DAY 213: Isaiah 64–66

Welcome to 5-Minute Bible, your daily guide for your daily reading. Today's August the 1st, and we'll be looking at Isaiah 64 through 66. Now yesterday, Isaiah showed the Lord intervening where no human rescuer could.

Isaiah’s Prayer for God to Come Down

Sin had separated the people from God, so the Lord armed Himself as the divine warrior. He sent the Redeemer to Zion, He placed His Spirit and His Word upon His people, and He announced the good news through His Spirit

Well today, Isaiah's vision reaches its grand crescendo. The prophet pleads for God to rend the heavens and to come down, and the Lord answers by judging rebellion, by gathering the nations, and by promising new heavens and new earth.

Now in that way, Isaiah 64 opens with an urgent prayer. Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down, Isaiah says, remembering the Exodus when God made His name known among the nations. But the prayer quickly becomes a confession, because the people have sinned.

Their righteous deeds are like filthy garments in comparison of the Lord, and no one can claim restoration as a wage for their good deeds. Yet Isaiah appeals to covenant mercy. The Lord is Father, Israel is the clay, and He is the potter who can save them.

Judgment, Remnant, and New Creation

Then chapter 65 records God's answer. He was ready to be sought even by a nation that didn't call upon His name. While rebellious Israel provoked Him through idolatry and false worship, He was ready to answer them.

But still God won't destroy the whole people. As new wine is found in a cluster, He preserves servants who will inherit His mountains. But then comes the great promise. God will create new heavens and new earth.

Jerusalem will become a place of joy. Weeping is going to be silenced. Life is going to flourish. People are going to enjoy the work of their hands again, and creation's hostility is going to be transformed from futility to flourishing.

Humble Worship and the Gathering of Nations

Isaiah 66 then begins by declaring that the heaven is God's throne and the earth is His footstool. He's the one who looks to the humble person who trembles at His Word. And then the book ends with judgment upon the rebels, comfort for Jerusalem, the gathering of all the nations and tribes and tongues, missionaries sent to distant peoples, and all the flesh coming to worship before their Creator.

So as you read today, I want you to ask the following question. What does God create when He finally answers the prayer to come down and save? And Isaiah 64 through 66 answers that, that the Lord does more than restore the old covenant arrangements.

He judges their rebellion. He preserves a remnant. He gathers the nations and He creates a fully renewed world and He establishes worship that's going to reach every corner of that new creation. Salvation then is not merely an escape from exile.

God is bringing a transformed new cosmos. And the central tension is between religious presumption and humble dependence upon God because Isaiah confesses that Israel's righteous deeds are like filthy rags.

They can't purchase anything. Sin is penetrated too deeply. The clay cannot remake itself or even command the potter to do it either. We can't save ourself. But our salvation rests in the hands of God alone, the one who formed us, made us, and the only one who can remake what is broken.

Then Isaiah 66 sharpens the point. Israel may build a magnificent house and bring sacrifices and yet God isn't impressed by worship that is severed from obedience. He looks to the humble and the contrite person who trembles at His word.

Those are the ones that He blesses. And that of course expands to the entire cosmos because this language of restoration is not confined at personal salvation. The promise reaches a transformed world, enduring joy, peace among former enemies, and all of the nations coming under the worship of Yahweh.

God answers the plea of Isaiah to come down, but He does so by promising to make everything that is broken new again. And in that way, Isaiah 64 through 66 points directly to Jesus Christ in whom God rends the heavens.

He comes down, gathers the nations, judges evil, and establishes a new creation. At Jesus's baptism, the heavens open and the Spirit descends fulfilling this passage in Isaiah. The Eternal Son enters our condition not merely to observe ruined humanity, but to redeem it.

Christ is the faithful servant who trembles at the Father's word and offers the acceptable sacrifice that Israel could never provide. Through His resurrection, new creation begins within the old world.

Jesus rises as the first fruit of a new world that Isaiah was promising. And everyone united to Him becomes a new creation now in an old creation world. And the church then becomes the beginning of this brand-new humanity that will eventually overtake the world.

Christ’s Advancing Kingdom and the Future Consummation

And this doesn't mean that Isaiah's promise is exhausted in the present. Christ's kingdom is already advancing as the gospel gathers worshippers all over the world and is transforming lives out of death and out of rebellion, out of sorrow, into His marvelous joy.

The King who began renewal is going to complete it when He raises the dead, when He makes the world according to His image, and when He saves people from every tribe, tongue, and nation. Then Isaiah ends with all flesh worshiping before the Lord, all flesh worshiping before the Lord, which means the worldwide horizon of salvation is not just an optional appendix.

It's the goal of redemption, Christ winning the world, Christ sending messengers to win the world, Christ by His own glory and power winning the world. That is the trajectory of human history. That's how Isaiah ends with Jesus making a saved world.

And that, my friends, is coming in the future. So as you read Isaiah 64 through 66, hear the prayer for God to come down and the promise that He will make all things new as He has been doing that for the last 2 ,000 years.

And tomorrow our schedule is going to return to the historical kings and second Kings 20 through 21. We're gonna see Hezekiah's weakness and Manasseh's wickedness, and it's gonna prove why Isaiah's glorious future cannot depend upon the ordinary sons of David.

It needs the true Son, the true King, Jesus Christ. And with that, read your Bible carefully, devotionally, and joyfully. May the Lord use His word to sanctify you completely, and we will continue our journey tomorrow.

God bless you.