Wednesday, March 5, 2025 PM

And turn to Isaiah chapter 5. We're going to be reading 13 through 17 this evening. Isaiah chapter 5 verses 13 through 17. Let's begin with a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day.

We thank you for your love for us. We thank you for this gift of your word. We thank you for the gift of your son Jesus Christ who is the way, the truth, and the life. We thank you for the hope that we have and the love that you have poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom you've given to us.

And we pray now that as we read your word together that we would rejoice in what you have to say and that you would have your way in us. We pray these things in Jesus name. Amen. So in Isaiah chapter 5 we begin with a song which is a parable about how Judah is a bunch of rotten grapes.

God is the vineyard owner. He did everything just right in planting the vine and caring for it. And yet the vine produced rotten grapes. What is there to do? God then clarifies that Judah was the plant.

Their deeds, their lives are all rotten fruit. And so God pronounces woe, sevenfold woe in verses 8 through 25. He brings out verse 23. So verses 8 to 23 are all these woes. Sevenfold woe. And we've been looking at each one of those woes and now in the middle of that section there is a description of what that woe actually means.

How that's going to be felt. How that will be experienced. And that's what we're looking at right now. Verses 13 through 17. The woe propounded. The woe explained. The woe described. What's going to happen to Judah.

What's going to happen to these children of Israel because of their covenant breaking. So that's what we're going to look at now in verses 13 through 17. Therefore my people have gone into captivity because they have no knowledge.

Their honorable men are famished and their multitude dry up with thirst. Therefore Sheol has enlarged itself and opened its mouth beyond measure. Their glory and their multitude and their pomp and he who is jubilant shall descend into it.

People shall be brought down. Each man shall be humbled and the eyes of the lofty shall be humbled. But the Lord of hosts shall be exalted in judgment. And God who is holy shall be hallowed in righteousness.

Then the lambs shall feed in their pasture and in the waste places of the fat ones strangers shall eat. So as we look at this passage and try to break down what God means when he says woe. He says it seven times in the surrounding context.

Woe upon this person. Woe upon that person. Woe upon all these different covenant breakers. Guarantee of wrath upon the covenant breakers. Wrath upon all the members of that covenant because of the transgressions that have imputed wrath to all of them.

Guilt to all of them. Well what kind of trouble do they face? We see the trouble described in verses 13 and 14. We hear God say it like this. Therefore my people have gone into captivity. Keep that in mind.

Captivity because they have no knowledge. Their honorable men are famished and their multitude dried up with thirst. Therefore Sheol, meaning the grave, the place of the dead, has enlarged itself and opened its mouth beyond measure.

Their glory and their multitude and their pomp and he who is jubilant shall descend into it. So we hear the character of the woe, the nature of the woe can be described in terms of exile and death. Go away into captivity, taken away by their enemies.

And again we'll see that as this is a main theme in Isaiah leading toward the coming exile, the coming captivity of the Babylonian captivity. But not only is there a captivity in this woe, there's also death.

The grave has enlarged itself. It's like the bullfrog that its mouth gets three times as big as itself. It just widens up and just consumes. And Sheol's mouth is unhinged at the jaw, getting wider and wider to consume all of these people, the people of God who are slated for judgment.

So exile and death. It's interesting that both exile and death, what they have in common is the theme of separation. This is at the heart of what is meant in this woe, in the sevenfold woe. That judgment, that God's righteous judgment upon these covenant breakers has to do with separation.

Captivity and the grave, exile and death are separations. To be cut off from both land, that's the exile. Cut off from the land, that's exile. And to be cut off from life, death. Both of them are separations.

And that is the essential terror of the woe propounded here, separation. You should think also of the timing. You'll notice as we read through these verses that there is past, present, and future tenses being used throughout this short selection of verses.

It's interesting that the captivity is described in past tense. Therefore, my people have gone into captivity. They have gone into captivity because they have, and this is present tense, no knowledge.

Not that they had no knowledge, but that they have no knowledge. There's a present tense there. Their honorable men are famished, present tense. This is the way that they are. Their multitude dried up with thirst.

They are currently hungry and thirsty. They're currently starving and they don't have enough to drink. And so Sheol has enlarged itself ready to consume. We read their glory and their multitude and their pomp and he who is jubilant shall descend into it.

So there are those who are currently parading around, but their future is that they shall descend into the grave. People shall be brought down. Verse 15 says, each man shall be humbled and the eyes of the lofty shall be humbled.

So we have all three tenses being used. So what's the nature of this? What's the nature of this timing? Well, in the past, the past tense is that they are already enslaved, somehow, in some fashion. They're already enslaved.

And what is the description of how they're already in captivity? In what sense are they already gone? Because they have no knowledge, because of their ignorance. And this is doubly insidious. Yes, of course, on the horizon is the coming exile, the coming captivity.

But the truth of the matter is they're already slaves. They're already gone. They're already in captivity because of their ignorance. And the insidious part about it is, because of their ignorance, they don't even know how enslaved they are.

They don't know how far gone they already are. And that's so the past tense that they've already become enslaved. So he's picking up on the theme from chapter one, where they're the children of God, but they don't even remember that God is their father.

They're so bad off. And so he comes back to that, and that ignorance here in this chapter. But also presently, presently, they cannot satisfy any hunger, and they cannot slake any thirst. Which is very interesting, because in the previous verses, they're all about gorging themselves and drinking all day long.

They're all about the party life and trying to satisfy the flesh. But here we're told that they can't find any satisfaction at all. So presently, they are endangered. You see them on the cusp of the grave, the cusp of the tomb.

Because if somebody's eating, but they can't get enough nutrients, they're going to die. If they're trying to drink, but they can't satisfy their thirst, they're going to die of hunger. They're going to die of thirst.

That is the picture, the peril that we see about God's people in this passage. But also, there is a future where there's going to be a series of reversals and upsets until God is satisfied with the results.

Because we hear that the party goers, the glory, the multitude, the pomp, and the jubilant, those who are on cloud nine, everything is great, are about to descend all the way into the grave. The party's about to be over.

It is the proud that are just about to be humbled. It is those who think that they have plenty that are going to end up having nothing. Where they live is going to be absolutely abandoned. In the future, there is some sense of an inversion.

You'll hear about when God's people praise him for his righteousness and his judgments, very often there is a great surprise that comes. Remember Mary's prayer and Hannah's prayer. How often it's emphasized that great reversals are part of God's judgment.

Now, the timing we'll see there, past, present, and future is in play. But this is all about the Lord triumphing. The Lord wins the day. Yes, his people are full of disaster, but this is actually the Lord's triumph.

What is clearly a defeat for Judah and Jerusalem is also just as clearly a triumph for God. As you see in verse 16, the Lord of hosts shall be exalted. God wins. God who is holy shall be hallowed in righteousness.

So, great failure amongst the children of Israel, but we see that God triumphs. God is not going to lose. He's going to triumph. He wins in this. He's going to bring about his desired end. And so, he has particularly designed and puts into play a doom of reciprocity in verses 13 through 15.

And he achieves a dawn of righteousness in verses 16 and 17. So, reciprocity is just this idea of tailoring the judgment exactly to the crime. A perfect payment, a perfect vengeance from God's point of view.

So, when we see the first word there in verse 13, therefore, my people have gone into captivity, therefore, we look back and we see the problem. The problem in verse 12, halfway through verse 12, it says, but they do not regard the work of the Lord, nor consider the operation of his hands.

There's this ignorance. They don't think about God. They don't have knowledge because they have no knowledge. So, when it says, therefore, my people have gone into captivity, what comes before and after it is ignorance.

They don't think about God. They don't pay attention to his works. They have no knowledge. So, in their abandoning, notice how this works. When they abandon the knowledge of God, they run straight into captivity.

They run straight into exile. As soon as they give up on the knowledge of God, they go into exile. Their whole life have been found in fearing the Lord, thinking of him first, thinking of him most, but when they disregard God, they embrace death.

Now, verses 11 and 12 speak of the drinking and the feasting and the partying, but verses 13 through 14 show devastating hunger and thirst and these jubilant party goers being cast into the grave. Verse 8, we talked about the woe upon the land grabbers who were denying other Israelites their due inheritance.

Well, in verse 17, we see that all those who the fat ones, all their land that they grab is going to be abandoned and given to other sheep. So, the land grab concludes in a wasteland. Once again, the punishment fits the crime.

Great houses are reduced to rubble. Now, why does God use this doom of reciprocity? Because he wants to achieve a dawn of righteousness, verses 16 to 17. So, God, part of the question of this passage is, if God's people in whom he has invested so much, if they are undone, if they're so diminished, doesn't that tarnish his name?

Doesn't that bring him down? Wasn't the concern of Moses and interceding for the people, like, well, if you punish these people and kill them all, what will the nation say, right? It's a compelling thought.

God had placed his name among them. He had bound himself to these people by covenant, but he will not fail to exalt himself. He exalts himself in judgment, and as the holy one, he will be hallowed in righteousness, and he shows how good he is and how he brings judgment upon the covenant breakers.

So, he displays how good he is by punishing the covenant breakers. He exalts himself in judgment, where once there was chaos and rebellion and hunger amongst the people, there we see that the lambs are going to feed in their pasture, that they're going to be nourished and satisfied in righteousness, and where once the gluttons laid claim, then sojourners are now going to feast.

This is a signal that there's a new covenant coming. There's going to be an undoing, so there's something new, just like we talked about the agricultural picture of burning the diseased plants, burning all of that for the sake of fertilizing the ground and getting ready for something new, that there's actually a chapter past the burning.

This is getting ready for something else. Now, when we think about how this relates to us, I think it's helpful to reflect about the situation that Israel was in, that the men of Judah were in, that we too have a real inability to know how thoroughly ensnared we can become in sin, how entangled we become, that we have a tendency to think that we can accurately, thoroughly analyze ourselves and know just how far deep we're in and know how to get out of it just fine, right?

Like somebody who has a gambling addiction. Oh, I can handle it. I know how far deep I'm in. I know I can get out of it, but in fact, they're so far in, they can't ever make it out, you see. So, we need to be careful to think about, to think God's thoughts after Him, not think that we can understand ourselves just fine on our own.

So, let's think about some of these themes. We see that the punishment, the trouble, the terror of the woe is really separation. Separation. Now, God made man in His image and uniquely relational to love God supremely, love each other rightly, and steward the creation righteously, faithfully.

But when mankind abandons the knowledge of God, disregarding His standards, choosing their own way, what is the result? Separation and death. The garden. No, thank you. We're going to determine the knowledge of good and evil for ourselves.

Thank you very much. What's the result? Death and exile, right? That's what happened in the garden. Separated from God, separated from each other, and separated from the creation and various judgments.

Now, that's what happened. This is why the covenant is crafted in the way that it is. In the covenant, Israel is called to creational standards of relationship that bring to the front the whole pattern of the image of God.

And so, their covenant unfaithfulness is met by punishments and curses that separate them from God, separate them from one another, separate them from their land. An echo of what happened in the garden.

And the separation leads to these themes of God's reciprocity and then God's righteousness. Because God is holy and righteous, He's not going to fellowship with or embrace sin. So, sin makes a separation between man and God.

The punishment is thus fitting and the character and the power of God are exonerated. And now, how did God express the law? Through the principle of lex talionis, or the law of retaliation. The law of retaliation.

You've heard this before. Deuteronomy 19 .21. Your eye shall not pity, life shall be for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot. That was the principle of the law that God gave to Israel.

That the punishment would fit the crime. The Creator's justice expressed against His creatures is a fitting retaliation. Remember that He wanted a bag of just weights, a bag of accurate measures, balanced scales, proper proportions.

That's the kind of justice that God required in the life of Israel. So, not justice according to us, but according to Him. Because He owns us and we don't own ourselves. He gets to say how it goes. God gave man life by His word, so man's rejection of God's word brings what?

Death. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth. And we recognize that we live in God's world and there are regular consequences for our actions, but we also know that even if we don't perceive any immediate consequences for someone doing evil, we always leave room for wrath because vengeance is the Lord's.

He will repay and we know that He is just. And the concern is, of course, well, with all these problems in this, the evil in the world and we see the judgment upon Israel and so on, is God really winning?

Is God really succeeding? But God is succeeding. He is winning. If God's people here in Israel, if they're so undone and diminished, doesn't that tarnish Him? What if the church looks weak? Does this say something bad about God's name?

But God always exalts Himself and He also exalts Himself in judgment. He exalts Himself in righteousness. And all of these concerns, whether the question about how will God prove His worthiness or the issue of lex talionis, eye for eye, and the issue about separation, all of these things are answered in Christ.

All of these things are answered in Christ. God is glorified in Jesus in that the separation between the creature and the creator is reversed and undone in Christ. And we have Tyndale's invented English word he coined at-one-ment.

We pronounce it atonement. He's trying to find a word in English that would fit what he was reading in the New Testament. He said, I don't have a word in English that'll do the job. I'll make one. So he made the word atonement, which means at-one-ment, because what's the issue is separation, is the death and the exile.

And because of Christ's atonement, he brings us back to God. Jesus Christ suffers the right punishment in penal substitution. The punishment is just, and it's substituted upon Christ. God made him who knew no sin to become sin on our behalf that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

And we deserve the separation, but it was Christ on the cross who said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He took what we deserve. That awful separation came upon him rather than on us so that we would be at one with him.

And any question that we ever have about, is God winning and will God win? And what about all the problems of evil in the world? All of those questions have their very best answer when we simply pay attention to the story of Jesus Christ.

The incarnation, his righteous life, his suffering, his death upon the cross, his resurrection from the dead, his ascension to the hand of the father, his reigning over all powers and authorities today, and his return when he will raise the dead.

When we have that story in mind, we don't have any problems with the problem of evil anymore, because we have the answer. Because God triumphs over the whole thing. So when we're thinking about these woes, how do we respond as believers in Christ when we read about these woes?

Well, we remember that the promise of the new covenant, these lambs, these lambs we read about in verse 17, remember that the lambs are going to feed by their shepherd. We have many promises of Jesus Christ being the good shepherd feeding his sheep.

And because of Christ, because of his person and work, the wrath of God does not abide on us. We do not live before the specter of death. These covenant breakers were to live the rest of their lives looking at the horizon and expecting doom.

But that is not the case for Christians. The horizon is no harbinger of doom for us, because Christ has taken all of our woe. So we can exalt the Lord in our rest, because of the accomplished work of Christ, we exalt the Lord when we rest in that, when we rest in him.

And then we hallow God as holy in righteousness. Because we rest in the finished work of Christ, as we pursue righteousness, which of course we desire by God's grace. We're not hallowing our name as holy, right?

We're not promoting our name as holy. Look how good I am when I pursue righteousness. It has nothing to do with that. We're showing how holy and good God is when we pursue righteousness. It's about giving praise to his name, not trying to show how good we are.

And we can have that dynamic in our lives, because we're already resting in the finished work of Christ, the true covenant keeper. So next time we're going to look at the last portion of Isaiah 5, verses 24 through 30.

So we'll look at that conclusion of the chapter next time. I've asked Brian to lead us in our time of.