist in a tangible, physical reality. In that day, Jerusalem and God’s children, Jews and Gentiles---will have been purified and made perfect. Isaiah called the people of his day and the people of ours, “to live now, as if it‘s already a reality.” Isaiah wasn’t blind to the sin and apostasy that was happening in his day, just like we aren’t blind to what is happening now. He spoke out against injustice and faithless politics and hypocritical religion, with a passion, that should make us ashamed that each one of us, is not doing the same thing.
But, it was the vision of the future, the hope of heaven, the assurance of the presence of God and the promise of the coming Savior, which inspired Isaiah. Faith, for him, was never an escape from reality, it was the source that he clung to and drew from and found the strength that he needed--- to face whatever came, head-on. And we are called to live our lives with that same certainty of that faith.
• Wrath 2:6-4:1 Day of the Lord
The day of the Lord is another name for the time of tribulation and judgment that God is going to allow during the 7 years after the church is raptured-----------Isaiah was very clear in his explanation about why the tribulation has to happen and also about what, will happen during the time. Isaiah was in the grip of strong emotions as he delivered his message. He knew that what he was saying was the truth and he desperately wanted the people to hear and to understand the Lord through his words and to turn from their wicked ways and to turn to the Lord, before it was too late.
Isaiah lamented that God had abandoned His people and that they deserved it. They had once been full of justice and righteousness but now they were full of other things; unresponsiveness, divination and witchcraft, unholy partnerships and idolatry. The people trusted in their wealth and their education and in their military might, rather than in the Living God. Isaiah said that people who don’t trust in God alone, who have been given the truth, but turn their backs on it, don’t deserve forgiveness. This is pretty strong language-----but He wanted the people to understand the seriousness of their behavior and to understand that God will judge and He will punish sin. Privilege creates great responsibility. To whom much is given, much is required (1st Corinthians 4:2). God’s judgment against Judah and Israel is going to be more severe and intense than against any other nation because they knew better--------they had a special relationship with God and they had chosen to walk away from Him.
Numbers 26, gives us some insight into why these things that Judah was participating in, were so bad. And unfortunately, way too often, we wind up doing the exact same things. They were pleasing themselves instead of God; they tried to fashion God into an image to worship, that was created by human hands, they wound up worshiping the created instead of the Creator; the leaders were corrupt and the people followed the leaders instead of God; they spent their time with people who didn’t love God—------we need to be very intentional about who we spend our time and emotion and energy with and how we spend it-so that our identity as Christians won’t be diminished or polluted. We’re supposed to go into the highways and byways to be a witness for the Lord Jesus and we’re supposed to be to be kind and loving to all people—but we’re not supposed to get so close, that the world’s values become incorporated into our own. (Did you know that statistics have proven that it takes 3 Christians to resist the pull of 1 non-Christian?)
Isaiah says that the bottom line of the problem is PRIDE and it isn’t just Judah’s problem--------it is the universal disease of all mankind. It can manifest itself in 1000s of ways. It was the problem of Adam and Eve in the garden and it is our problem today and it will be the problem in the last days. None of us are immune to the disease of pride and there is no vaccine that we can take to inoculate us from it. When we least expect it, it rears its ugly head and we become so sick that we can’t do anything to help ourselves. Only God can cure it and unfortunately, the cure can sometimes be the worst thing that could ever happen to us. That kind of pride can only have one outcome, eventually---a confrontation with God that brings us to our knees.
(This weekend we were in NYC visiting Ashley and Griff and we went down to Ground Zero. I was thinking about this lesson while we were standing there. I wouldn’t presume to put words in God’s mouth and say that 9/11 was justified and that it was a wake-up call for America as some people have said.) But what I did think about was about how those twin towers had risen higher in the sky than any of the other buildings around them and how they had been totally leveled in a matter of minutes! I was reminded of all that we think that we have accomplished as human beings, created in God’s image, and how far we have strayed from that image and how quickly things can come crashing down. We think we are so smart, and so accomplished and so benevolent and so athletic and so creative. It made me realize that the truth is-----we are all of those things, because a great, wondrous God allows us to be. We should marvel that we can even walk and talk, much less accomplish extraordinary things. There is so much more that the Lord would like us to understand and experience and create and embrace, but we settle for so much less, because we are blinded by our own pride and our own sense of self-worth. With God, our potential is unable to be measured, it is so great---------in our own strength and wisdom and ability, our potential still can’t be measured, because it is so little, it is nothing. God is the only sure truth that we can believe and He and He alone is worthy to be praised.
Many of Isaiah’s contemporaries looked forward to the Day of the Lord, as the day that The Lord would step in and destroy Judah’s enemies just like He had done in the days of Moses and Joshua. But Isaiah realized that their confident expectation was grounded in arrogance, not faith. Their arrogance, was even further proof, that Judah had taken on the ways of the surrounding nations and was just as guilty of punishment, as they were. (This is a very sobering thought to me and it should make us all think. If we are going to be excited about the comeuppance or punishment that can happen to other people for their wicked behavior, we better be ready to put our money where our mouth is-------------we need to examine ourselves and make sure that our behavior isn’t lacking---that we aren’t acting just like the people we’re standing in judgment of. We might just find ourselves experiencing some of the very same penalties of God’s wrath. We need to take the plank out of our own eye before we try to take the splinter out of someone else’s.) We need to fear God’s wrath, but we also need to understand it. Webster’s says that “wrath is a firmness to exclude evil” It is a willingness to do what has to be done, in order to make things right. God isn’t a tyrant; He is a God of order; He’s in control all the time; He’s like a parent who tells a child what the consequences will be if they disobey (our 8 rules and the consequences when the children were little…)----God tells us what will happen and why-we have no one to blame but ourselves-----God warns us first, then He acts when He has to and then He forgives and restores. That is His pattern---it has always been His pattern and it will always be His pattern.
Isaiah said that everything that the people had trusted instead of the Lord would be brought down in the last days------trees===pride of man; mountains and hills===government and society; ships, pleasure and pictures===commerce and art; and idols===all false religion. False or man-made religion is the supreme expression of human arrogance because it is an attempt to bend God to our will by remaking Him in, into our image, instead of us into His. (Last week-end, when we were walking down the street, I saw a sign that was advertizing for a meeting of people to come and hear about Kabala and discover the secret of life; and I saw a Buddhist monk hurrying to get to some destination; and I listened to midday prayers on the radio with our Muslim cab driver. I was so saddened by the futility of the fervency of their worship. The people that these 3 examples represent are so lost and they don’t even know it.)But are we any different---sometimes we are so secure in the arrogance of what we think is righteous living? We need to make sure that we are worshiping our Creator and not what we’ve created.
The Day of the Lord is pictured as a great earthquake, a mighty shaking that will leave nothing standing and will send people running in terror to caves and crevices, in a vain attempt to save themselves. It is an image that would have been understood, all too well, by the people of Isaiah’s day, because a massive earthquake had taken place in the days of Uzziah and it was still within living memory. (I think about 9/11 or Haiti. I can still remember where I was and what I did that day when those airplanes crashed into our country. I will never forget the fear and horror.) Well Isaiah says that the terror that the people of his day felt over the earthquake and that we felt over 9/11 is nothing compared to what the world will feel, when the Lord allows judgment to come.
Isaiah singles out corrupt leaders and haughty women, as the reason why so many of the people would fail to turn back to the Lord, during that time. God used the lack of worthy leaders, as part of the judgment, against Judah. It has been proven in history that all great nations have fallen because of internal corruption. Without good leaders, there will always be a complete breakdown of social order.
We know, all these many hundreds of years later that Judah’s rulers were removed by either death or deportation. Their demise started with Assyria; then Babylon captured them, then the Persians, then the Romans and it has continued down through the centuries, even till today---they are still scattered all over the world and are in a constant battle for their homeland. Isaiah faults the leaders and cites them for their treatment of oppressed people, as the main reason. And when the Day of the Lord comes, the Lord will act even further against them. Food and water supplies will be taken away and military, political and religious leaders will be brought down and replaced by immature and incompetent leaders. The elite of their society will be punished for exploiting the poor.
The women of Zion were also singled out and accused of leading other astray. They were married. Their husbands must have been rich to deck them out so extravagantly. The women were probably dressed so well, at the expense of poor people being exploited. The male leaders were probably the husbands of these women. The women were partners in the crimes of their husbands either by turning a blind eye to their wickedness or by encouraging the wickedness, because they were so high-maintenance. Women are notorious for pushing their husband for vain things. We have to be so careful.
The women, as a result of the siege and fall of Zion in the days of the Babylonians and ever oppressor since then and during the Tribulation, will suffer disfiguring disease, sexual abuse, captivity and bereavement. In desperation, the once proud women will be reduced to throwing themselves at any surviving male who will have them.
There is nothing wrong with style and fashion and making the most of yourself, as long as it isn’t immodest. There is nothing wrong with make-up and pretty jewelry and high-lighted hair and pretty shoes. God didn’t condemn those women because of their style; He condemned them because of their hearts. Their hearts were haughty and brazen. They didn’t care about anyone but themselves. We ought to be able to see a woman’s beauty in the way that she lives her life with a gentle and quiet spirit; with loveliness and a winsomeness that comes from walking and talking with the Lord Jesus. As women, we represent our nation morally; and we represent our families socially and we represent the Lord, spiritually----our lives need to identify with God’s character. (Mary Kathryn’s 2 friends in high school….) (Mary Kathryn called me and said, “I don’t want to be a woman of Zion…”) None of us want to be, so we have to examine our hearts and see where our motives are--------we want our character and our demeanor to be pleasing to the Lord-------and everything else should fall into place under that.
With all the hard truth about the Day of the Lord, we need to hold onto the fact that the most wonderful thing that could ever happen, will also happen on that Day. The very day of Zion’s desolation will also be the day of her restoration. The Lord God Almighty will be exalted above all things and will finally be seen in all of His spender and glory. That’s why we should long for the day and make sure that we’re ready for it and that the people that we love are ready for it. God’s purposes will finally reach their full perfection. The Day of the Lord is the Ultimate threat and it is the Ultimate promise. Isaiah issued an urgent call to the people of his day, because of the joy set before them and because of the horror set before them, to take action before the Day came. We should pay attention to that same call. I don’t believe that believers will go through the Tribulation, but I do know that we want to be ready when the Lord comes to rapture His church and that we want to lay jewels at His feet not wood, hay and stubble.
• JOY 4:2-6 The Branch of the Lord
God will not forsake His children. A remnant will be preserved and joy will come in the morning! Isaiah ended his discourse on the tribulation and judgment------------ and turned his focus back to the joy that God desires and will provide for His children. God’s ultimate purpose for His chosen people and for all mankind is salvation, not destruction. Paul says in 1Thessilonians 5:9 “God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.” And Peter says in 1Peter 1:5 “Through faith, we are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.”
Isaiah discribed this salvation that will be fully realized when the Lord Jesus comes back again, to set up the Millennial Kingdom, with 4 images that God uses numerous times, in the scripture, to reveal Himself:
• The Branch of the Lord: This is an image of The Messiah----Jesus Christ---the Son of God-----the Savior of the world ---- as He brings God’s purpose of salvation, to fruition. Jesus and those He has redeemed will be on display for all to see. Every gardener knows how a healthy plant in full bloom, reflects credit on the one who planted and cultivated it. In a similar way, the salvation that the Lord will achieve for His people will reflect great credit on Him. The Branch will be beautiful and glorious!
• A Fruitful Land: This is an image of abundant provision and deep contentment. Canaan was a land that was flowing with milk and honey and had been God’s gift to the Israelites in the days of Joshua, in fulfillment of the promises that had been made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It was a precious, visible sign to them, and still is, of God’s grace, in choosing them to be His people. In Isaiah’s day their relationship was strained almost to the breaking point and the land lay desolate and ravaged by Israel’s enemies, right up to the gates of Jerusalem, itself. But Isaiah was confident, that in the last days, God would keep His ancient promise and Israel would be given back her promised land, in its entirety. That is why, as a nation, and as individual people, we need to be a friend to the nation of Israel, because she is still God’s chosen people------God tells us in Revelation that God will bless the nations who befriend Israel and will curse the ones who don’t. Woe to the nations who don’t. Jew and Gentile is what God meant for the church to be ( Laura and Gordon’s wedding ---Jew and Gentile----it was precious)-----the Jews just had to learn the hard way-but God still loves them-------He will never take His hand off of them----so after the judgment, they will go back to their land—and it will be glorious!
• A Holy City: Jerusalem/Zion had acquired its special status and significance under King David. It was a holy city then, because God had decided that it would be the place where David and his descendants, which down the line would include Jesus, would rule over His people forever. And it was the place where God’s people would assemble to meet with Him in His Temple. The Zion of Isaiah’s day had become a corrupt, harlot city, but Isaiah never doubted that it was still chosen to play a key role in the Lord’s purpose and plan. The Zion in the Millennial Kingdom will be inhabited by the redeemed of God and it will be purged of all moral corruption and it will be holy and faithful forever.
• A Canopy of Glory: in the Millennial Kingdom, God’s people will be secure in His presence forever. During the Exodus, God’s presence was with them in a pillar of fire in the nighttime and in a cloud of smoke in the daytime. Israel was protected by it and guided by it. If it moved the people folded up their tents and went with it. It was the manifested presence of the Lord and it covered the tabernacle in their encampments. But, the children of Israel had never achieved perfect rest in their Promised Land-not even under King David-----------and definitely not during Isaiah’s time. Isaiah believed and promised his listeners that the final encampment would be in the new Zion/Jerusalem. Their journey and ours will end there. In the final encampment, the glory of the Lord’s presence will fill the whole camp. The canopy of the Lord’s presence will not just be over the tabernacle, it will be over everyone that is assembled there and it will be so vast that we cannot even imagine it and God will dwell with His children, in perfect peace and it will be forever.
Our Heavenly Father, Thank you that you are a God of hope. Thank you that you have a plan to bring peace and protection to your people. Please forgive our arrogance and our pride. Please take away the temptation to concentrate on what we have accomplished or what we own. Teach us your ways and your law and give us the strength and the courage to walk in them. Help us to have the heart to follow you wherever you lead…..
Pride
Isaiah--- 2:1-4:6
• Joy--- 2:1-5 (Temple of the Lord)
• Wrath ---2:6-4:1 (Day of the Lord)
• Joy---4:2-6 (Branch of the Lord)
I love to read. In our home there are bookshelves in every room, except maybe the dining room. I like all kinds of books; fiction and non-fiction; spiritual and non-spiritual; biographical and historical; children’s’ books, teen-age books and classic literature. I love them all and I am seldom without one in my possession-------so, when I sat down to write this lesson this week I was struck by the number of books that were in my line of vision and it made me think about how talented and gifted and creative human beings are. It is no wonder that we look at everything we’ve accomplished, down through the centuries, and pat each other on the back and say to ourselves, “wow, we are good, we are really good!”
It’s so easy to go to work and church and even to spend time with friends and become a mutual admiration society, where we tell each other how wonderful we are and how blessed we are that we have each other and how smart and kind and benevolent and special we are. Especially at church, we self congratulate ourselves for our giving and our presence in the community and our numbers and our missions endeavors and our children’s programs and our music and our Bible Studies. Basically, everywhere we go, temptation reaches out, in such an insidious, pervasive way, to tell us what good girls we are.
Then we pick up the scripture and turn to Isaiah, and hear the Lord speaking through him, telling us, that our hope rests in God and what He has already done and what He’s going to do, not in us and what we try to do. It makes us realize that all the effort that we expend on human endeavor, often brings with it, huge amounts of angst, fretting, worry, frustration, stress and long hours of hard work. Way too often, we focus on our human inventions and our incredible technology, and our knowledge, and our children, and our ability to love and forgive and to discern and to control, and our husbands (even if it is just looking for one), and our wants, and our feelings, and our belief and trust in the Lord and our service to others, in His name----but its’ all pride, because it all centers around us, and it leaves us empty. It makes us wonder if that is really what life is all about and if that’s what we really want out of it (life)? It makes us ask the question “is there something better that we should be seeking or expecting?”
Isaiah used one, Jewish word to describe what we want, what we really, really want----and that word, is shalom, which means peace, wholeness and fulfillment. We want it, but we don’t know how to achieve it. The truth is, we can’t do anything to achieve it in our own strength; we just have to accept it as God’s free gift to us; rest in it and praise Him for such a marvelous present. Devotion to the Lord and worship of Him brings us shalom, which is what we want, and most importantly, it’s what we need, even if we don’t even realize it. Devotion to human work and achievement, in the end, will bring us nothing. There is a chorus from a hymn that I love, that seems to be a fitting introduction to this week’s lesson of Joy, Wrath, Joy-------it is “turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face and the things of this world will grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace.
• Joy----- 2:1-5 Temple of the Lord
We have to look at Chapters 2-5 of Isaiah as one long prophecy, although we aren’t going to include chapter 5 in today’s lesson----that will be next week.
One thing we need to remind ourselves of, is that time is irrelevant to God; but He knows that humans have to have some sort of context to frame their lives around, so He gave us 24 hour days----which have beginnings and endings. And, He has given us the scripture, so that we would have some idea of the timeline that He has laid out, to span the history of mankind. Isaiah’s words look beyond the day he was living in; and they look beyond the days of the church, to a day in the future, that only God is sure of. But, we need to remember that even though Isaiah was speaking prophecy about the future, there was a lot that the people of his generation could apply to their lives and there is a lot that we can glean from it and apply to ours.
We have to take what Isaiah says here, and line it up with the Book of Revelation, which explains to us, that there will come a day when God’s present work of grace will come to an end and that the church, as the bride of Christ, will be raptured--------the church will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air and will spend 7 years at the marriage feast of the Lamb, with Him. This will be a reward to the Gentiles, for having accepted the call of Christ, to take His Gospel to the world. Meanwhile, during those 7 years, there will be The Great Tribulation happening on the earth----Satan will be unleashed and will roam the earth---------it will be a time of terrible judgment, for Judah in particular, because of the special privilege that they have been given by God, as His chosen people and their rejection of It and Him, and for the unbelieving world, in general. But God will end those terrible days and He will bind Satan and his minions for a time-------- and there will be a remnant of Jews and Gentiles who will survive---------- and when God establishes the Millennial Kingdom they and the raptured church, will rule with Him, as His viceroys, for 1000 years.
Isaiah’s message is a soul-stirring one that is addressed to Judah and Jerusalem/Zion and he begins it with a description of the millennial kingdom, in a language, that is too plain to be misunderstood; then He gives them a little insight into the specifics of why the Great Tribulation will be necessary and a description of what it’s going to be like----and then He takes his readers back--- to a further description of the glories of the Millennial kingdom.
He says that in the last days, of the history of this world, God will take up the remnant of his ancient people, Israel, and restore them to their land. And He will make Jerusalem/Zion (which will, at long last, be forever perfect) His throne-city; it will be the capitol of the world, and God’s laws will go forth, from it, to the ends of the earth. Christ will rule the nations from the throne of David and there will be a universal acknowledgement of Jerusalem/Zion as the center, of all of earth’s religious, political and social activities. Jesus will rule the nations in perfect righteousness. He will walk among the nations and hand out judgment to everyone. 1st Corinthians 3:12 says “that even believers will be judged for our works, that we have done in the name of the Lord and our works will either be hay, wood and stubble, which will be burned up, or they will be precious jewels and gold and silver, which we will lay at Jesus’ feet.” One of the primary concerns of all the people during this time will be to discover and do the will of God. They will seek to learn His ways and walk in His paths. Weapons of war, will be melted down into tools of commerce and blessing--------- and war will be a thing of the past---until, (as it says the book of Revelation) the final great battle of Armageddon, between God and His army and Satan and his----where Satan will be destroyed and thrown into a lake of fire and God will establish the new heaven and the new earth for all eternity.
During His Millennial reign, Jesus will compel the nations to practice justice and fairness with each other. For the 1st time in the history of the world, countries will dwell together in peace. Even though it may be well-intentioned and a wonderful thought, it’s really a futile idea, for any man or any nation to promise world peace. People aren’t capable of establishing peace, because of the sin in their hearts and their overwhelming ambition to rule over other people. That is why we can rest assured, that there will never be world peace until Jesus comes back to earth, the 2nd time, and establishes that peace, Himself. Isaiah is able to see that peace will only become a reality when the nations are willing to submit to the Word that goes forth from Zion, where the one true God will reveal Himself. Peace, on any other terms is a cruel delusion----this is a truth that we need to remember constantly, as we seek to be faithful to God’s word in our own modern world, when we get bombarded with religious propaganda from very good but very spiritually, misguided people-------(Baccalaureate----Christian or ecumenical-the decision had to be made…)
Isaiah called Jerusalem/Zion, the Mountain of the Lord and even though it was not the highest physical mountain in the area, it was the mountain that the temple had originally been built on and was still standing on, in Isaiah’s day, and would be the mountain that it would be built on again, in the Millennial Kingdom. This elevated it to a status in the eyes of the Jews, which made it higher than any mountain they could conceive of. Mountains played an important part in the various religions of Judah’s neighbors. Mountains were considered to be the points where heaven and earth meet each other, so they were the favorite sites for altars and temples. (Back a few years ago---------we went to Seattle, Washington and I can honestly tell you that it is one of the most spectacular places I have ever seen----where the mountains meet the sea----------the magnificent grandeur of it is breath-taking--------I can understand why they thought a mountain was a sacred place to meet God.) But, the Canaanites worshiped their gods in “high places” too and this had become a snare for God’s people because there was a mystique about the mountains that made them just seem more spiritual and more holy and they thought that they were places where they could worship better. Isaiah explained that the day was coming when 1 holy mountain would stand supreme, reducing all the others into insignificance. It reminds me of how we think we can worship in certain places today better than in others--------it might be a cathedral that is beautiful and huge with a spire that looks like it can reach the sky, furnished with beautiful paintings and rich tapestries and velvet curtains or it might be a little white church, nestled in a valley with a small little belfry and simple wooden pews and clear windows or it might be a big-city seeker church that meets in a school or auditorium with folding metal seats and a stage that has to double as an altar. The point is that we can worship anywhere, if God is there. He is the Mountain of Zion.
The Mountain of the Lord/Zion is a symbol of the very real coming, of the Kingdom of God, that already exists in our hearts but will one day exist in a tangible, physical reality. In that day, Jerusalem and God’s children, Jews and Gentiles---will have been purified and made perfect. Isaiah called the people of his day and the people of ours, “to live now, as if it‘s already a reality.” Isaiah wasn’t blind to the sin and apostasy that was happening in his day, just like we aren’t blind to what is happening now. He spoke out against injustice and faithless politics and hypocritical religion, with a passion, that should make us ashamed that each one of us, is not doing the same thing.
But, it was the vision of the future, the hope of heaven, the assurance of the presence of God and the promise of the coming Savior, which inspired Isaiah. Faith, for him, was never an escape from reality, it was the source that he clung to and drew from and found the strength that he needed--- to face whatever came, head-on. And we are called to live our lives with that same certainty of that faith.
• Wrath 2:6-4:1 Day of the Lord
The day of the Lord is another name for the time of tribulation and judgment that God is going to allow during the 7 years after the church is raptured-----------Isaiah was very clear in his explanation about why the tribulation has to happen and also about what, will happen during the time. Isaiah was in the grip of strong emotions as he delivered his message. He knew that what he was saying was the truth and he desperately wanted the people to hear and to understand the Lord through his words and to turn from their wicked ways and to turn to the Lord, before it was too late.
Isaiah lamented that God had abandoned His people and that they deserved it. They had once been full of justice and righteousness but now they were full of other things; unresponsiveness, divination and witchcraft, unholy partnerships and idolatry. The people trusted in their wealth and their education and in their military might, rather than in the Living God. Isaiah said that people who don’t trust in God alone, who have been given the truth, but turn their backs on it, don’t deserve forgiveness. This is pretty strong language-----but He wanted the people to understand the seriousness of their behavior and to understand that God will judge and He will punish sin. Privilege creates great responsibility. To whom much is given, much is required (1st Corinthians 4:2). God’s judgment against Judah and Israel is going to be more severe and intense than against any other nation because they knew better--------they had a special relationship with God and they had chosen to walk away from Him.
Numbers 26, gives us some insight into why these things that Judah was participating in, were so bad. And unfortunately, way too often, we wind up doing the exact same things. They were pleasing themselves instead of God; they tried to fashion God into an image to worship, that was created by human hands, they wound up worshiping the created instead of the Creator; the leaders were corrupt and the people followed the leaders instead of God; they spent their time with people who didn’t love God—------we need to be very intentional about who we spend our time and emotion and energy with and how we spend it-so that our identity as Christians won’t be diminished or polluted. We’re supposed to go into the highways and byways to be a witness for the Lord Jesus and we’re supposed to be to be kind and loving to all people—but we’re not supposed to get so close, that the world’s values become incorporated into our own. (Did you know that statistics have proven that it takes 3 Christians to resist the pull of 1 non-Christian?)
Isaiah says that the bottom line of the problem is PRIDE and it isn’t just Judah’s problem--------it is the universal disease of all mankind. It can manifest itself in 1000s of ways. It was the problem of Adam and Eve in the garden and it is our problem today and it will be the problem in the last days. None of us are immune to the disease of pride and there is no vaccine that we can take to inoculate us from it. When we least expect it, it rears its ugly head and we become so sick that we can’t do anything to help ourselves. Only God can cure it and unfortunately, the cure can sometimes be the worst thing that could ever happen to us. That kind of pride can only have one outcome, eventually---a confrontation with God that brings us to our knees.
(This weekend we were in NYC visiting Ashley and Griff and we went down to Ground Zero. I was thinking about this lesson while we were standing there. I wouldn’t presume to put words in God’s mouth and say that 9/11 was justified and that it was a wake-up call for America as some people have said.) But what I did think about was about how those twin towers had risen higher in the sky than any of the other buildings around them and how they had been totally leveled in a matter of minutes! I was reminded of all that we think that we have accomplished as human beings, created in God’s image, and how far we have strayed from that image and how quickly things can come crashing down. We think we are so smart, and so accomplished and so benevolent and so athletic and so creative. It made me realize that the truth is-----we are all of those things, because a great, wondrous God allows us to be. We should marvel that we can even walk and talk, much less accomplish extraordinary things. There is so much more that the Lord would like us to understand and experience and create and embrace, but we settle for so much less, because we are blinded by our own pride and our own sense of self-worth. With God, our potential is unable to be measured, it is so great---------in our own strength and wisdom and ability, our potential still can’t be measured, because it is so little, it is nothing. God is the only sure truth that we can believe and He and He alone is worthy to be praised.
Many of Isaiah’s contemporaries looked forward to the Day of the Lord, as the day that The Lord would step in and destroy Judah’s enemies just like He had done in the days of Moses and Joshua. But Isaiah realized that their confident expectation was grounded in arrogance, not faith. Their arrogance, was even further proof, that Judah had taken on the ways of the surrounding nations and was just as guilty of punishment, as they were. (This is a very sobering thought to me and it should make us all think. If we are going to be excited about the comeuppance or punishment that can happen to other people for their wicked behavior, we better be ready to put our money where our mouth is-------------we need to examine ourselves and make sure that our behavior isn’t lacking---that we aren’t acting just like the people we’re standing in judgment of. We might just find ourselves experiencing some of the very same penalties of God’s wrath. We need to take the plank out of our own eye before we try to take the splinter out of someone else’s.) We need to fear God’s wrath, but we also need to understand it. Webster’s says that “wrath is a firmness to exclude evil” It is a willingness to do what has to be done, in order to make things right. God isn’t a tyrant; He is a God of order; He’s in control all the time; He’s like a parent who tells a child what the consequences will be if they disobey (our 8 rules and the consequences when the children were little…)----God tells us what will happen and why-we have no one to blame but ourselves-----God warns us first, then He acts when He has to and then He forgives and restores. That is His pattern---it has always been His pattern and it will always be His pattern.
Isaiah said that everything that the people had trusted instead of the Lord would be brought down in the last days------trees===pride of man; mountains and hills===government and society; ships, pleasure and pictures===commerce and art; and idols===all false religion. False or man-made religion is the supreme expression of human arrogance because it is an attempt to bend God to our will by remaking Him in, into our image, instead of us into His. (Last week-end, when we were walking down the street, I saw a sign that was advertizing for a meeting of people to come and hear about Kabala and discover the secret of life; and I saw a Buddhist monk hurrying to get to some destination; and I listened to midday prayers on the radio with our Muslim cab driver. I was so saddened by the futility of the fervency of their worship. The people that these 3 examples represent are so lost and they don’t even know it.)But are we any different---sometimes we are so secure in the arrogance of what we think is righteous living? We need to make sure that we are worshiping our Creator and not what we’ve created.
The Day of the Lord is pictured as a great earthquake, a mighty shaking that will leave nothing standing and will send people running in terror to caves and crevices, in a vain attempt to save themselves. It is an image that would have been understood, all too well, by the people of Isaiah’s day, because a massive earthquake had taken place in the days of Uzziah and it was still within living memory. (I think about 9/11 or Haiti. I can still remember where I was and what I did that day when those airplanes crashed into our country. I will never forget the fear and horror.) Well Isaiah says that the terror that the people of his day felt over the earthquake and that we felt over 9/11 is nothing compared to what the world will feel, when the Lord allows judgment to come.
Isaiah singles out corrupt leaders and haughty women, as the reason why so many of the people would fail to turn back to the Lord, during that time. God used the lack of worthy leaders, as part of the judgment, against Judah. It has been proven in history that all great nations have fallen because of internal corruption. Without good leaders, there will always be a complete breakdown of social order.
We know, all these many hundreds of years later that Judah’s rulers were removed by either death or deportation. Their demise started with Assyria; then Babylon captured them, then the Persians, then the Romans and it has continued down through the centuries, even till today---they are still scattered all over the world and are in a constant battle for their homeland. Isaiah faults the leaders and cites them for their treatment of oppressed people, as the main reason. And when the Day of the Lord comes, the Lord will act even further against them. Food and water supplies will be taken away and military, political and religious leaders will be brought down and replaced by immature and incompetent leaders. The elite of their society will be punished for exploiting the poor.
The women of Zion were also singled out and accused of leading other astray. They were married. Their husbands must have been rich to deck them out so extravagantly. The women were probably dressed so well, at the expense of poor people being exploited. The male leaders were probably the husbands of these women. The women were partners in the crimes of their husbands either by turning a blind eye to their wickedness or by encouraging the wickedness, because they were so high-maintenance. Women are notorious for pushing their husband for vain things. We have to be so careful.
The women, as a result of the siege and fall of Zion in the days of the Babylonians and ever oppressor since then and during the Tribulation, will suffer disfiguring disease, sexual abuse, captivity and bereavement. In desperation, the once proud women will be reduced to throwing themselves at any surviving male who will have them.
There is nothing wrong with style and fashion and making the most of yourself, as long as it isn’t immodest. There is nothing wrong with make-up and pretty jewelry and high-lighted hair and pretty shoes. God didn’t condemn those women because of their style; He condemned them because of their hearts. Their hearts were haughty and brazen. They didn’t care about anyone but themselves. We ought to be able to see a woman’s beauty in the way that she lives her life with a gentle and quiet spirit; with loveliness and a winsomeness that comes from walking and talking with the Lord Jesus. As women, we represent our nation morally; and we represent our families socially and we represent the Lord, spiritually----our lives need to identify with God’s character. (Mary Kathryn’s 2 friends in high school….) (Mary Kathryn called me and said, “I don’t want to be a woman of Zion…”) None of us want to be, so we have to examine our hearts and see where our motives are--------we want our character and our demeanor to be pleasing to the Lord-------and everything else should fall into place under that.
With all the hard truth about the Day of the Lord, we need to hold onto the fact that the most wonderful thing that could ever happen, will also happen on that Day. The very day of Zion’s desolation will also be the day of her restoration. The Lord God Almighty will be exalted above all things and will finally be seen in all of His spender and glory. That’s why we should long for the day and make sure that we’re ready for it and that the people that we love are ready for it. God’s purposes will finally reach their full perfection. The Day of the Lord is the Ultimate threat and it is the Ultimate promise. Isaiah issued an urgent call to the people of his day, because of the joy set before them and because of the horror set before them, to take action before the Day came. We should pay attention to that same call. I don’t believe that believers will go through the Tribulation, but I do know that we want to be ready when the Lord comes to rapture His church and that we want to lay jewels at His feet not wood, hay and stubble.
• JOY 4:2-6 The Branch of the Lord
God will not forsake His children. A remnant will be preserved and joy will come in the morning! Isaiah ended his discourse on the tribulation and judgment------------ and turned his focus back to the joy that God desires and will provide for His children. God’s ultimate purpose for His chosen people and for all mankind is salvation, not destruction. Paul says in 1Thessilonians 5:9 “God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.” And Peter says in 1Peter 1:5 “Through faith, we are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.”
Isaiah discribed this salvation that will be fully realized when the Lord Jesus comes back again, to set up the Millennial Kingdom, with 4 images that God uses numerous times, in the scripture, to reveal Himself:
• The Branch of the Lord: This is an image of The Messiah----Jesus Christ---the Son of God-----the Savior of the world ---- as He brings God’s purpose of salvation, to fruition. Jesus and those He has redeemed will be on display for all to see. Every gardener knows how a healthy plant in full bloom, reflects credit on the one who planted and cultivated it. In a similar way, the salvation that the Lord will achieve for His people will reflect great credit on Him. The Branch will be beautiful and glorious!
• A Fruitful Land: This is an image of abundant provision and deep contentment. Canaan was a land that was flowing with milk and honey and had been God’s gift to the Israelites in the days of Joshua, in fulfillment of the promises that had been made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It was a precious, visible sign to them, and still is, of God’s grace, in choosing them to be His people. In Isaiah’s day their relationship was strained almost to the breaking point and the land lay desolate and ravaged by Israel’s enemies, right up to the gates of Jerusalem, itself. But Isaiah was confident, that in the last days, God would keep His ancient promise and Israel would be given back her promised land, in its entirety. That is why, as a nation, and as individual people, we need to be a friend to the nation of Israel, because she is still God’s chosen people------God tells us in Revelation that God will bless the nations who befriend Israel and will curse the ones who don’t. Woe to the nations who don’t. Jew and Gentile is what God meant for the church to be ( Laura and Gordon’s wedding ---Jew and Gentile----it was precious)-----the Jews just had to learn the hard way-but God still loves them-------He will never take His hand off of them----so after the judgment, they will go back to their land—and it will be glorious!
• A Holy City: Jerusalem/Zion had acquired its special status and significance under King David. It was a holy city then, because God had decided that it would be the place where David and his descendants, which down the line would include Jesus, would rule over His people forever. And it was the place where God’s people would assemble to meet with Him in His Temple. The Zion of Isaiah’s day had become a corrupt, harlot city, but Isaiah never doubted that it was still chosen to play a key role in the Lord’s purpose and plan. The Zion in the Millennial Kingdom will be inhabited by the redeemed of God and it will be purged of all moral corruption and it will be holy and faithful forever.
• A Canopy of Glory: in the Millennial Kingdom, God’s people will be secure in His presence forever. During the Exodus, God’s presence was with them in a pillar of fire in the nighttime and in a cloud of smoke in the daytime. Israel was protected by it and guided by it. If it moved the people folded up their tents and went with it. It was the manifested presence of the Lord and it covered the tabernacle in their encampments. But, the children of Israel had never achieved perfect rest in their Promised Land-not even under King David-----------and definitely not during Isaiah’s time. Isaiah believed and promised his listeners that the final encampment would be in the new Zion/Jerusalem. Their journey and ours will end there. In the final encampment, the glory of the Lord’s presence will fill the whole camp. The canopy of the Lord’s presence will not just be over the tabernacle, it will be over everyone that is assembled there and it will be so vast that we cannot even imagine it and God will dwell with His children, in perfect peace and it will be forever.
Our Heavenly Father, Thank you that you are a God of hope. Thank you that you have a plan to bring peace and protection to your people. Please forgive our arrogance and our pride. Please take away the temptation to concentrate on what we have accomplished or what we own. Teach us your ways and your law and give us the strength and the courage to walk in them. Help us to have the heart to follow you wherever you lead…..
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