Bible Talks - Sunday Night Church
Series: On Eagles Wings - Isaiah 1-39 · Talk No. 1
The Grand Vision
Sunday, 27 June 2004
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1. On the cusp…
When the last reigning monarch of great Britain died (George VI), the newspapers of the day proclaimed: “The King is Dead. Long live the Queen”. They did so, because one of the great comforting factors in recent history for British people was the certainty of the flow of control and power. The King might be dead, but there was someone else ready in the wings, waiting to take over keep things running smoothly.
But that wasn’t the case in 1996 when the then leader of the People’s Republic of China – Den Xiaoping was on his deathbed. Deng represented stability in the world’s most populous nation. He had masterminded that country’s slow and careful opening to the rest of the world, balancing all sorts of pressures and concerns. It had been a dangerous balancing act, but one that was remarkably successful in seeing China cope with the demand for change.
But with Deng on his deathbed and no obvious successor , China was on a knife edge, and the future was very uncertain.
And over 2500 years ago, a young man called Isaiah was in similar circumstances as he stood in the temple in Jerusalem, hearing God call him to be a prophet. By the best of Isaiah’s and our reckoning, the year was 740bc, the year that King Uzziah died (6:1).
With all the strange names and places, it’s very easy to feel remote and distant from this mighty book. But the truth is, that the very real social and political situation that Isaiah finds himself in echoes strongly with our own experiences, and if we soak ourselves in this book, get to know Isaiah and wrestle with the vision that God gave him, we will find ourselves caught up in powerful and relevant ways with God’s message to his people then, as it speaks to us now.
2. Isaiah’s Vision.
So let’s get down to business and see what all the fuss is about… The whole book of Isaiah is a vision, as v1 reveals. This reveals that God himself is the author.
There are six aspects to this vision – as you can see from your outlines.
a. An Historical Vision.
The vision that God gives Isaiah addresses real historical circumstances, and while some of the exact dates are a little fuzzy (due mainly to calendar differences), this doesn’t detract from the ‘realness’ of the events and situations.
Isaiah lived in the time when the once united nation of Israel had split. The term ‘Israel’ now referred to the northern kingdom which consisted of the northern-most of the original twelve tribes, which rebelled and split off from the tribe of Judah. Judah retained Jerusalem as it’s capital, along with the temple that Solomon built. It’s in Jerusalem that Isaiah has this vision.
We’ve said that the current King of Judah is Uzziah, and that he is close to death.
During his reign, Uzziah had hung on to the great truth handed down from King David that God was the only true King, and he and all other humans kings were merely ‘custodians’ of the land and the people. Uzziah, like many in Judah had looked forward to the day when all the earth would know and acknowledge that truth.
For most of Uzziah’s reign, Judah and Israel had held a position of some influence in the region, and that creed they proclaimed of God being the only true King, was relatively easy to live by.
But things were rapidly changing for the worse. Political and military pressures were building fast, and threatening both Judah and the northern kingdom.
In the year that Uzziah died things were not good on the home front either. The new-found wealth that had come in the earlier years of Uzziah’s reign was not evenly distributed. The wealthy few had little regard for the poor and struggling majority, and deep cracks were opening up in Judean society as justice was bought and sold, or disregarded totally.
Religious observance had continued, but it increasingly failed to conceal the rot underneath. The creed that the Lord God was King was ringing increasingly hollow as people disregarded it’s ethical and moral implications and lost confidence in it, as military and political pressures made the national boarders ever more fragile.
That the Lord God really was King was going to be a hard belief to live out in the turbulent times that lay ahead.
But what we have in Isaiah’s prophecy is God speaking into the chaos giving his perspective on all that is happening around and how Judah must respond.
b. A Grand Vision.
Given that, it’s no surprise that the vision God gives Isaiah is big in size, but it is also big in ideas.
It begins (1:2) with heaven and earth called to bear witness, and finishes (66:22) with a new heaven and a new earth. The opening describes Jerusalem under judgment, and the closing chapters picture a new Jerusalem representing paradise.
It is a book of renewal on an absolutely huge, cosmic scale – literally the re-creation of the universe!
It deals with God’s dealings with his people from the 8th century BC (1:1) right down to our own time and beyond – to the things that will bring history to a close and usher in eternity (66:22-24).What we have is the whole Bible in miniature and in a very real sense the vision is as big as the mind of God himself.
c. A Structured Vision.
The vision is carefully structured. It can be divided into many different parts, but a simple handle is found by the division into chapters 1-39 and 40-66 – which is what our approach will be. We will seek to cover chapters 1-39 in this series and the rest in a later series.
And while I’ve just said that the overall theme of the book moves from Jerusalem to the New Jerusalem, from fallen creation to new creation, from chapter 1 to 66, in fact this movement takes place again and again within the book as well as across the whole of it. We are frequently given little snippets and insights into the new creation all the way through – little glimpses before we get the full vision at the end…
d. A United Vision.
As always, there are many suggestions and assertions that challenge the unity and integrity of the book, which in turn, can challenge it’s validity.
However, to keep it simple, the weight of evidence lies with treating the book of Isaiah as a whole, and even if there are some tensions within it, it has a fundamental theological unity which overrides some of the other concerns.
e. A Focussed Vision.
The opening verse of the book spotlights Judah and Jerusalem as the focus of the vision.
Now this is far more than a statement of geography. These places were the centre of promise for God’s people and the promise now seems under threat by rebellion against God. However, God remains committed to his covenant and he promises to do a refining work to raise up a purified remnant people.
As we look closer, we discover the focus is sharper still with the promise of a royal Messiah, a special chosen one of God, who will arise from this remnant.
This king appears in the early chapters, only to appear again later in a different guise - this time as the servant who will actually create this remnant community to share in a renewed kingdom under his authority.
f. A Foundational Vision.
Isaiah can be regarded as the ‘Romans’ of the O.T., or even as a ‘fifth gospel’. Because it is here that the threads come together and the big picture of God’s purpose for his people and his world are clearly set out.
It is no coincidence that it is the second-most quoted O.T. book in the N.T. (66 quotes from Matthew to 1 Peter), and the book that Jesus quotes from the most. But the primary importance of Isaiah in the N.T. is because it’s the O.T. book that bears witness to Jesus the most. In the synagogue at the start of Jesus’ public ministry, this is the book that is put in Jesus’ hands. He reads Isaiah 61:1-2 and declares that ‘This is it!’. This Scripture is fulfilled in me! (Luke 4:16-21).
The whole N.T. moves to it’s climax by echoing Isaiah’s promise of seeing sin and death conquered and the new heaven and new earth established.
The climax of the New Testament echoes and completes the climax of Isaiah.
All in all, the book of Isaiah is not one to be over-looked.
3 The prelude (1:1-31).
So lets move on and have a look at the prelude to this monster book in the verses of Chapter 1.
Verse 1 stands as a title for the whole book, and it contains lots of information to help us understand its message.
It tells us that the entire book is a single vision. It tells us whose vision it is, and the period that Isaiah exercised his prophetic ministry.
For the duration of the reign of the four kings mentioned here (Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah), as Judea and Jerusalem were under ever increasing threat of destruction by Assyria, Isaiah saw, by the power of God, what God was doing with his people, why he was doing it, and where it was all heading under his sovereign guidance and control.
Now I know that many of us struggle with many parts of the O.T., how it is to be read and how it speaks to us. But in just these few verses this morning, we have great guidance in this:
While the vision is directed to a specific city and nation in the 8th century BC, we only have to reach the start of chapter 2 to see that this is merely a vantage point, something like a lookout in the Blue Mountains, that the prophet looks out from.
The fact is, the vision is absolutely breathtaking in its scope, it encompasses all nations – including ours – and reaches forward to the very end of time.
Here is a vision that is guaranteed to cure us of spiritual short-sightedness if we are prepared to grasp it with both hands – or better still, allow it to grasp us!
Let’s quickly see how it starts in chapter 1…
a. The problem.
The first thing stated is the problem.
Isaiah begins his prophecy by calling his fellow citizens the children and people of God. This imagery of the people of Judah and Jerusalem being the children and people of God is a powerful one. It conjures up pictures of the Exodus and the covenant forged at Sinai – a special people saved by God, called out of slavery for God’s own special purposes and blessings… In that sense, we can identify powerfully with Isaiah’s audience. We too are the special people of God, called out of slavery to sin, and called to a life of service to God.
But… there’s a major problem…
God’s children had become rebels (2-4). His Daughter Zion had become a harlot (8,21). Their worship of God had become separated from justice. Their lives had become a travesty of what the people of God should be living, and the fatherless and widows had suffered (17) as a result.
So complete and ingrained had this rejection of what God stood for, that no amount of temple ceremonies could make up for it. Like many of the other prophets of his time (Amos, Micah), Isaiah insists that the ceremonial worship and even prayer (15) are worthless if not accompanied by an active concern for justice. Their sins are: “are like scarlet… they are red like crimson”. Back in v2, the call to heaven and earth to listen in to the words of God spoken through Isaiah underlines just how high the stakes are in this confrontation between the Lord God and his people. In a very real sense the welfare of the entire universe depends on how God’s people respond to His word to them.
This is a pitiful and tragically serious state of affairs. How will God respond?
b. The answer.
What’s the answer?
God will come in judgement on his enemies – and his enemies are now his children (24-25a). The writing is already on the wall (5-7) and God makes very clear that He will bring this threat of judgement to completion (28-30).
Is all lost? Well, we know by the fact that we are here today, that it is not, but we need to look a little more closely to understand why…
c. A closer look at the answer.
Yes, Judah is rebellious. Yes, God will bring judgment. But judgment is not an end in itself. God will purge and cleanse his people (25b-27). Salvation will actually come through judgment. There will be cleansing of sin for all who turn to the Lord (18-20), although clearly the process will not be an easy or pleasant one.
When I worked at the church in Dapto, just south of Wollongong, I visited young bloke from church at work – in the main blast furnaces of the steelworks. It’s an awesome sight to see and feel the power of the furnaces as they convert dirty, coarse, primitive iron ore into glowing, pure, useful molten steel.
In v25, the main image is of crude ore being passed through a furnace and emerging as refined metal. And this presents the choice facing Judah and Jerusalem.
4. The conclusion (2:1-4)
But before Isaiah continues with his message of judgment, he gives us a glimpse of the end, of the amazing future that God has in hand as we move into the opening verses of chapter 2.
a. A new world order (2:1-4)
Mountains played an important part in the religions of Israel’s neighbouring countries. They built temples and alters on their peaks, as they were thought to be the meeting point between heaven and earth. The Caanites had worshipped their false gods in the same way and Israel had picked up some of these practices when they failed to excise such practices from the land. Isaiah here foresees the day when one holy mountain will stand supreme, and to which all nations and peoples will come and share in the blessings of God’s rule.
Effectively, Isaiah describes a new world order, where God reigns supreme. All nations will come to him and receive his blessing. God’s word will not just be acknowledged by everyone, but will be practised by all and there will be evermore only justice and peace among all peoples.
5. And now (2:5)
a. The grand vision.
The image of the mountain of the Lord is a symbol of the coming Kingdom of God… A vision reaches its climax in Jesus. The purging work has been done. Heaven awaits all who turn to the Lord. But Hebrews 12 teaches us that if we belong to Jesus then we have already come to the heavenly Mount Zion.
b. Walk this way.
Isaiah was not blind to the harsh realities of life. He spoke out against injustice, faithless politics and hypocritical religious practise with a passion. But it was this vision of the future which inspired him. Religion for him was never an escape from reality, but rather, the source from which he drew the strength he needed to face reality squarely.
That same vision was intended to inspire the people of Judah to turn from their rebellious, corrupt ways, to the Lord of heaven and earth.
2800 years later, we now have the full picture.
God has kept his promises.
We have seen his power to accomplish his good purposes throughout history.
He has demonstrated his patience in forgiving all who turn to his servant. And he listens to all who humbly call on his name.
So… v5 “come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.
Let us walk in his ways.
