The Merging of Nations

Isaiah 19 and the Mystery of Christ

All right, well, we're continuing on in Isaiah 19. So if you go ahead and turn there, Isaiah 19. Something to remind you about last week. You know, we looked at how God sent foolishness as a punishment upon the people of Egypt.

But one of the challenges he puts there to the so-called wise men, as they're ultimately foolish, one of the challenges he puts there is in verse 12. Where then are your wise men? Let them tell you that they might know what the Lord of hosts has purposed against Egypt.

And so here is this, here's this question. What are God's intentions? Why is he doing what he's doing? And this next section gives us the answer, and it is something that you wouldn't expect. And that's his whole point.

No one can anticipate what the Lord is doing when he sends these calamities against Egypt. No one can anticipate. And here he gives the answer. And we see in the New Testament, this is even called the mystery of Christ.

What is this mystery of what God is doing in the Old Testament? How is that? What is he, what is that leading to? And then we see in the New Testament. Let me go ahead and read verses 16 through 25. Please stand for the reading of God's Word.

In that day, the Egyptians will be like women and trembling with fear before the hand that the Lord of hosts shakes over them. In the land of Judah will become a terror to the Egyptians. Everyone to whom it is mentioned will fear because of the purpose that the Lord of hosts has purposed against them.

In that day, there will be five cities in the land of Egypt that speak the language of Canaan and swear allegiance to the Lord of hosts. One of these will be called the city of destruction. In that day, there will be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt and a pillar to the Lord at its border.

It will be a sign and a witness to the Lord of hosts in the land of Egypt. When they cry to the Lord because of oppressors, he will send them a savior and a defender and deliver them. And the Lord will make himself known to the Egyptians, and the Egyptians will know the Lord in that day and worship with sacrifice and offering.

And they will make vows to the Lord and perform them. And the Lord will strike Egypt, striking and healing, that they will return to the Lord, and he will listen to their pleas for mercy and heal them.

In that day, there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and Assyria will come into Egypt and Egypt into Assyria. And the Egyptians will worship with the Assyrians. In that day, Israel will be the third with Egypt in Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, whom the Lord of hosts has blessed, saying, Blessed be Egypt, my people, and Assyria, the work of my hands, and Israel, my inheritance.

You may be seated. Dear Heavenly Father, what a wonderful, glorious passage this is. It speaks profound things. I ask that you would by it lift up our hearts and liven our souls, that we might worship you more deeply, seeing this great salvation that you have provided in your Son, one that is not just for one nation, but for all the nations.

In Jesus' name, amen. So we live in a world that is wracked by much division. There's war and all kinds of things in our world. Right now there are concerns about Russia invading Ukraine's border, although I think I saw a headline that they're less concerned about that 24 hours ago compared to what they were concerned about 48 hours ago.

Things are always changing. We have our own contentions at our own border. And there are all kinds of national divisions in the world. And it's not just nations, but ideologies that are opposed to each other.

Anyone who's spent some time as a Christian knows that the world is very opposed to Christian values. Yet at the same time, worldly ideologies are often pitted against worldly ideologies. You know, Bruce Jenner, who goes as Caitlyn Jenner, he was applauded as, you know, this great figure for trans rights.

But now that he's come out as opposing that biological men should participate in women's sports, he's considered to be transphobic. The world eats its own alive. These ideologies are pitted against each other.

The Gospel Brings Salvation to the Nations

But this is nothing new. You know, there's nothing new under the sun. There has been division all this time from the very beginning, from the beginning of the fall. And God has an answer. He has an answer in the gospel, and that is what we see here.

He had said in verse 12, you know, what is the Lord purposing? Tell me if you can know what he is doing by sending all the calamities. And the wonderful, unexpected answer here is he is bringing salvation.

He's bringing salvation not just to Israel, but he is bringing salvation even to the nations of the world that he is sending calamities against. And here we have one of the most profound proclamations of that gospel going forth to the Gentiles.

That we have in all of scripture. So I'd like to go ahead and look at this with thinking about the unity that God provides, this world filled with division. Think about in terms of this process of bringing a fear of him upon people so that they would return in repentance and be healed.

And this is a process of assimilation, where people turn in repentance, they are healed by him, and they assimilate into God's people and are one in unity and peace. And this is the fulfillment of what was said earlier in Isaiah.

Isaiah 2 -4, that nation would not war against nation. This is the great promise of Isaiah. So beginning in verse 16 here,. And that day the Egyptians will be like women and tremble with fear before the hand of the Lord, the hand that the Lord of hosts shakes over them.

So here you see God threatening, the picture that's being painted is him shaking his hand over the people of Egypt. And so they tremble with fear because he has sent calamities upon them. He sent foolish counselors against them that they might go foolish directions and recognize that they are nothing against the counsel of the Lord.

It says that they will be like women, you know, defenseless and afraid. Of course, that's something that stands at odds with modern sensibilities. But, you know, in my own household, there's one of us who is afraid of spiders, and it isn't me.

There's something real to this statement that they will be like women and tremble with fear. And the land of Judah will become a terror to the Egyptians. Now this is, possibly a little more profound than you may initially think.

Yes, it is talking about the people of Egypt fearing God's people and wanting their mercy. But there's something more in that at this time, at this time, the people of Israel have gone to Egypt for mercy.

So it is exactly the opposite of what you think. Later on you see in Isaiah that they are considering going to Egypt for an alliance so that they can stand against Assyria. It's this question that is, that is put forward.

Should we, should we continue going to Egypt? And it said that Egypt is like a broken reed. You can't trust them. But here you see just the opposite, that Egypt would want mercy from Judah. Everyone to whom it is mentioned will fear because of the purpose that the Lord of hosts has purposed against them.

So he sends his fear upon them. Now fear is not always good, but it is good if the thing you're afraid of you should be afraid of. Right? If you weren't afraid of terrifying animals, like, you know, if there's a dog, a rabid dog foaming at the mouth and growling at you and you aren't afraid of him, well, you might not defend yourself in such a way that you could avoid his bite.

You want to be afraid when you should be afraid. God is a wonderful God. And if we have his love, that casts out all fear, as 1 John says. But apart from that, we should be utterly afraid of him. And we should still continue being afraid of him in the way that means knowing how great he is if we were to go against him.

I bring this up often, but you know, the second line of Amazing Grace says this very well. "'Twas grace that caused my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved.'". You know, it is by God's grace that we fear him, and then by God's grace that he relieves our fears.

So we should fear the Lord. We should not take lightly his commands. We should know that he is a great and awesome God who can destroy all his enemies, and we should come to him for mercy. Continuing on here in verse 18.

One of these will be called the City of Destruction. So there are several difficult to understand things in here, but you see cities, whole cities. Five isn't necessarily being so specific. I've seen the number five before used in Isaiah just to refer to several.

So the idea here is that you have whole cities, you know, not just a few people of land, but whole cities who are assimilating, speaking the language of Canaan. They have sworn allegiance to the Lord of hosts.

One of these called the City of Destruction. Now what that means that one is the City of Destruction, this is a very difficult passage. Some have translated it as the City of the Sun, in which case the point would be that, well, there's this one city that was following the God of the Sun in Egypt, and now they're following the true God.

Or some have said this should be translated the City of Righteousness, in which case it's obvious that it just means that they have repented so fully they are called the City of Righteousness. Calvin interprets this as being a sixth city that is destroyed.

I think the most reasonable thing here, though, is that it refers to the destruction of idols. I think that's just the most straightforward that doesn't require taking this some other way. That, especially in this context of this passage where in verse 22 it says, and the Lord will strike Egypt, striking and healing, the destruction here refers to that destructive process of taking away idolatry and restoring the city.

So it's, it is a label referring to their repentance. They have come to the Lord for allegiance. And this is quite a picture using the language of Canaan. Can you imagine a city at that time, other countries at that time, adopting Hebrew as their language?

That would be pretty profound to watch. And so it is with us, you know, as we come into God's kingdom, we must adopt the language of God's people. Now, that's not a particular language like English or Latin or whatever else you might consider the language of God's people, but it is a way of speaking of Him where we honor Him as He ought to be honored.

And we come to conformity with one another, being conformed into the image of Christ, speaking worthily of His name. We must be a people who are assimilated to God's people, conforming together in holiness.

And we must call other people to also be assimilated. A lot of times it may feel very difficult to require too much of people, or that it would be too divisive to call this brother to repentance, or to call this one who is out in the world into into the fold because it's just requesting too much.

But this is what God requires. This is the unity that He is aiming for. It's this great unity where all God's people have assimilated into one. We will continue having our diversity. We'll continue having our different backgrounds.

But as we speak the language of Canaan, we can have a great, great unity. I think also worth considering here is what this means for missions. The study of missions is called missiology. There's something in missiology called contextualization, where people are concerned about how do you present the gospel to someone in a different culture?

How much do you change—are you willing to change the way you do things here in the States as you take the gospel elsewhere? You know, do you have everyone in this island tribe, you know, dress up in suit and tie as they go to church?

Do you have them use hymnals? And so there are a lot of ways where we should contextualize the gospel, but some have taken this so far to really remove the gospel or to change the message of the Bible, where instead of really requiring assimilation, you allow this person to keep everything and just replace Jesus with one of their elements, right?

And we see this. This has been going on for centuries. I've read up on Roman Catholic missions to the Philippines, and it was interesting as they were going around to these different countries on their way to the Philippines that they would just hold up a cross to people who were pagan worshipers, and if they would, you know, if they were willing to bow to the cross, well, that's just like their worship of this other god, and so we'd count them as having become Christian.

And this happens a lot with Islam. I think I mentioned this morning that I recently attended a seminar on helping Afghan refugees, and something I heard several of the speakers say, you know, we've stopped using the Bible to present Jesus to people because they find that too offensive.

Instead, we show them what the Quran says about Jesus, and then show them that Jesus is good from that. And so they're not really even requiring that people submit themselves to God's word. They're fine enough with them submitting to Muhammad's word, and what Muhammad says about Jesus, and hopefully we can get them to think of Jesus a little more highly that way.

There was a there was a controversy several years ago with Wycliffe, with Wycliffe Bible translators. They had translated the Bible into one tongue that was primarily surrounded by Islam, this people.

And so in order to make it not too offensive, they didn't translate the phrase son of God. They never called Jesus a son. They never called God the father. They would just say that Jesus was the servant of God, or that God was the creator, the father was the creator.

They would never, they would never say son or father because, because Islam would find that offensive and assume wrongly some kind of biological sonship. Well, thankfully, there was a controversy about that, and I, if I remember correctly, they changed the translation.

But something to consider when you have the opportunity to give to missions and participate in any kind of missions decisions, we want to call people to true repentance, to full assimilation, not, not culturally in every sense, but in as much as it includes God's revelation and what He is calling people to.

Let's go all the way. Let's not be timid and back down from what God is calling people to. Here in verse 19, it's to the land of Egypt and a pillar to the Lord at its border. So this is some kind of monument to the Lord.

This is not describing any kind of pagan monument. This is a good thing. You have Jacob in Genesis 28 erects a monument to the Lord like this. It will be a sign and a witness to the Lord of the hosts in the land of Egypt.

When they cry to the Lord because of oppressors, he will send them a savior and a defender and deliver them. Now, how direct of a prophecy is that about Jesus? You know, Egypt coming to God for forgiveness, God sending them a savior.

What does this refer to? This refers to none other than Jesus Christ. There are many Egyptians who have turned to the Lord for repentance. There are many Gentiles who have turned to the Lord for repentance, and God has sent a savior to save them.

And the Lord will make himself known to the Egyptians, and the Egyptians will know the Lord in that day and worship with sacrifice and offering, and they will make vows to the Lord and perform them. So God makes himself known to the Egyptians.

God makes himself known to us, most of us being Gentiles, by sending Jesus Christ to call the world to repentance, to be God with us, showing us who our Father is. If we have seen him, we have seen the Father, as Jesus said.

It says they'll make vows to the Lord and perform them. We spoke this morning in Sunday school about vows, and one of the things we talked about is how God enables people to keep their vows. One of the reasons why you might consider making a vow is because God is good to those who make good vows and enables them to keep them.

In the Old Testament, the people of Israel made a made an oath to the people of Gibeon, or to the Gibeonites, and God even had the sun stand still so that they could fulfill their oath. And you see that elsewhere in the Bible, that God God enforces oaths.

He cares about oaths. So consider, consider your oaths that you have made. You know, recognize, first of all, recognize your oaths. There are things that you may not have even considered being oaths, but a baptism or the Lord's Supper.

Our confession even calls it a bond and a pledge of our unity with Christ and with each other. You know, each week as we take the Lord's Supper and we have the one bread that is broken that represents unity, it's a pledge that we're making weekly to each other and to God of unity.

The same kind of unity that this passage is talking about. So recognize these vows and keep them. Verse 22, So it speaks to the Lord, striking and healing, speaks of his hand of discipline. Now, this is very surprising because you would expect the Lord to strike Egypt for evil, right?

To strike them in order to destroy them because they are the enemies of God's people, but he strikes them and heals them. It's like it says in Job, Though he slay me, I will hope in him. Hosea 6, 1 says, Come, let us return to the Lord, for he has torn us, that he may heal us.

He has struck us down, and he will bind us up. After two days he will revive us, and on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him. Here you have that same picture of striking and healing and it even prophesies in shadowy terms the third day resurrection.

The Lord strikes and he heals. He's like a doctor. Doctor has to cut in order to heal. It's like a coach or an athlete, right? They have to break down their muscles in order to build them up stronger.

The Lord is—the Lord is good. Consider then how we ought to recognize discipline, right? We ought to recognize discipline joyfully as being a good thing from the Lord. Proverbs 12, 1 says, Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid.

You don't want to be a stupid person. You want to recognize the Lord's discipline is good. He strikes and he heals. And you want to make use of your discipline. When you experience discipline, when you experience any kind of suffering, whether it be in direct relationship to your sin or just some trial that you're going through, make use of that.

Know that you have been given this trial, as James says, so that you may grow. If you recognize that, if you recognize it as an opportunity, you are more likely to use it as an opportunity than you should.

The Highway Between Egypt and Assyria

Verse 23 says, Blessed be Egypt, my people, and Assyria, the work of my hands, and Israel, my inheritance. Now, this— this picture of a highway is frequent in the in the book of Isaiah. You go through there and you look at times highways used to refer to God's people returning to him or some kind of unity.

And here you have highways being built between Egypt and Assyria so that they may no longer be at odds with each other, but they can be united. Now, typically you might imagine this as some kind of alliance that's going to backfire and—or not backfire, but be used against Israel.

But here it's—it's an alliance between them, an alliance with Israel, a good one, a holy one, as they are all serving the Lord. In that day, Israel will be the third with Egypt. Surprising once again.

Why aren't they first among them? But they are—they are just a third. And does that not reflect reality today, where as the gospel has gone out to Gentiles, there's no special standing of Israel in such a way that they're—they're the largest one, and—and the Gentiles are this little add-ons on the side.

No, God's gospel has really gone out to the Gentiles in a great and glorious way. Be a third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, whom the Lord of hosts has blessed, saying, Blessed be Egypt, my people.

Now, that's—that's an unusual statement. And Assyria, the work of my hands, and Israel, my inheritance. We're used to hearing—we're used to hearing these things of Israel, but hearing them of Egypt, and hearing them of Assyria, that's—that's wild.

That's wild. And so here you have that answer to that question. Tell me what the Lord of hosts has purposed, and what he is doing, and this destruction he has sent upon Egypt. What is he accomplishing?

You know, as you see calamities in the world, what is the Lord accomplishing? He is accomplishing salvation. He is bringing some to their breaking point, causing them to repent and turn to him, and he is assimilating many people from the nations into a single people who are coming to him for salvation and can have great unity together.

As I said, this is—this is what the New Testament refers to as the mystery of Christ. Let me read to you Ephesians 3, but before I do, let me explain that the word mystery, a lot of people, I think, following Roman Catholic usage, use the word mystery just to mean something too deep to understand.

You know, they call it the trinity of mystery, or I'm trying to think of other, you know, the mystery of the rosary, something like that. But mystery, as the Bible uses a term, I don't—I suppose you could use the word mystery to mean something profound, but the way the Bible uses the term mystery is not to mean something you can't understand, but to mean something that just hasn't been revealed and then later is revealed.

The mystery of the gospel, no one knew what Christ was going to do, and then it was revealed what he would do. So here you have this in Ephesians 3, 1. As I have written briefly, when you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men and other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.

This mystery is, and here he finally defines it, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. This is the great mystery.

In verse 12 of Isaiah 19, what has God purposed? And then he answers, this is the mystery, that Assyria and Egypt and Israel will all become one. And this is accomplished in the gospel. Now, you might wonder, as I did, what did what did Jewish people of roughly that time or later, you know, think about this passage?

Because it seems pretty clear that it's talking about something more than just the salvation of Israel. So there's documents known as targum, the targum. So these targums are written by different people, and they are essentially paraphrases of the Bible.

They're, they function as commentaries, but they're written as paraphrases. So it's kind of like, if you ever read the message version of the Bible, right, how it's a paraphrase of the Bible, it works a lot like that.

And so you can kind of get an idea of what they thought this passage meant. So I'm going to read, this is, um, this is Isaiah 19, 23 to 25, and the targum Jonathan. And at that time, there shall be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrians shall fight against the Egyptians, and the Egyptians against the Assyrians.

This is how they understand the roads, is they're going to fight against each other. And the Egyptians against the Assyrians, and the Egyptians shall serve the Assyrians. And at that time, Israel shall be a third party to the Egyptians and to the Assyrians, a blessing in the midst of the land, whom the Lord of hosts has blessed, saying, Blessed be my people whom I have brought out of Egypt, and because they have sinned before me, I carried them captive into Assyria.

But when they repent, they are called my people, and Israel my inheritance. And so here, they took this as referring only to the Jews. Oh, this is the Jews that were in Egypt, and then this is the Jews that were in Assyria.

There's no way that this could be the gospel going out to the Gentiles. It, it goes against common sense, as you might have developed this idea in Old Testament times, that God would only save this one national people.

But he had something much more glorious. He sent Jesus Christ, who is a signal for the nations, to come to him, and we can have great unity in him. Like I said, we will always have our, our differences will always be different.

God, God made people to be diverse. Yet as we are united in one culture of Christianity, in one Savior, in one tongue of praise to him, we can have a unity that transcends any differences we may have.

Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for this great and glorious gospel, this mystery that has been revealed. And as we live in a time after that mystery has been revealed, I pray that we would steward this revelation well, that we would, that we would boldly pursue reconciliation with others, knowing that you have given us a spirit by which we can pursue such reconciliation.

Pray that you would allow us to boldly take the gospel to the world, knowing that you have promised to do great things to even those who appear hardest in heart. I ask that you would give us the strength and the encouragement to do so, knowing that you have given us a great and wonderful gospel that is to go to all the nations.

In Jesus' name. Amen.