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Sunnyside Baptist Church Michael Dirrim, Pastor
Thank you for the fellowship that we have, the love that we may share together in Jesus Christ. Thank you for this book of Isaiah, for these words that you gave to your prophet, to your people that are full of your truth, that express your desires, and your will, and your delight in your son Jesus Christ.
Thank you that they are forever reliable, and that we may go to them to see what it is that you have to say through your spirit to us concerning your son. I pray that you would help us in this study tonight.
In Jesus' name we pray, amen. So we are coming to the end of several follies that are being rebuked by the prophet Isaiah, the ways in which.
Judah.
Is.
Locating her security, her sense of well-being. If she feels anxious on any given day when she wakes up, she would resort to four different comforts. She would remember, she would remember how how well off she is, how well funded she is.
She would remember all of the rich culture that she enjoys. She would remember the strong armies that she possesses in the fortified cities that protect her. She would remember all of the different idols that she placates and worships.
And with this kind of network of securities and comforts, truly, what could possibly go wrong? And in this, she looks to every comfort other than the one that really matters. She needs to look to the Lord for her comfort.
But as we see from chapter one, the ox knows its owner, the donkey knows its owner, but Judah doesn't even remember her father. The people of Israel have a father, but they don't remember that they are his children.
And this is how foolish and how spiritually dark everything has become. Do they still attend worship at the temple? Yes. Do they still have the feast days? Yes, they do. But they go through the motions of the worship to get it over with, to get done with it, so they don't have to continue to be bothered with it.
It's not a joy. It's not true worship. And so there's an emptiness to the life of Judah. That's chapter one. And then God puts before them what he desires, how he's going to redo everything, how he's going to make a new Jerusalem on a new Mount Zion.
And all the nations, including Judah, are invited to come into this Mount Zion, into this new Jerusalem. And then he begins to take apart all of her confidences. And so this is the majority of chapter two and all of chapter three.
And so he walks through, by his prophet, every single one of her confidences and then shows how empty it is and how useless it is, especially in light of the day of judgment. And God has promised to judge his people if they break covenant with him.
And it's a day coming. They don't know if it's going to be the armies of Assyria or some other event, but they are going to lose their city. They are going to be overrun by foreign armies. God will bring about the judgment that he said he would in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28.
And in that day, he wants them to consider, when that happens, what will remain of your pride? What will remain of your idols? What will remain of your armies? What will remain of your wealth? And that's the part we're on right now, is the wealth, that they trust in their wealth.
That they have wealth is not a sin, that they trust in it, that they rely on it for their confidence, that they look to it to see their status. That is the problem. So, let's see what the Lord has to say about how they got their wealth, how they use their wealth, how they trust their wealth, here at the end of Isaiah chapter 3, beginning in verse 13.
The Lord stands up to plead and stands to judge the people. The Lord will enter into judgment with the elders of his people and his princes. For you have eaten up the vineyard. The plunder of the poor is in your houses.
What do you mean by crushing my people and grinding the faces of the poor, says the Lord God of hosts? Moreover, the Lord says, because the daughters of Zion are haughty and walk with outstretched necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, making a jingling with their feet.
Therefore, the Lord will strike with the scab, the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the Lord will uncover their secret parts. In that day, the Lord will take away the finery, the jingling anklets, the scarves, and the crescents, the pendants, the bracelets, and the veils, the headdresses, the leg ornaments, and the headbands, the perfume boxes, the charms, and the rings, the nose jewels, the festal apparel, and the mantles, the outer garments, the purses, and the mirrors, the fine linen, the turbans, and the robes.
And so it shall be, instead of a sweet smell, there will be a stench, instead of a sash, a rope, instead of well-set hair, baldness, instead of a rich robe, a girding of sackcloth, and branding instead of beauty.
Your men shall fall by the sword, and your mighty in the war. Her gates shall lament and mourn, and she, being desolate, shall sit on the ground. So, in this last portion of the follies that are being rebuked, God focuses on the way in which Judah has been trusting her wealth, how she's prioritized it, and prized it to the point of even taking that which belonged to the poor, scraping the vineyard clean, taking away all of the gleanings that the poor should have been able to grab, to grab all the plunder of the poor to make themselves rich, brings the judgment of God upon them.
And so then they are the ones who crush the faces of the poor as they would shred the very grapes that they just harvested. What do they do with all this extra wealth? Well, they flaunt it. We find the daughters of Zion prancing about with bells on their ankles and trying to grab all the attention they can.
21 items of finery are listed that they all wear, and all those things will be done away with. We see the excessive emphasis upon wealth in the life of Judah, and God says, consider what will happen when all of this is taken away so very quickly.
What will you have then? And so the Lord takes action to bring judgment, defending the poor. He shows the foolishness of flaunting wealth. And then finally, he shows how wealth is a failure. You can't really trust in it.
You can't really depend upon it. And so we see this in verse 17 and verses 24 through 26. God undoes all of their confidence in wealth and shows that in verse 17. He says, therefore the Lord will strike with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the Lord will uncover their secret parts.
And then verses 24 and 25. So it shall be. Instead of a sweet smell, there will be a stench. Instead of a sash, a rope. Instead of well-set hair, baldness. Instead of a rich robe, a girding of sackcloth.
And branding instead of beauty. Your men shall fall by the sword, and you're mighty in the war. Her gates shall lament and mourn, and she being desolate shall sit on the ground. And so you hear that key word of instead.
There's an exchange. It has been this way, but instead of that, here's something else. And these reversals are repeated to be emphasized, but they're also reversals that are total. It isn't a slight degradation.
It isn't a falling off. It isn't a lessening of wealth. It's an utter reversal where all of the wealth is gone. All of the independence is gone. All of the ability to flaunt and show that these are self-made people.
All of it is taken away in a very drastic fashion. Now it helps to think about why it is that the Lord emphasizes this so much in comparison to the other three follies that he rebuked. He rebuked pride.
He rebuked the idolatry. He rebuked the military trust. Well, we have lots of armies, so we're fine. But when it comes to this, when it comes to their wealth, he spends a little extra time. There's a lot more word pictures in play, a lot more emphasis as he's rebuking their trust in wealth.
I think the reason is, and why it was saved for last, is because their trust in wealth is what supported the other three things. They were proud of their rich and abundant culture, and they were proud of all of these idols covered over in silver and gold and all their luxuriously appointed shrines.
And they were very proud of all the chariots and soldiers and fortified cities they had. But you know, what funded all of those other false trusts was the abundance of their wealth. The fact that they had the money to spend on all of those things.
And so he's getting down to this root, the love of money as a root of all kinds of evil, and God is exposing that. And so this is why it's kind of saved for last and given a lot more emphasis. There are three ways that God judges this trust in wealth, and we find exposure.
He promises exposure. He promises enslavement, and he promises emptiness. And the first exposure is seen there in verse 17. Therefore the Lord will strike with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the Lord will uncover their secret parts.
So there's an uncovering that happens to the daughters of Zion. Remember that the daughters of Zion function as a metaphor. Certainly there were women in Jerusalem acting this way,.
But it's also a.
Reminder of all of the satellite cities, the fortified cities, and the armament cities that were attached to Judah and Jerusalem, wherein they flaunted their wealth and their military prowess and so on.
And so with one stroke in describing the fall of the daughters of Zion, God is describing what happens to the fall of a nation as well as the loss of pride amongst the women of the city, of the capital city.
The idea of striking with a scab the crown of the head has the idea of some kind of sickness, some kind of disease that causes this the women's hair to fall out, or to totally ruin their hair, which was given to women as a covering for her glory.
But also the Lord will uncover their secret parts, meaning that they will be exposed in a shameful fashion. So it's a combination of two things and a close connection in verse 17, sickness and shame. So these women are going to be exposed in a way that they thought would never happen.
Why didn't they think that it would ever happen, that they would ever be exposed? Well, 21 layers of finery. I mean, and if you're hiding under 21 layers of finery, the last thing you think is that you're going to get exposed.
You're under that much wealth, that much finery, that much luxury. No one can ever see anything shameful underneath all of that. But the Lord says, I'm going to take all that away, and what's left? What's left when all this false covering goes away?
Well, there's going to be an exposure of how sick they truly are and how shameful they truly are. And again, the idea of sickness and being exposed, both are connected with the judgments of God that he talked about in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28.
But they're also associated with warfare. Disease always accompanies warfare. Disease is one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, right? So in warfare comes disease as part of it. But also the fact that they get exposed, either because they don't have enough for clothing anymore, perhaps it all got burnt up or all used for something else, but also when a nation was conquered, it was typical for the conquered ones as slaves to be led away naked in shame.
So either way, this is a pointing forward to that day of judgment that's going to come against their city. So God promises exposure where they thought that they would be covered. That is a familiar theme in the Bible, where the Lord in his judging work, he exposes where men try to cover.
And we remember that Adam and Eve sinned against the Lord and immediately tried to cover themselves, to hide their shame. And how did they try to do that? Well, in two ways. They sewed fig leaves together for an immediate covering, but they also hid amongst the trees of the garden.
And the Lord, when he called them to account in sifting the matter, exposed them in their shame. The fig leaves didn't work. The trees didn't work to cover them before the face of God. And so we are reminded that we don't need just any covering that temporarily makes one feel OK.
Even a normal kind of covering isn't good enough, as we see from 21 layers of finery. Why wasn't the first three OK? Why do you need the other 18 layers? Because none of these layers are good enough. What we need is some sort of dealing with the sin before the face of God.
And so God began to show that in the covenants that he made with his sinful creatures, showing how it is there to be in right relationship with him and offering to them the shadows of the ultimate covering that we have in Christ.
And again, what's the language that we have with our Savior, Jesus Christ, but righteous clothing, clothed in righteousness, white robes that are spotless. And so this language comes to bear because of the original emphasis on shame and exposure in nakedness of our sin in the garden.
So the Lord says, you're not going to be able to keep covering yourself up and and covering up over all of your sin through your 21 layers of finery, all of that's going to be taken away and you're going to be exposed.
You'll have nothing to cover you in the day of judgment. Now, wealth is not the only thing that we might use to mask sin, to try to mask shame. But it is a very common thing to be used to mask shame. Now, also, we see that the Lord promises enslavement, not only exposure, but enslavement.
Verse 24, and so it shall be instead of a sweet smell, there will be a stench. Instead of a sash of rope, instead of well set hair, baldness, instead of a rich robe, a girding of sackcloth and branding instead of beauty.
So this is a contrast between what they enjoy in the present as Isaiah is preaching to them and what they're going to suffer in the future when God's judgment comes. It's a way of bringing to mind what really matters.
It's very difficult for Isaiah to preach the coming judgment of God and the need for repentance from sin when these folks are doing so well. Everything's fine. What do you mean? We're enjoying all of this abundance.
Why are you so negative, Isaiah? So Isaiah brings to mind, well, what will it be like when the judgment of God comes? Think about what's going to be exchanged. So we envision here in this verse a long march of slavery that is described by a stench and a rope and baldness and sackcloth and branding.
The slaves in a line being led by a rope, you see, instead of a sash, they're being led away. The rope ties them together and forces them away from their home city, away from Jerusalem, all the way into captivity.
We remember the laments in the Psalms about the Jews finding themselves in captivity and mourning having been taken away from their city, from their homeland. They are shaved, their heads are shaved to depersonalize them and to humiliate them.
It was a sign of a slave to shave your heads. As also it was a sign of mourning for several cultures to say that they were in mourning, they shaved their heads. People shaving their heads has recently become very fashionable, maybe because of sorrowful, being sorrowful or because of a sign of slavery.
I'm not sure, but that's why we have baldness in this context. And so they are taken away, their heads are shaved and they now have sackcloth. Sackcloth is that garb of deep mourning, the great painful mourning.
They would wear sackcloth and they would put ashes on their heads from time to time. But also notice the branding instead of beauty. Slaves also were seared with hot irons to show who now owned them and to mark them forever as slaves.
So that even later on, if somebody else were to find them, they would see the mark of the slave and know what kind of a person that they were. And so all of these adornments that they enjoyed and reflected on and gave them comfort and assurance, all of these are replaced and they are led away.
And so this folly of trusting in wealth is something that is deeply ingrained in the human heart. It is a difficult thing to dislodge. It's so tangible that we would depend upon and trust upon wealth instead of the Lord.
We can begin to get the idea that if things are well off materially, then things are well off spiritually. And if things are poor materially, it must be that things are bad off spiritually. And even though that may be instinctive, that's not biblical.
We have in this particular passage a reminder, I think, of how difficult it is to get rid of this folly. Here in verse 24, this is a prophecy that came true. And it came true in the time of the Babylonians.
Babylon was the one who led the remnants of Judah captive in just this fashion and took them to the river Euphrates and took them away from their homeland. The mourning, the laments of Psalm 137 and so on were because of the Babylonian captivity.
And it reminds me of that folly of wealth, the folly of trusting in wealth being deep in the heart, even of good King Hezekiah. Remember that Isaiah ministered in the time of Hezekiah. In fact, he and Hezekiah were calling upon the Lord to deliver them from the Assyrians, and God did deliver them.
But it was later on that Hezekiah, you may remember, led the Babylonian envoys on a tour of all their wealth. And the Babylonian envoys were just making a shopping list for later on. Like, oh, thank you for showing us that.
Thank you for showing us that. Yeah, so you are indeed a wonderful target for our later conquering. But it was his folly of trusting in wealth and priding himself in wealth that led him to showcase all of that to the Babylonian envoys.
And he was rebuked for that and promise came, they're the ones who are going to lead you captive. This enslavement that we see in verse 24, this is also a theme in regards to sin. The type of enslavement that is envisioned in sin is one in which if we're not serving the Lord, then we are serving others.
And any other taskmaster that we may envision is a terrible taskmaster. To try to serve the self, there is no end to that. To serve others in the fear of man is a snare, there's no end to that. If we're trying to fight against our coming death and to please ourselves as much as possible before we die, that fear of death, that's slavery.
To try to always keep other people happy, that's enslavement, we're tangled up in that. And those types of fears, those controlling thoughts and concerns are various forms of enslavement. But when Jesus Christ presents himself as our savior, he also presents himself as our sovereign.
And he calls us to serve him, to labor for him. And yet, Paul, as the bond slave of Jesus Christ, described service to Christ as liberty. He described it as freedom because of the nature of who Christ is and the joy that we have and the salvation that we have in Christ.
That we're delivered from this meaningless emptiness that Ecclesiastes described so well when we're trying to live without respect to the glory of God. When we think about our wealth, we have been told in many times, in many places, we've been told that because we live in the time that we live in and the country that we live in, despite all of the problems and so on, that we are in the top percentile of wealthy people in the world and in the history of the world.
And if you were to take the idea, which I think is a good idea, to think of technology as a form of wealth, in the history of the world, we are wealthier than any Nebuchadnezzar that ever lived. That's not sinful in and of itself.
That's not a problem in and of itself. But why has our Lord so blessed us? Well, to take what all that God has given to us and steward it in some fashion in a way that will please him. And that is a liberating thing to recognize that what we have is truly not our own, but we are stewards and we want to use it well for our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ.
The last theme in verses 25 and 26 is emptiness. So there's exposure, there's enslavement, and there's emptiness. Verses 25 and 26. Your men shall fall by the sword and you're mighty in the war. Her gates shall lament and mourn, and she being desolate shall sit on the ground.
So here comes the clarity. Why is it that there's going to be disease and slavery and disaster and all the wealth will be taken away? Because of war. Because foreign armies are going to come and conquer you.
And it's a very sad scene as we're moving away from this picture, the last scene that you see, if you're in the tail end of that long rope train of slaves, as you look back, you see Jerusalem burned, her gates burned black, soot and ashes, this mourning and wisps of smoke, the stones of the walls lie in heaps all around, and Zion is desolate, a habitat for jackals.
That which pained the heart of Nehemiah as he served as the cupbearer to the pagan king, because he knew how sad a scene it was that the city of Jerusalem to exist like that. Well, this shows an emptiness, shows a desolation, shows what's left after all the investment in their pride, all of these false trusts, how they expended their generations to build themselves up in pride, in idolatry, in military power and in wealth, to say, come and see our glory, to commit this very same sin of humanity in the plains of Shinar.
Come, let us make a name for ourselves and let us build something to our own name. What's left? What's left is rubble. The only thing that's left is what archaeologists may come later and see, everybody's trash left in underneath of two feet of earth and say, oh, wow, people lived here.
But it's all garbage. This is all the remnants of what was there and the desolation is meant to remind us of what lasts versus what does not last. Now, this is not a happy prophecy or promise, but it is part of a major part of Isaiah's message.
Remember the calling of Isaiah in Isaiah chapter six. We remember that famous verse, here am I, send me in verse eight. And then you have to keep on reading and find out what kind of mission it was. The verses one through seven is here am I, save me because he sees the holiness of God.
But then it's here am I, send me. Now, what does the Lord send Isaiah to do, to say? Well, verse nine of Isaiah six, the Lord said, go and tell this people, keep on hearing, but do not understand. Keep on seeing, but do not perceive.
Make the heart of this people dull and their ears heavy and shut their eyes, lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and return and be healed. And I said, Lord, how long?
And he answered, until the cities are laid waste and without inhabitants, the houses are without a man, the land is utterly desolate. The Lord has removed men far away and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land.
But yet a tenth will be in it and will return and be for consuming as a terebinth tree or as an oak whose stump remains when it is cut down. So the holy seed shall be its stump. And so there's the promise that the salvation that God has planned will come in the wake of the destruction of the judgment that he has ordained.
There is the hope of something changing, something better on the other side of this old covenant judgment. And what is on the other side of this, but that although this old covenant Jerusalem will be shaken and this kingdom will be shattered and brought to an end, there is an unshakable mountain and an everlasting dominion with a heavenly city.
And that when Jesus redeems his bride by his blood and washes her with the water of his word, he reigns over her in glory forever. And his kingdom is unshakable. And so the message of Isaiah did stop the ears and blind the eyes.
But when Jesus came, he said to his disciples concerning this very same passage, How blessed are your ears because you hear and understand. How blessed are your eyes because you see and you perceive the grace of God being manifest in Jesus Christ who is that holy seed who came out of the stump of Israel.
We will leave it there and next time as the Lord wills we will start looking at Isaiah chapter 4 and the Vineyard of the Lord.
