Wednesday, Aug 7, 2024 PM

Isaiah’s Judgment on Jerusalem and the Faithful City

The book of Isaiah. And though the problems are severe, God promises to act faithfully and mercifully. And as this nation is continually addressed according to their covenant commitments that they are failing, the covenant with God that they are breaking, it shows that God is being faithful because He brings the chastisements, He brings the curses, He brings the judgments that He promised to bring, while they, Israel, continues in their unfaithfulness to Him.

So in verses 21 through 31, the attention has moved away from the land to the temple and now to the city. We see that verse 21 puts our attention upon the city. We have a very special poem that moves from verse 21 through verse 26, and it begins and ends talking about the city.

As we move through the remainder of the chapter, we begin to think about the terebinth trees and the gardens that are planted in the city. So the focus in this section is on Israel's society as condensed and looked upon in their capital city, Jerusalem.

If you want to know what Israel is all about, you just go to Jerusalem. In a sense, the city is standing in for the whole nation like the king would stand in for all the people. And so there's attention placed upon the city.

We think about in this passage the societal dynamics, her princes, her poor, her counselors, her corruption, her present and her future are all considered in these verses. So a good way to look at this is to look at verses 21 -23, verses 24 -27, and verse 28 -31.

And I'm collecting these together in terms of their themes. Thematically, we need to think about Jerusalem's present ruin, her future purification, and then how God promises to get rid of all those who have rebelled against him.

So in the first three verses, we have the city's ruination proclaimed, the city's restoration promised in the next set of verses, and then the city's rebels punished in the remainder of the chapter. The sad state of Jerusalem is stated over and over again.

Especially in the first three verses, it is shown to be a very deep ruination. But in contrast to what she was, it's the real pain of, this is what you were, but this is what you are now. And it's stated in that way so that the promised salvation shines very bright.

Look how far you have fallen, but look at what the Lord is going to do. And that salvation means judgment. Salvation is always coupled with judgment in the scriptures. There is not an act of salvation that proceeds without an act of judgment.

These things come together in tandem in the scriptures. To save his people, God will judge their enemies. How often does that occur? But most clearly, our salvation in Christ comes by God's judgment upon Christ in our place and for our sake.

So judgment and salvation, they run together in tandem. It's especially true here in these verses. The first couple of text blocks that we have, really, and I've put verse 27 here in this middle section, but really verses 21 through 26 are its own poem.

You can see there at the beginning of verse 21, how there's the collapse of the faithful city. And at the end of verse 26, you have the restoration of the faithful city. So those are the bookends. It's an inclusio.

It brackets in. And if you move one level in, the second part of verse 21 talks about the past and the present. There's a contrast there. But we see that justice is replaced by murder. If you look at the first part of verse 26, it's past and future.

And, well, it's the reverse, isn't it? There's justice replaced by murder in verse 21, but in verse 26, justice is restored in true judges. In verse 22, there's a metaphor about values turned into dross.

And in verse 25, God's promising to purge the dross. And then right at the heart of it, in verse 23 and verse 24, two different authorities are contrasted. You have corrupt rulers in verse 23, and you have God as the divine sovereign in verse 24.

And so this is a common way of writing in the Hebrew as a chiasm of concentric parallels moving in. And it's a very carefully constructed bit of poetry from Isaiah. What we are reading in this poem is that this faithful city that once was faithful but will be faithful once again, it's encasing a sad present and a promised future of good in which bad silver is finally refined.

The corrupted leaders are personally handled by God and the city is made faithful and pure again. In other words, this poem, these six verses put together, is showing the ideal city restored by God's divine intervention.

And so once you move past verses 21 to 26, and you see, here's how bad everything was, here's how good everything's going to be. It's the prophetic polar opposite or the global antipode. Here's all the problems, here's all the solutions, here's all the sin, here's all the righteousness.

And so it's balanced perfectly that way. After that, you have some summary statements about God's salvation and judgment. So verse 27 is a summary statement of the previous six verses. Just in case you missed the point, here it is, Zion shall be redeemed with justice and her penitence with righteousness.

So that's summing up the previous six verses. Well, what about all the sinners? What about all the rebels? Well, verse 28 gives us that general heading and then everything else that follows should be understood.

So we have the absolute despair and doom of those who remain rebellious. They're not going to persist. They're not going to continue what seems to be an entrenched system of rebellion against God and corruption and disaster that will just never be undone.

God promises to undo it. He promises to completely uproot it and get rid of it and cleanse the city from it. And when we get to verses 29 through 31, we have a new metaphor introduced, that of sacred trees.

So we just noticed that. Does anybody have a different translation than terabinth in verse 29? For they shall be ashamed of the terabinth trees. Oak. Okay, good. The reason why trees are being introduced here, you'll be ashamed of your trees.

Now, some of us are ashamed of the trees in our yards. This is Oklahoma. And if you've come from the Pacific Northwest or something, this is pretty sad. However, this is not what they're thinking about when they think about their terabinth trees, about their oaks.

They are ashamed of these trees, which they have desired. And they have placed their affections, their desires upon these trees. And they're in gardens, you'll notice. The parallel is you shall be embarrassed because of the gardens which you have chosen.

So imagine a tree that is greatly valued and desired. There are a lot of tree huggers in Israel at the time. And they formulated gardens around these special trees because these were sacred trees. They were used in acts of worship.

They were used in idolatrous practices. And it was an idea that by catering to this tree and worshiping under this tree and showing all kinds of affection upon this tree, that we are going to receive the kinds of fertility and prosperity and strength that we need for our city and for our nation.

If we just love the tree enough and give it enough attention, then everything will go better in our society. I know people don't act that way today. That would be really strange, wouldn't it? But they were more direct with their paganism or direct with their idolatry in this age than we are today.

A little bit more roundabout. So when he's identifying the problem of idolatry in verse 29, because this was something that they're clinging to. How is it that there's going to be judgment and an uprooting of all this system?

How is it that God is going to restore everything by means of judgment? But what about all these trees that we have? We have this system in place. No, you're going to be ashamed of that. Verse 34, you shall be as a terebinth whose leaf fades and as a garden that has no water.

Now, we were talking about last time about how the blessings and the curses declared in Deuteronomy 28 and Leviticus 26 involve God shutting off the rain. He brings famine to the land when they reject him as part of his obligation in the covenant to bring a covenant curse upon them.

So their trees are going to dry up. At some point, they're going to have to stop watering the tree and survive on the water rationing that they have left because this is in their future. Verse 31 says, the strong shall be as tinder and the work of it as a spark.

Both will burn together and no one shall quench them. So what just happened there in the text? The metaphor is that you love your trees, you trust your trees, but you're going to be ashamed of them. In fact, you're going to shrivel.

You yourselves are going to shrivel like trees in famine. Now, this notion that they themselves are going to be like the terebinth trees that they once so desired and once so catered to, but then they're going to shrivel up and then they're going to burn.

This idea comes from Psalm 115. In Psalm 115, in verse 3 says, our God is in heaven. He does whatever he pleases. So contrast him to the so-called gods of the nations. Verse 4, their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands.

They have mouths, but they do not speak. They have eyes they have, but they do not see. They have ears, but they do not hear. Noses they have, but they do not smell. They have hands, but they do not handle.

Feet they have, but they do not walk, nor do they mutter through their throat. Those who, now this is verse 8, notice this, those who make them are like them. So is everyone who trusts in them. So as they're worshiping these trees and making these gardens to adorn these trees with the beautiful surrounding and so on and so forth, they are trusting, they are making the gardens and they're trusting in these trees and they're becoming like them.

Trees that are going to shrivel up and become nothing but firewood. Because we become like that which we worship. Since we're made in the image of God, it's already hardwired in who we're supposed to worship.

We're made in the image of God. Worshipping anything else is not only ludicrous, it's deadly. So they will become the kindling and firewood for God's judgment. That's how the chapter 1 concludes. But in the end, it is only their return to their covenant Lord, only their return as a people, as a city, to their covenant husband that will prove their life in prosperity and their blessing.

Notice how the passage begins in verse 21, how, this is a word of lament, how the faithful city has become a harlot. We think of Hosea, we think of the metaphor throughout Hosea of Israel acting the role of a harlot, abandoning her faithful husband who always provides for her until such time as he hedges up her way with thorns and speaks kindly to her in the wilderness, in the suffering, in the difficulty, and then brings her back and restores her.

And that same framework is here in our passage. So, when they worship trees, when they worship the creature rather than the creator, they dry up and they burn. All right. Now, in contrast to that, think about Psalm 1, think about Psalm 1, opposite of cursing is blessed, right?

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, a lot of ungodly counselors here in verses 21 through 31 of Isaiah chapter 1, who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly nor stand in the path of sinners nor sits in the seat of the scornful, but his delight is in the law of the Lord.

In his law, he meditates day and night. So, don't get confused. The law is not, he's not talking about the Ten Commandments. That's all he's thinking about is the Ten Commandments and counting to ten over and over again.

Ten Commandments are included. He's not thinking about just over and over again all the cleanliness laws and so on and so forth. That's not included, but not the entirety of it. The term law is the Lord's instruction used in a technical sense to talk about the first five books of the Bible, and there's a whole lot of stuff in the first five books of the Bible that are not laws.

They are architectural drawings and battle stories and geographical surveys and senses and genealogies and stories about faith and covenant promises, and there's a whole richness there. The idea is the instruction that the father gives to his children so they will know what everything's about and how to live.

So, obviously, the Scripture is the Word of God. His delight is in the law of the Lord. In his law, he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither, and whatever he does shall prosper.

So, the idea is that when the delight of a man is in the Word of God, the outcome is life, like planted in a river of water, and you're blessed, and in a sense, this is just catechism prepping for Christ, because Jesus once told a dried-up woman by a well who she should delight in and that there would be a water of everlasting life that would bring her life.

She wanted to argue minor theological points and start debates of this and that, and the other says, no, no, no. You see, when you turn to the Word of God and delight in Him, what we end up with is blessing and the river of the water of life, and there's liveliness.

There's true life in Christ, something that was lacking in Isaiah chapter 1 in the warnings. So, in our future studies, we're going to take a look very carefully, beginning in verse 21 and 22, and work through the metaphors and the meaning of that passage in future opportunities.

Let's turn our attention to our prayer requests tonight.