Wednesday, June 5, 2024

In our Bibles in turn to Isaiah, we're looking at chapters 1 through 5 as an overview.

As we talked about last time, we are zeroing in on chapter 1, verses 2 through 9 as our first passage to work through.

And to understand what goes on there, it's helpful to see it in its context.

So, last time we talked about chapters 1 through 12, which is the first section of Isaiah.

And now we're looking at a portion of chapters 1 through 12, verses 1 through 5.

Sermons from Isaiah that don't have a date attached to them.

There's no particular king that is mentioned, no particular historical, social problem that is identified as a time marker.

But these sermons are carefully constructed in order to give an idea of what all the book of Isaiah is about.

And so, you can think of these as kind of the hall of fame of Isaiah's sermons and sermonizing

And they're carefully collected together in this opening part of the scroll of Isaiah.

And so, what we have here, we're going to begin by reading verses 1 through 9 of Isaiah 1.

Let's begin with a word of prayer. Father, we thank you for the time you've given to us. Pray that this survey of these chapters would be a blessing as we consider your holiness and we consider the hope that we have in Jesus Christ.

And I pray that you would be honored and glorified in this. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Okay, Isaiah chapter 1, beginning in verse 1.

The vision of Isaiah, the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken. I have nourished and brought up children.

They have rebelled against me. The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master's crib.

But Israel does not know. My people do not consider. Alas, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a brood of evildoers, children who are corruptors.

They have forsaken the Lord. They have provoked to anger the Holy One of Israel.

They have turned away backward. Why should you be stricken again?

You will revolt more and more. The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faints.

From the sole of the foot even to the head there is no soundness in it but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores.

They have not been closed or bound up or soothed with ointment. Your country is desolate.

Your cities are burned with fire. Strangers devour your land and your presence, and it is desolate as overthrown by strangers.

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.

Unless the Lord of hosts had left to us a very small seed like Gomorrah.

To understand this opening volley of a rebuke, it's good to try to put it into the context of the first five chapters.

So I want to take you on a tour loosely based off your journey through the temple, though I put into the entrance a coffin because this people, this generation, this covenant people, they're dead on arrival.

There's no hope on the outset about all this covenant breaking going on.

And chapter one begins talking about rebellious children. So this first pillar, and the first pillar we're looking at is about rebellious children.

And that's verses two through three, introduces that metaphor and then it carries throughout the rest of the chapter.

In what ways are they rebellious? Well, they're politically rebellious in verses four through nine.

It talks about the city. It talks about the nation.

It talks about the land, the country, and how all of it is defiled.

The next passage deals with religious rebellion, how they were idolatrous and not being faithful in their worship of the

Lord. And then their social rebellion in that they had covenant obligations to one another that they were not keeping, and they were being unjust towards one another.

And each one of these three sections of chapter one begins with a slight rebuke of an introduction, lays out the charges, and then closes with a very faint hope at the end of each one of these three sections.

And that's what we get in the very first chapter of Isaiah. Notably, the witnesses called to bring judgment against the rebellious children are nothing less than all of heaven and earth.

We'll be looking at that in more detail when we come to verse two in depth.

So this is a fairly heavy chapter full of rebuke.

There are some hints of hope. But in parallel to chapter one is chapter five, where once again, we have a vivid metaphor.

We begin with these children that God cared for, that he raised, and yet they're dumber than an ox, because at least the ox knows its master and where to go get the food.

But the children are even more ignorant than the ox. How terrible is that?

And you think that God, being a wonderful God, taking care of children, that these children are well cared for.

Same thing over here. Now we have a new metaphor, but it's in parallel, that of a rotten vineyard.

And rather than heaven and earth being called to be witnesses, Jerusalem and Judah are being called to bear witness, which of course is in parallel to heaven and earth.

Jerusalem is where the temple was, the throne of God on earth. And then you have the land, the land, same word in Hebrew, the land of Judah and the land or the earth, same word.

So witnesses once again are called to consider a rotten vineyard.

And God says, consider my vineyard, I took really good care of it. I took care of the vine,

I built a wall, I built a wine press and a tower, did everything to really care for this vineyard.

And you'd think that after all that I did for it, it would bring out good grapes.

But in fact, it brought out wild grapes, awful grapes, sour, shriveled, nothing grapes.

And so he calls Jerusalem and Judah as witnesses to the rotten vineyard.

He then proceeds to, through his prophet, give seven woes. You may remember

Jesus doing something similar against the Pharisees and the

Sadducees, the scribes saying, woe, woe, woe. Well, though what he said was original to them, the idea of getting a series of woes against covenant breakers, that's not an original idea in the

New Testament. We can find that in the Old Testament and we see it in Isaiah chapter 5. And then the last portion of that chapter details how thorough

God is going to be in bringing judgment against Judah, Jerusalem, all their inhabitants.

It's going to be an absolutely thorough judgment. And you'd think it would be after a seven -fold woe, which is the idea of completion and fullness.

Now, these two pillars stand in parallel to each other as you have a vivid metaphor of something that was precious to God, something he cared for and yet was rebellious and turned away from him.

He calls witnesses against them and then he lays out the charges in each. So very similar ideas, chapter 1, chapter 5.

Now, on the interior, chapters 2 through 4, we're taking on a tour, a more detailed tour of the folly of these children.

Remember, so the big section that we're in is the children of woe, which is chapters 1 through 6.

And the question of chapters 1 through 5 is, is there any hope? And we are given hope.

In chapters 2 and 4. So we're not going to go take a look at all the terrible problems and the follies of Judah without being given hope.

We're going to take that tour. We're going to look at all of it and think about the follies of Judah. But coming and going, we're going to find two doors of hope.

You can't go through this tour without finding hope as you walk in and as you come out. And the first door of hope is the

Lord's house, meaning the Lord's household. We see that in chapter 2, verses 1 through 4.

And it's house and then it turns into household. So Isaiah chapter 2, verse 1 says,

The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. Now it shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the

Lord's house shall be established on the top of the mountains and shall be exalted above the hills.

And all nations shall flow to it. Many people shall come and say, come and let us go up to the mountain of the

Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways and we shall walk in his paths.

For out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations and rebuke many people.

They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nations shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.

The place where they learn no more war is Jerusalem, is Zion. All the nations flowing up to Zion.

The place that they beat their spears and their swords into plowshares and pruning hooks is

Zion, is Jerusalem. In this place, the mountain of the Lord's house, and he says this comes about in the latter days.

We don't know about the latter days, come back Saturday for the eschatology workshop. But essentially it comes down to when the

Messiah comes on the scene and brings the new covenant with him, you're coming into the latter days of the old covenant.

And so in the new covenant, there's a temple and it's a big temple, living stones quarried from the nations, brought in.

And that's what we have pictured here in chapter two. So there's hope. There's hope as you walk in to what is rather a gloom filled section of chapters one through five.

We have an epitaph, we have an obituary, and we have a eulogy. So it's all about mourning.

This is a dead end apparently, but we do have hope on both sides.

So before we look at this, I want to talk about the Lord's branch, chapter four, one through six, which also stands in parallel.

As you see the pillars stand in parallel, so also do the notes of hope. So chapter four, the entirety of the chapter is full of hope.

Chapter four, verse one begins this way, and in that day, seven women shall take hold of one man saying, we will eat our own food and wear our own apparel, only let us be called by your name to take away our approach.

This is a transition verse from scenes of judgment where there's nothing but desperation. And the idea of war, all these men will die in war, and then what will the women do?

But this is a transition verse into hope, because the idea begins to be paralleled to chapter two, the nations all come up to the mountain, and we have other metaphors in the scripture, the birds all come nest in the one tree.

Also we have all these women being married to one man, this is not an advocacy for polygamy, it's a metaphor.

We also have another passages, 10 men will grab the sleeve of one Jew and he will lead them up Mount Zion.

So these are common metaphors looking forward to the new covenant and the people being brought in.

In that day, verse two, in that day the branch of the Lord, the Naseer of the

Lord, Jesus is the Nazarene, the branch of the Lord shall be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and appealing for those of Israel who have escaped.

And it shall come to pass that he who is left in Zion and remains in Jerusalem will be called holy. Right now the

Zion in Jerusalem that they have is full of unholy, it's unholy no matter where you go. Later on Jeremiah would say every intersection in a marketplace is an idle factory, this place is not holy at all.

But in that day, Jerusalem and Zion, everybody there is holy.

Everyone who is recorded among the living in Jerusalem, when the Lord has washed away the sin of the world by the spirit of judgment and by the spirit of burning, so once the judgment is completed then the

Lord will create above every dwelling place of Mount Zion and above her assemblies a cloud and smoke by day and the shining of a flaming fire by night.

Just like it was in the wilderness, you know, where you had the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, the

Lord was always communing and abiding with his people. So that picture is being brought forward here.

For over all the glory there will be a covering and there will be a tabernacle for shade in the daytime from the heat for a place of refuge and for shelter from storm and rain.

What a beautiful picture of God communing with his people and bringing all the protection and shelter that they could possibly need.

So metaphors of hope for the people who are in need of comfort. Now let's take a look at the middle section here as the follies of trusting wealth and power and idols and self are all taken to task in the life of Judah.

We begin in verses five through six and we meet a people who forsake the

Lord and are forsaken by the Lord. This is bad news. So in chapter two and verses five through six,

O house of Jacob, come and let us walk in the light of the

Lord. We'll come back to that verse in a second. For you have forsaken your people, talking to the

Lord now, for you have forsaken your people, the house of Jacob, because they are filled with Eastern ways. They are soothsayers like the

Philistines and they are pleased with the children of foreigners. So verse six says that God has forsaken his people.

Why? Because they've forsaken him. They're going after the idols, the ways of soothsaying, the ways of the

Philistines, anything but the old fashioned worship up at the temple. Anything but the old fashioned religious calendar has the

Passover and the Day of Atonement and the Feast of Tabernacles and so on. Anything but that. We're going to dabble in this and dabble in that and the people have forsaken the

Lord and so the Lord has forsaken them. Is in verse five,

O house of Jacob, come and let us walk in the light of the Lord. Now if you have to call someone, it says now, why don't you come over here into the light?

What does that mean? Where are they at right now? They're in the darkness. You know, the Apostle John picks up on this metaphor in John chapter one and he talks about walking in the light even as God is in the light.

God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him and you don't walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.

And so when we read through first John chapter one verse five through chapter two verse two, what you discover is that walking in the light is not being perfect, not getting it right all the time, it's walking in truth.

Because verses eight, nine and ten of first John chapter one says that if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us. You see the contrast there?

It's are we in the light? Are we saying what God says? Are we using his words?

Are we in agreement with him saying the same thing that he does? Or are we saying other things using other definitions and therefore in the darkness, deceiving ourselves and being deceived?

So this invitation, this exhortation from Isaiah to the house of Jacob, come let us walk in the light of the

Lord is an invitation to those whose eyes have become accustomed to darkness, to come do something very uncomfortable.

Come into the blazing light of God. Now what's going to happen when you come into the blazing light of God?

Stuff's going to get exposed, stuff's going to get shown. You know, there's going to be, for some, there's going to be repentance.

And we know from chapter six, for others, there's just going to be hardness, right? Now if you put a bucket of butter and a bucket of wet cement out in the light, out in the sun, the same thing's not going to happen to both.

One's going to get softer and the other one's going to get harder, right? The difference between that, it's the grace of God, alright?

So by the grace of God, when the light of God shines upon believers and those who are born again, the light of God shining on us by the word of God softens us, brings us to repentance, right?

But we also find, as Isaiah is instructed in chapter six, preach. He says, how long until having eyes they no longer see and having ears they no longer hear?

Until it's all hardened wasteland and dust. Now the preaching of God's word, you see, is a sword, remember it's a sword, it's always acting in its judgment.

We found a judgment in the Bible, everyone's getting sorted into two camps, okay? When the word of God comes, there's a sifting that occurs.

People are always getting sorted out. Here are the Lord's people and here are those who need to repent, right?

There's a distinction that's being made by the preaching of God's word. So the invitation is, oh house of Jacob, come let us walk in the light of the

Lord. And the need for that is that they are full of folly and darkness. Now the way this works is chapter two verses seven through nine, those three verses introduce different ways in which

Judah is engaging in folly. They're focusing on wealth, they're looking at military power.

I know we don't have, you know, all that much problem with our culture today, right? As long as we're wealthy and have military power, everything's fine, right?

The folly of trusting wealth, the folly of trusting power. And then in chapter two verse eight, the folly of trusting idols.

And in chapter two verse nine, the folly of trusting self in a kind of humorous, ironic note in verse nine.

Immediately after introducing each one of these subjects, we begin to hear about them in reverse order, a very

Hebraic way of writing called a chiasm. We're going to do parallels, but they're going to be set in this order, opposite order.

And so in chapter two verses 10 through 19, there is the folly of trusting in self fully exposed.

Chapter two verses 20 through 22, the folly of trusting idols fully exposed. Chapter three verses one through 12, the folly of trusting power fully exposed.

And then finally in chapter three verses 13 through 26, the folly of trusting in wealth. To give an example of this, just go ahead and look at the first part of verse seven and we'll see this outer parallel as an example.

Their land is also full of silver and gold. There is no end to their treasures. Wealth is just flowing.

Now what good is that? Okay, so let's take a look at its parallel in chapter three verses 13 through 26.

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. Oh, here's how they got rich. 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 without stretched necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, making a jingling with their feet, kind of referring to what was in style at that time.

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. 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 perfumed 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, the entire closet and the wardrobe and the storage and the other closet.

Remember that clothing was one of the primary forms of wealth in this time.

So, the metaphor in this, again, as the daughter of Zion will be addressed time and again, the picturesque way of speaking of Jerusalem, the daughter of Zion is

Jerusalem, as if an infant lays upon her mother's breast is the image of the metaphor.

So, the daughter of Zion is Jerusalem. And so, she's being addressed because there is this trust in wealth, this trust in finery.

The idea is, if we have all these things and all these amenities, surely everything is fine.

But all that's going to be taken away. Verse 24, 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.

In other words, you're going to go into slavery. 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.

This expression, this metaphor of the city being taken into slavery and the finery of a woman being taken away and her becoming a slave and in desolate, that image is used not just about Jerusalem, but other nations and other city -states as well throughout the

Old Testament to describe how God brings those who are proud and arrogant and rebellion down into the depths of humility.

Okay, so that's how chapters 1 through 5 are arranged. And so, when we begin to look at chapter 1, verses 2 through 3 and following, and we're thinking about these witnesses to heaven and earth, we should remember the parallel pillar that's going to pick up that very same pattern and theme.

We should remember if we get bogged down by great measures of judgment and oracles of doom and so on, we should remember the doors of hope that God has put in place to encourage the hearers of this prophecy.

As we move through the various follies of Judah, we should remember the call in verse 5 to come into the light and to call trust in wealth and trust in power, trust in idols and trust in self as foolish.

That indeed these are not something that we can depend on and rest on, but rather we are to come back to the

Lord and depend upon Him. Okay, any questions or thoughts as we close? All right, well let's close with a word of prayer.

Father, we thank you so much for the time you've given us in your word. We pray that you would help us to remember the lessons that we've seen here in chapters 1 through 5.

I pray that we would turn our attention to you, that we would fear you rather than death or fear man, that we would think of you first, that we think of you most, that we would rejoice in the light of Jesus Christ and it's in His name that we pray.