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Sunnyside Baptist Church Michael Dirrim, Pastor
Of the northern kingdom of Israel. Major kings are listed here in the first verse of Isaiah. And their time in Judah was, of course, contemporary with the kings of Israel who are called to attention and judgment of God proclaimed against them in the book of Isaiah.
God's instrument of judgment tended to be the king of Assyria, whichever one of those happened to be on the throne. So we've thought about the kings of Judah that are listed in Isaiah 1 .1. We've thought about the kings of Israel who were contemporaries of those kings of Judah.
We've looked at the kings of Assyria whom God used to judge the northern and southern kingdoms. And now we're thinking about the prophets who were also serving during that same time. And whereas you have one king at a time and one high priest at a time, you can have a whole bunch of prophets at the same time.
And the contemporaries of Isaiah were not lightweights. Isaiah had contemporaries of Amos, Hosea, and Micah. And as we read through those three minor prophets and the major prophet of Isaiah, we can find that they share common concerns.
There are problems in the northern kingdom and in the southern kingdom that are similar. There are issues that take so much attention by the prophets that we would consider them to be of the most weighty concern in the eyes of God.
That He is sending His prophets to say, thus saith the Lord, cut that out. Or, why have you acted this way? Now we've looked at that with Amos, whose ministry was mostly prior to Isaiah's beginning, though they did overlap for a time.
And we just finished thinking about the prophet Hosea as he ministered to the northern kingdom. And in the first three chapters of the book of Hosea, we see God instructing Hosea that he had to act in certain ways.
Marrying a prostitute and then naming the children that she had names like, No Mercy or Not Mine. And this obedience by Hosea in marrying Gomer and naming his children these names was a living out of the story of God and Israel.
How God was merciful. How God was gracious. How He committed Himself faithfully to His people, although they responded ever more in immorality, committing spiritual adultery against God with all these false gods wanting to be like the other nations, to the point where God said over them, No Mercy and Not My People.
And then the rest of the book of Hosea deals with a series of sermons showing how just God is, how loving God is, how holy God is. And we were reading a few of the promises from Hosea. It's not all condemnation.
There is hope that in the place where it was said, No Mercy, and in the place where it was said, Not My People, that there it would be said, Mercy and My People. And Romans tells us that that place is none other than Jesus Christ Himself.
Now I wanted to look at Hosea briefly and conclude our brief focus on that book by thinking about where it is in Hosea that tends to echo Isaiah. How it is that though they were contemporaries, they had similar language, though one was in the north, one was in the south, that they had similar concerns.
So we can focus on these major themes. In Isaiah chapter one and verses 13 through 15, we hear God's instructions to the nation of Judah about their religious practices. And I'm going to begin in verse 12 just for the flow of the text.
God asks in a, I would say, a rhetorical, frustrated tone. He says, When you come to appear before me, who has required this from your hand to trample my courts? Bring no more futile sacrifices. Incense is an abomination to me.
The new moons, the Sabbaths, and the calling of assemblies. I cannot endure iniquity. And the sacred meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts, my soul hates. They are a trouble to me. I am weary of bearing them.
When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you. Even though you make many prayers, I will not hear your hands are full. They are full of blood. So God is saying to the Southern Kingdom of Judah, he's saying to these folks who are still engaging in the religious practices, still paying attention to the religious calendar, to the new moons and the feast days, who are observing, they are observant Jews, sacrificing and bringing their offerings to the temple where the priests are offering up incense on the altar of incense, which then fills the Holy of Holies, prayers and petitions to God that he would have favor upon his people, that he would forgive them of their sins, and that he would show them the blessings that he had promised.
So they are going through the motions of compelling God and imploring him to give them covenant blessings. And yet he is saying, stop. This is profane. Your arrival to the temple, you're just trampling my courts.
Your sacrifices are empty and meaningless. The incense is an abomination. I am so tired of you keeping the feast. Now that's an interesting irony, isn't it? Who was tired of keeping the feasts? They were.
Another moon, another new moon, another feast, over and over and over again. Boy, they were, man, all right, here we go again. Gotta do another one, gotta do another one. They thought they were weary.
They thought they were tired, but God turns it upside down and says, I'm the one who's troubled and weary by all of this feast keeping, by all of these observances of the new moons. He said, I'm not going to listen to your prayers.
I'm gonna hide my face from you because of your iniquity. So in other words, the meaningless sacrifice cuts them off from God. It actually makes it worse. It actually makes it worse. It's piling iniquity upon transgression.
Now, he says the same thing in Hosea. So if you go over to Hosea chapter eight, we can see where this is also a problem in the northern kingdom. And beginning in verse 11 of Hosea eight. Because Ephraim has made many altars for sin, they have become for him altars for sinning.
God being humorous again, putting the irony upon his people. Because Ephraim has made many altars for sin, they have become for him altars of sinning. I have written for him the great things of my law, but they were considered a strange thing.
For the sacrifices of my offerings, they sacrifice flesh and eat it, but the Lord does not accept them. Now he will remember their iniquity and punish their sins, and they shall return to Egypt. For Israel has forgotten his maker and has built temples.
Judah also has multiplied fortified cities, but I will send fire upon his cities and it shall devour his palaces. This was also the complaint of God by Isaiah in chapter one of Isaiah that they had forgotten their maker.
Now, what was the problem with the northern kingdom? When the northern kingdom split, when Rehoboam was foolish and spoke harshly to the leaders of the 10 tribes, they rebelled against him and chose Jeroboam to be their king.
And God had promised Jeroboam by way of a prophet that if he would lead the people in fidelity to the Lord and lead them to be faithful to the covenant and worship God alone, God promised him a dynasty, many, many generations.
And he would greatly bless Jeroboam and his reign and his descendants and this endeavor of the northern kingdom of Israel. But one of the very first things that Jeroboam did was build two shrines, one in Dan and one at Bethel, wherein golden calves were erected, just like the ones that Aaron had made when the people of Israel had come up out of Egypt, and declared that these calves represented the Lord and that if you wanted to make sacrifices and worship Yahweh, then go to the shrine in Dan or go to the shrine in Bethel, but don't go down to Jerusalem into that southern kingdom of Judah that we're hostile against now.
And Jeroboam did this because he did not want his people traveling into the southern kingdom of Judah and worshiping down there in Jerusalem because he thought that the people's hearts would eventually be turned away from him and back to this kingdom because they would go down to Judah over and over again.
So he wanted all of the worship business to stay in the north. And these two shrines, in the shrine at Dan they've actually excavated, these two shrines became a great stumbling block to the northern kingdom.
And so God complains in Hosea that they have made many altars for sin and they have become altars for sinning, for many sins. And it began with Jeroboam and the two false shrines. And in both cases, the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom have forgotten God.
Now, what was the remedy that God gave the people of the Old Covenant that they would not forget God? What was the strategy? What was the instruction that God gave so that the Old Covenant people would not forget God?
Anybody remember?
It's okay.
You had a lot of it.
The religious calendar was to keep them on track, wasn't it? Constant reminders. Hey, remember the Lord?
Remember the Lord?
What other things were there in the Old Covenant to keep the Old Covenant people remembering the Lord? The Passover, the sign of circumcision. Yeah, so the instructions in Deuteronomy 6. They were supposed to teach who the Lord was and what He had commanded.
And to say that to one another, to say that to their children when you rise up, when you lie down, when you go out, when you come in. And they were supposed to put the instructions of the Lord, the Word of God on the doorposts of their houses.
They were to be on the frontlets in between their eyes and bound to their hand, which again, the Pharisees took literalistically and made little boxes and tiny little scriptures and they stuffed them in the boxes.
And then of course, Pharisee A walking around, I'm obeying Deuteronomy 6. And then the other guy says, yeah, but my boxes are bigger than yours. I'm obeying it more. You know, and so they're walking around with big old boxes on their heads and on their hands.
They can't get anything done. That was the idea, the metaphor was that everything that they thought and everywhere they looked should be filtered through the truth of God's Word. When I see something, I will interpret it according to the truth of God's law, His instruction.
And then when I think about it, I'm going to filter it through the standard of God's Word. And then whatever I put my hand to do is going to be according to the Word of God. And how do you get so saturated in the Word of God by continually telling one another how blessed is the man who meditates in the law of the Lord day and night, right?
Look at that picture of wisdom. To sum it up in one of the instructions concerning the New Covenant, the difference between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant is not that the New Covenant would not have the Word of God, but that the people of the Old Covenant, a whole bunch of them, did not know the Lord from the heart.
They were not circumcised of the heart. They were not truly born again by the ministry of the Holy Spirit. They did not groan in their hearts of the wickedness that they saw. They were not really of what was later called the remnant who were truly born again.
And in the Old Covenant, you were in because of your birth into Israel, and then each one would say to his neighbor, what? Know the Lord. Know the Lord. Know the Lord. And so they had to continually remind each other who God was.
In the New Covenant, that's not how it works. We still say, behold the Lord, and rejoice in His truth, but every member of the New Covenant are those who are born again in Israel, Christ, the fulfillment of Israel.
And so we know the Lord because the Spirit indwells us. He indwells us, and so we already know the Lord, and we don't have to remind each other who the Lord is because we do know the Lord, because the Lord indwells us as the New Covenant temple.
So the problem here is what we're seeing here in Isaiah and Hosea is that they forgot God. They didn't know who the Lord was anymore. And so they were just going through the motions of the sacrifices, but they weren't thinking of the Lord or knowing who He was.
They had forgotten who He was, and they were just going through these motions, and God says, this is not what I wanted. Of course, you've already looked at the passage where He says He didn't want sacrifice.
He wanted what? He wanted covenant faithfulness. I desire mercy, not sacrifice. Mercy, in the Hebrew, chesed, covenant faithfulness. I want covenant faithfulness, not sacrifices. And He was not finding it in the Northern Kingdom or in the Southern Kingdom, although He had been faithful to them.
And that estranged relationship in need of restoration is described in the metaphor of husband and wife. So in Isaiah chapter 54, in Isaiah chapter 54, and then verses four through eight. And this is picking up on a theme that has been developed already a little bit in Isaiah.
So beginning in verse four, the Lord says, do not fear for you will not be ashamed, neither be disgraced, for you will not be put to shame, for you will forget the shame of your youth and will not remember the reproach of your widowhood anymore.
For your maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is His name, and your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel. He is called the God of the whole earth. But the Lord has called you like a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, like a youthful wife when you were refused, says your God.
For a mere moment, I have forsaken you, but with great mercies, I will gather you. With a little wrath, I hid my face from you for a moment, but with everlasting kindness, I will have mercy on you, says the Lord, your Redeemer.
Now this is picking up on the same themes that we find, in fact, the main theme that we find in the book of Hosea. So look there in Hosea chapter two, Hosea chapter two and verses 12 through 16. In Isaiah's depiction, we hear about Judah, the Lord's people, as a bride, who is afflicted and forsaken and sorrowful and barren and so on, but then her hope is in the Lord who acts as her husband.
Now the same metaphor is in Hosea and it's very strong. So verse 12 of Hosea two, God says, and I will destroy her vines and her fig trees of which she has said, these are my wages that my lovers have given me.
So I will make them a forest and the beast of the field shall eat them. So she was looking at her, so Israel's looking at the vines and the fig trees and her prosperity and she is saying, I have these because I'm faithful to Baal.
I have these because I give the offerings to Kimosh. I have this because I worship the queen of heaven and so on and so on and so on. My lovers have given this. So in her spiritual adultery, she's looking at her prosperity and saying, that's why I have all this stuff.
And so God says, I'm just gonna ruin them,.
Take it all away.
Verse 13, I will punish her for the days of the Baals to which she burned incense. She decked herself with her earrings and jewelry and went after her lovers, but me, she forgot. There's the theme again, forgetting God.
Verse 14, therefore, behold, I will allure her, will bring her into the wilderness and speak comfort to her. I will give her her vineyards from there and the Valley of Achor as a door of hope. She shall sing there as in the days of her youth, as in the days when she came up from the land of Egypt.
And it shall be in that day, says the Lord, that you will call me my husband and no longer call me my master. So much like Isaiah, the theme of a restoration in Hosea, talking about God's promised redemption of His people from their sins.
Saving them from their sins. This is when the communication to Joseph. She'll name the child Jesus, for He will save them from their sins, not from their oppressors, not from their poverty, not from their estrangement.
He will save them from their sins. In the book of Micah, oh, there goes the glasses. In the book of Micah, we have the writings of the closest contemporary to Isaiah. Isaiah was a man of the schools and Micah was a man of the fields.
That's a quote from J. Sidlow Baxter. Isaiah was very polished, very educated. He had connections to the priesthood, connections to the royal family. And Micah was of Moresheth from Judea near Gath, that old Philistine haunt.
So they did not originate from the same circles. They were of different classes. And yet they echoed each other very well. Micah certainly affirmed God's present judgment upon Judah, but he also assured the people of God's future blessing.
The book is kind of a collection of his sermons, his sayings, his extended metaphors. And it can seem a little bit disconnected, but when you read through the book of Micah, at the very middle of the book, we have his collection of promises concerning the new covenant and the new Jerusalem.
So a bright center of hope, kind of like right in the middle of lamentations. There's this bright center of hope. And Micah flanks both sides of those new covenant, new Jerusalem promises with sermons and warnings against covenant breakers.
Now there's a couple of famous passages in Micah. And I'm gonna read a couple of those. So in Micah chapter five, Micah five in verse two would be pretty familiar to you. Says, but you, Bethlehem, Ifrathah, though you are little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall come forth to me the one to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth are of old, from everlasting.
Remember that verse? The verse that the scholars of Jerusalem by which they informed Herod of the location where the Messiah would be born. And when we read that passage, we are reminded that there was one to be ruler.
Shiloh is his name. The one to whom it all belongs. The ruler's scepter will not depart from between Judah's feet. His descendant would rule and reign. But the promise, his goings forth are even older.
Even older than Jacob's prophecies over his sons in his latter years. Because these goings forth, the goings forth of this one to be ruler in Israel is from everlasting. From everlasting. Even before the promise of the seed who would defeat the serpent in Genesis 3 .15, there was one whose goings forth, his arrival had been planned and determined from everlasting.
Something prior to history. So it's a very famous verse. And also Micah chapter six and verse eight. Recently, since the social justice outbreak, shown you, oh man, what is good and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
So that was the memory verse for about three years straight as everybody dealt with their white guilt. So hopefully we've figured that out and moved on. Micah is a wonderful book to read. And this particular verse, of course, has a beautiful context, ultimately fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
All right, we're going to leave the comparison of Isaiah and Micah till next time, as there are four different passages that are almost verbatim between Isaiah and Micah. I think that Micah sat at the feet of Isaiah, learned a lot and then brought his messages to the countryside to share the news in the word of the Lord that Isaiah had received.
And then following that, we're going to start talking about the covenantal places of Isaiah. And when you think about the places that Isaiah talks about, he talks about Jerusalem, he talks about Zion, he talks about the land, he talks about the temple, he talks about the whole earth.
And we're going to not do a full survey of that because there's a lot there. But we're going to take a look at some passages that talk about all of those covenantal places in their old covenant context.
Then also look at Isaiah where he talks about all those things in their new covenant context. And I think by that we can see a beautiful story of redemption. All right, so that's the goal next time. Any questions or thoughts before we dismiss in prayer?
All right, let's close in prayer together. Father, we thank you so much for the time that you've given to us. We thank you for the light and the authority, the beauty, the power of your word. We pray that you would help us to recognize your worthiness and that we would worship you in spirit and in truth.
We thank you for hearing all of our prayer requests tonight. Thank you for being a God of mercy and grace and abundance. We pray all these things in Jesus' name, amen. We are dismissed.
