Wednesday, June 26, 2024

Isaiah’s Vision of Judah’s Rebellion and the Need for Hope

Robust pictures of hope, but this is the controlling question here in Isaiah chapters 1 through 5. So, I want us to look together, and we'll begin reading verse 1. 1. The vision of Isaiah, the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Mahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

2. Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the LORD has spoken. 3. I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me. 4. The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master's crib.

5. But Israel does not know. 6. My people do not consider. 7. Alas, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a brood of evildoers, children who are corruptors. 8. They have forsaken the LORD. 9. They have provoked to anger the Holy One of Israel.

10. They have turned away backward. 11. Why should you be stricken again? 12. You will revolt more and more. 13. The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faints. 14. From the sole of the foot even to the head there is no soundness in it, but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores.

15. They have not been closed or bound up or soothed with ointment. 16. Your country is desolate. 17. Your cities are burned with fire. 18. Strangers devour your land and your presence, and it is desolate as overthrown by strangers.

19. So the daughter of Zion is left as a booth in a vineyard, as a hut in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city. 20. Unless the LORD of hosts had left to us a very small remnant, we would have become like Sodom.

We would have been made like Gomorrah. So in the first 35 chapters of Isaiah, we have sermons for a difficult present. But the difficulty for Judah is of the Lord. It's from the Lord because of their idolatry, because of their covenant unfaithfulness.

And it turns out that only God can save them from their woes. False worship and foreign warriors. These are the two big woes of Judah. They have false worship internally and foreign warriors externally.

These are the two things that keep Isaiah up at night. All that and the visions he gets over and over again. While the rebukes are powerful and plenty, hope is found by Judah by coming into God's light, saying what he says about their own situation, meaning they confess their egregious rebellion against him.

So the rebellious children have been addressed. They are dumber than an ox and more stubborn than a donkey. And God rebukes them and then begins to lay out exactly in the different arenas, their rebellion.

Judah’s Political Rebellion and Covenant Treason

The political arena, the religious arena, the social arena. And this is all laid out in verses 4 -9, 10 -20, and verses 21 -31. So we begin with the political arena of rebellion in verses 4 -9. It's important to remember that this thoroughly corrupt society had originally been designed at Sinai to express the image of God.

And yet they are an unfaithful servant. And they are in need of a faithful servant who will be revealed later on in Isaiah. When we're talking about the political arena of rebellion, we're not talking about what we normally think about when it comes to politics.

The term political here is we're not talking about electioneering and arguing and debates and bribes and polling and bribes and speeches and bribes or even bribes. We're actually observing the concerns of the nation-state of Judah.

The ancient nation-state of Judah. When you read verses 4 -9, you see terms like nation, people, country, cities, land, and in the singular, city. So here are the vital places that a particular people live and are responsible for.

And that's true in the relationship to other nations. They don't tax people from Egypt. They don't tax people from Assyria. They're worried about the people within their own borders. But on a deeper level, we're talking about the nation of Judah in light of their covenant obligations to God.

The political stewardship and character of Judah has to be contextualized in the covenant that they made with God. Everything about their lives could not be reduced to simple politics because it was about their faithfulness to God.

And in verse 4, we find a nation of betrayers. A nation of betrayers. Verse 4, you'll notice, is put into seven lines. English translations may have eight lines, but it's actually seven lines. And you have a four-fold description of the traitors first, and then a three-fold expression of their treason.

You see, first of all, the traitors, there's a nation, a people, a brood, and children. So here's the description of a nation. Nation, people, brood, children. But each one of those nouns is described.

It's a sinful nation. It's a people burdened with iniquity. It is a brood of evildoers. It's children who are corruptors. So you see that is a four-fold description of the traitors. And then there's a three-fold description of their treason.

They forsake, they provoke, they turn away. So let's think about that. Very often, when you have a four-fold description of anything in the Bible, it's to give the sense of every which way. No matter how you look at it, no matter which direction you come at it from, or what direction you go, this is what you're going to find.

It has the idea of the four winds, the four directions. The idea is you have, no matter which direction you go in Judah, this is all you're going to find. If you leave Jerusalem and you go towards Anathoth, the hometown of Jeremiah, this is what you're going to find.

If you head out of Jerusalem and you go south towards Gaza, this is what you're going to find. If you head off west towards the lower plains and head down the elevation of the Shephelah towards the coastline, this is all you're going to find.

Even if you head over across the Jordan, this is all you're going to find. You're going to find traders everywhere you go. And these four terms tell us that they are a special kind of people, and yet they walk as if they're not.

They walk as if there is no path. They abandon treasure as if it has no worth. This is essentially sin, the image living as if there is no God. How does Paul describe sin? Falling short of the image of God.

The image of God living as if there is no God. And this is what is going on in the very first description, this sinful nation. The Hebrew word for nation is goyim. Plural is goyim. If Brother Red were here, he would remind us the answer to the question.

The question is, how odd of God to choose the Jews? And the answer to come back was the goyim anoyim. The goyim anoyim, the nation's anoyim. I can't ever look at those Hebrew words without Brother Red, his jokes coming to my head.

But this nation is singular, this one nation. This is about this nation being formed as a promise. They were formed by a promise to Abraham, a promise to Isaac, a promise to Jacob. In Deuteronomy chapter 7 verses 6 through 8, I'll have us go ahead and look at that.

I think we have time. God says very clearly why they're a nation. Why are the children of Jacob, or the children of Israel, why are they a nation at all? Deuteronomy chapter 7 and then verses 6 through 8.

For you are a holy people to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth. The Lord did not set his love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you are the least of all peoples, but because the Lord loves you.

If you're tracking the logic, the question is why does he love you? The answer is because he loves you. And because he would keep the oath which he swore to your fathers. God keeps his promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

This is why they are a nation at all. But they're a sinful nation now, meaning they're walking as if there's no promise. They're living as if there's no treasure. The image is denying that there is a God.

That's sin. So not only do we have a promise denied, but we have a place desecrated. The second term here, the second term that we have is people. Now when we think of people, we don't think of place, but the term in the Hebrew is often combined with place.

The people of Edom, the people of Moab, the people of Egypt. This word is always connected to a place. And so this people are of a particular place. They were given a land flowing with milk and honey.

They were given the promised land. The land of Canaan was given to them. It was their land. They were given a bountiful land in which to be fruitful. And of course with that came many cautions and warnings in Deuteronomy chapter 8.

When they got into the land and they were living in homes they did not build, drinking from wells they did not dig, benefiting from fields that they did not plow and so on, that they should never ever forget God and say, oh I have done this for myself.

And never forget that the bounty and the blessings of the land in which they lived were from God. The term here, people laden with iniquity. We can remember the people laden with grapes the size of fists.

We can remember the people laden with milk and honey, the people laden with bountiful harvests. But now there are people laden with iniquity. The Hebrew word for glory is kabod. It's heaviness, weightiness.

This is a Hebrew word kved. It's the same root but has the idea of they are carrying down and heavy laden with iniquity, with perversion. It's a way of saying their guilt is now their glory. Where once there was glory all over them now it's just guilt.

This is what is weighing them down now. Often you will hear expressions in the Old Testament about how the land is crying out against the people of that land. Remember innocent blood crying from the ground.

Remember the ground that was to be given its sabbath every seven years and every seventh day. The land would cry out against them because of the sabbaths that had been denied the land. This is the situation of the land in Isaiah's day.

Innocent blood and forgotten sabbaths are piling up as a burden of guilt. Thirdly we have a progeny damned, a brood of evildoers. So a sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, and thirdly a brood of evildoers, a progeny damned.

This brood in Hebrew is the word for seed. It's just seed. But where do they come from? Are they not in the lineage of Shem and Eber and Abram and Isaac and Jacob? Were they not to be a blessing? That the seed of Abram would be a blessing to all the families of the earth.

The focus on the seed from Genesis 3 .15 to Genesis 12 to Genesis 15 and 17 and all the way tracing it down. They were to be a blessing, but now they are a brood or a seed of evildoers. In other words, they're like the line of Cain.

They're like the spawn of Satan. This nation had a unifying promise and place and progeny and even parentage as they were called the children of God, but here they are acting as traitors. And where do you think Jesus got the metaphor when he was speaking to the Pharisees and the scribes and so on in John chapter 8?

He called them the brood of Satan. Now, Jesus could come up with all his original ideas. That's great, but let's just put it this way. That wasn't the first time that Israelites got called the brood of evil or the spawn of Satan.

So, these are traitors. The promise has been denied. The place has been desecrated. The progeny is damned and the parentage is defiled. Notice the children who are corrupters. It's the plural of sons.

The sons, the children are living as if God is not their father. And we've just heard about that in verses 2 and 3, didn't we? God's like, I am their father and they act as if I'm not. But the problem is they're corrupting his name.

So, they're bearing his name and everywhere they go they bear his name, Israel. Israel. They bear his name no matter where they go, but they're bearing his name in vain, breaking the third commandment.

And they are corrupting his name, bringing shame upon the name of God. They are not known for what they ought to be known for and they are known for what they ought not to be known for. Now, all the ingredients that are needed to destroy a nation are right here.

If you want to destroy a nation, this is all you have to do. Deny the promise upon which that nation was formed. Desecrate the place where that nation lives. Damn the progeny that comes from the people who are living and defile the parentage.

That's all you got to do to destroy a nation and that's why these men are traitors and being called out. Now, this list is not entirely to be hopeless because the specificity of it is also a list of repentance.

This needs to be confessed and repented from. This needs to be confessed and repented from all the way down the line. The recipe for repentance is there as well. Now, these traitors act in treason and we see the three action verbs there.

It's a seven-fold verse. Seven lines to create one verse. First of all, the four-fold description of the traitors. Now, three-fold description of their treason. The three actions are what? They forsake, they provoke, and they turn away.

They have forsaken the Lord. They have provoked to anger the Holy One of Israel. They have turned away backward. So, they abandon, they antagonize, and they alienate. First of all, they abandon. Basically, the word picture is they give up on and walk away from the Lord.

They've laid down their covenantal knitting and have not returned to it in years and it's just a tangle now. They don't even remember what the project was. They left the covenantal acts in a stump and a new clearing but have not returned in years and now it's a mess of rust and everything is overgrown all over again.

The tangles, the rust, the project is not forgotten, however, by the Lord. The Lord is looking upon it and saying, where are you? Why are you not living faithfully? Why have you walked away from me? Why have you abandoned me?

It matters to God. It matters to the Lord for his children have walked off. They do not stay to work. You ever have that, parents? Middle of a project, things are going well, you say to your child, this will be really helpful if you go do that and then they never return.

Where do they go? They abandon, they walked off. Secondly, they antagonize. Who do they antagonize? Who do they provoke to anger? No one less than the Holy One of Israel. Now, it is the Holy One of Israel that they do not know, we discovered from verses two and three.

They don't know the Holy One of Israel. They do not consider the Holy One of Israel. They have forgotten him. They have casually abandoned him and go about complaining about their current situation. In fact, some of them even blame him for their problems.

They provoke God to righteous anger. Now, these are all acts of treason. You can consider this as a neat thing to do. What is the opposite point on the globe, the antipode? You go find the antipode to Oklahoma.

It is in the middle of the Indian Ocean. What they are doing when they abandon and antagonize and alienate, those are the moral antipodes of what they are supposed to be doing. That is how you know it is treason.

It is the absolute opposite of what they are supposed to be doing because the entirety of their nation's good, the way that God arranged and made Israel in the Old Covenant, the entirety of their nation's good depended on them being faithful, and they are doing the exact opposite, thus actively sabotaging their nation.

Thirdly, they alienate. When we read this at the very end of verse four, they have turned away backward. They have turned away backward. One of the scholars translated it as this. They turn their backs on God.

They bestrange themselves backward. It would be an old way of saying it. This is not simply walking away and griping about Father. Right? This is also cutting off all access by which the Father can reach you.

The kind of rebellion where the child leaves changes the number and makes sure that the parents can never come find them. God's chosen people revert to alien status is the idea. Alec Moitra writes that somehow they reject everything about being God's chosen people.

They want to be alien to Him. So this is the situation in seven lines in verse four. And only the long-suffering grace of God can save in a situation like this. They have put themselves out of reach of anyone being able to help them.

Not even the great prophet Isaiah is going to be able to move them, and convince them, and compel them, and persuade them, even though his is the highest prose and poetry in the Old Testament. He's not going to be able to compel them.

They are beyond any reach except that of God. When we think about that, I'll go ahead and give you a sneak peek as we close. But look at verse nine. How does it read? Unless the Lord of hosts had left to us a very small remnant, we would have become like Sodom.

We would have been made like Gomorrah. Do you hear that? So who was it who saved a remnant? Who was it who, despite everything that Israel had done to him, he says, you deserve absolute annihilation, but I am not going to let that happen.

He left unto them a remnant, because he is as merciful as he is sovereign. Okay, so next time we're going to come back as the Lord allows, and look at verses five through nine. But especially at verses five through six, the picture of the fool.

So if you want to read ahead, you can look at Proverbs 19, 29, Proverbs 19, 29, and Proverbs 26, 3. If you'll read Proverbs 19, 29, and Proverbs 26, 3, you'll get a helpful background and insight into verses five and six of Isaiah chapter one.

So that'll help you anticipate what's to come. All right, let's go ahead and close. Oh, yes, question. Oh, good. 17. Okay, I'm gonna pray for us, and then we're gonna sing happy birthday to Cindy. Okay.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the day. We thank you for your many blessings. We thank you for the wisdom and provision that you grant to us. You are the Father of light, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow, and every good and perfect thing comes down from you.

And so we give you thanks. And we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, happy birthday.