Isaiah 1–5

0:00 21, 22 years, something like that, my family and I have taken a trip up to the coast of Maine to visit my mother-in-law, my wife's mother. She lives on the coast just across what's called the Union River Bay from Bar Harbor. It's absolutely beautiful. If you've never been up to the coast of Maine, I think it's one of the most beautiful places on the planet. The beaches there are not like what you're familiar with if you've been to beaches in Florida or North Carolina. They're not they're not sandy beaches, they're rocky beaches. So there's really, you know, nowhere you can kind of put down a towel and, you know, lay in the sun. It's not really that kind of beach. But you can stand on the edge of the shore and see the waves crashing up against the rocks and all the rest, and it's an amazing sight to see it. One of the things that I like to do when I'm there in Maine is take a kayak and set off on an adventurous journey across the Union River Bay, which usually is not that big of a deal. It's probably about two miles across, and so in order to, you know, do the whole thing, you got to go two miles across to the other side. You know, I always make sure to

1:02 step out of the kayak and put my foot on the shore like Christopher Columbus landing on the, you know, the New World. Then I jump back in the boat, head back across to where my mother-in-law's house is. Usually not a very big deal. The problem, though, with the Union River Bay is that even if the skies on a particular day are almost entirely blue, over the course of about 10 minutes, storms and squalls can make their way into the Union River Bay and kick up a pretty amazing problem, especially for a boat, a little boat that happens to be out there. Now, I've stood on the shore before and watched these storms roll in and the clouds come in. They just look ominous. There are dark patches up there. Occasionally you'll see one that rolls in sort of like a hand that's unfolding over the river, the river bay. It's just an incredible thing to see. And it's terrifying because one of the things that happens as you're looking across, on a clear day you can see clear across the two miles and you can see the shore on the other side, but as these storms roll in

2:05 you can see the mists and the rain and the fog and the darkness closing in and the other shore on the other side disappears from your sight. Now, that's not a huge deal to me when I'm standing on the shore because as soon as I see the darkness close in and the other shore disappear, I know that all I have to do is just turn around and walk back up to this really nice house and shut the door and I'm going to be safe from the storm. No big deal. There was one time a couple of years ago, however, when I was in the middle of the Union River Bay in my little kayak and one of these storms kicked up.

2:41 I must have been about a mile into the middle of it because as the mists came in and as the rain started and as the clouds unfolded above me, guess what happened? Both shorelines disappeared from sight. Both of them. And it was terrifying. See, to be in the middle of the lake, in the middle of the Union River Bay and have the storm roll in and have the shore disappear from your sight is a very different thing from being on the doorstep of the house. Because there's nowhere to run.

3:12 There's nowhere to go. There's nowhere that you can get for safety as the storm comes in. Now, obviously, I survived. Here I am, talking to you. Made it to the other side. Made it back to the house. But it's a terrifying thing. And that's exactly the kind of foreboding and fear and darkness that we see in the first five chapters of the book of Isaiah. Let me invite you to take a Bible and turn over to the book of Isaiah. If you're using one of the Red Pew Bibles in front of you, this book begins on page 566.

3:45 It doesn't actually have a page number on that page. You'll just see a big Isaiah there, but you can find page 567. Look across and you'll find the book of Isaiah starting there. We're beginning a study today of 11 weeks that are going to run all the way through the 66 books of the prophet Isaiah. It's an extraordinary book. I don't even know how to characterize it to you. people throughout history have always understood it to be one of the greatest prophetic books in the entire Bible, if not the greatest of the prophetic books in the Bible. I think that if I had to choose a favorite book of the Old Testament, you know, they ask the question, like, if you're stuck on a deserted island and you could only have one Old Testament book and one New Testament book, I think this one would be my Old Testament book. I think this is the one I would bring, because it is extraordinary. It's an absolutely epic story of God's plan to save his disobedient and sinful people. And he does it in this book with this spectacular display of power and in just an

4:47 astonishing way that sends out all of these rays of light like a sunrise, all of which land on the head of Jesus Christ in the New Testament. There are other places in the Old Testament that give us a glimpse of Jesus. The minor prophets talk about the importance of a king that's coming. The Old Testament law talks about the importance of the sacrificial system and how those sacrifices are going to atone for the sins of the people. But there's no other book in the whole Old Testament that takes all of those strands of messianic hope and salvation hope and pulls them all together into one. And so by the time you get to Isaiah 52, Isaiah 53, Isaiah 65, you've got this amazing mind-blowing panoramic vision of God's plan to save the world through a single divine suffering servant king who would make atonement for his people. It's mind-blowing and I hope by the end of this sermon series you'll be in awe of the saving God that Isaiah reveals and that you'll be

5:49 just astonished at what he has done in his own love and passion for you to save you. Let me give you a quick introduction to the book before we dive into these first five chapters. When Isaiah prophesied, the nation of Israel had already for several generations been split into two separate kingdoms. You'll be familiar with this if you were here through our series in Second Kings, because Israel, which was once a united kingdom under David and Solomon, split in about the year 1950, 50, something like that, into two different kingdoms. You had the northern kingdom in the north, obviously. It retained the name Israel. So in the Bible, once you get past the split and the civil war, every time you see the word Israel, it normally means the northern kingdom of Israel.

6:34 Sometimes it will mean the united kingdom. When you see the word Judah, that's referring to the southern kingdom of Judah, because Judah was the biggest tribe that was left. There were only two tribes left in the southern kingdom. Judah was the biggest one, and so the kingdom took on its name, had its capital in Jerusalem. If you remember from 2 Kings, what happened throughout that thing, the northern kingdom rebelled against the throne of David. They installed their own kings and those guys were a disaster. You remember King Ahab and all of his shenanigans fighting against the prophet Elijah. The southern kingdom retained the Davidic throne. So the guys that were sitting on the throne in Jerusalem in the south, these were the descendants of David. But it turns out that with very few exceptions, they really weren't any better than the imposters in the north.

7:17 They were evil, wicked people for the most part. You remember Ahaz? You got Ahab in the north. He's really bad. Ahaz in the south, a Davidic king, is like the worst king of them all. And it was during his reign, among others, that Isaiah was prophesying. Isaiah prophesied down there in the southern kingdom. He prophesied mostly in the capital city of Jerusalem during the years roughly 750 to 700 B.C. So, you know, if you were in 2023 right now, rewind 2023 years to the year zero, right?

7:54 And then you're talking about, you know, just at the beginning of the life of Jesus. Now rewind 750 years further past the Roman Empire, past the Roman Republic, all the way back to 750. And you've got the beginning of Isaiah's ministry, 700 years or so before the birth of Jesus. We really don't know that much about the prophet Isaiah himself. Obviously, we know he's a prophet because of his prophetic book here. And really, what we know about him is just what's told to us here in the book itself. In fact, most of what we know about Isaiah the man is told to us in the very first verse of the book.

8:31 If you look at that, 1-1. The vision of Isaiah, the son of Amos, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. Now, that basically tells us three things, two of which are helpful and one of which is not, right? He's the son of this guy named Amoz, who's never again mentioned in the Bible. We have no idea who he is. We have no idea what his profession was. We don't know if he was a farmer or a diplomat. We have no idea who Amoz was. Isaiah was his son, though.

9:03 Second, you can see that he saw visions concerning Judah and Jerusalem. So Judah is the southern kingdom. Jerusalem is its capital city. So he's in the south, not the north. And he was prophesying during the days of these three kings that we studied back in 2 Kings in the winter. Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, the really bad guy, and then Hezekiah, the good guy, kings of Judah. Now, another thing that we know just from reading his book is that Isaiah prophesied in an incredibly dangerous time for the nation of Judah.

9:40 In fact, it was during his lifetime in 712 B.C. that the northern kingdom was overrun by the Assyrian army and conquered and scattered into exile, never to be heard from again. That happened during Isaiah's lifetime. He would have lived to witness that. And so that Assyrian empire, which came down and crushed the northern kingdom, continued to press down toward Judah and the southern kingdom. So Isaiah, as he was prophesying, was surrounded by these enormous empires that were rising up. So you had Assyria coming down from the north.

10:13 You had Egypt coming up from the south. And then you've got this rising empire of Babylon that's eventually going to come crush the Assyrians and the Egyptians and take over the world, basically. Babylon is pressing in from this direction. And this little kingdom of Judah right here has got nowhere to run except into the ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, right here. They've just literally got nowhere to run. So they were getting pressed. And that forms the kind of main tension of the book. In the middle of that pressure, in the middle of that difficulty, what is the nation of Israel going to do?

10:48 Are they going to try to play these big empires off of one another? Are they going to try to create alliances between them and save themselves through worldly means? Or are they going to trust the Lord? That's what this book is about. This book of Isaiah is about Israel's failure to trust the Lord. There's sin against him and God's plan to save them. If you think about the book, Isaiah, it's got 66 chapters. You can kind of flip through if you want to and just kind of see what it does.

11:20 Most of it is poetry, as you can see. There are some sort of storytelling sections, but not many. Most of it is this prophetic poetry. And I think the book can be really neatly divided into three different volumes, like three different parts. Each of which, and this is where the book gets really fascinating. Each one of these three big parts of the book focuses in on one central character on whom God's salvation of his people depends. So that's what you've got in the book.

11:50 Three different sort of books or volumes in the book of Isaiah. The first of which, which runs from like chapter 1 all the way up through chapter 37, you would call the book of the king. Because it focuses in on this figure of a king who saves God's people. And you start to learn about who this king is, what he's going to do, what kind of character that he's got. Second book, which runs from 38 to 55, if you want to write that down, 38 to 55, focuses on a figure that Isaiah calls the suffering servant of the Lord.

12:22 And again, the salvation of God's people depends on this suffering servant doing his work in the same way that God's salvation of his people depends on the king in the first book. Third one, third book that runs from 55 to 66 or 56 to 66, you might call the book of the anointed conqueror because it focuses in on this one mighty conqueror who comes to save his people and judges people's enemies. And the salvation of God's people depends on this figure of the conqueror in the same way that it depends on the suffering servant and the king. So that's the big structure of the book. But what's fascinating about it is that as you read about the conqueror, as you read about the servant as you read about the king you start to realize oh my goodness certain things that are said about the king are also said about the conqueror and certain things that are said about the conqueror are said about the servant and the servant about the king these three figures of salvation all seem to be the same person the person at the center of isaiah's book the king

13:24 the servant the conqueror are all one thing you realize it's the messiah it's it's jesus see i think i think this is this is why isaiah is so famous this is why people have said through history that this is the greatest of the old testament prophets it's because more clearly than in any other book of the old testament god showed through isaiah exactly how he was going to save his people it was going to be through a single divine king who was also a suffering servant for his people and who ultimately would conquer the world it's a mind-blowing vision of the book. Well, today, we're not looking at the whole thing. We're not looking at very much of it today. What we're going to do today is look at the first five chapters of the book. We're not going to read the whole thing. It's just too long. There aren't going to be many times in the study of Isaiah where we do read the entire section that we're studying. So especially in this particular series, it's going to be really important for you to read ahead. If you look at the back of your

14:24 bulletin, you can kind of see the schedule that's coming up. And if you'll take a little bit of time and read the chapters ahead of time that we're going to be looking at, I promise you, you will get more out of these sermons. You'll just understand the thing better. So we're going to read portions of these five chapters as we go, but I do want to do at least a kind of flyover, since we're not going to read it, to show you how these five chapters are structured. Structure is going to be critical in this series. In just about every sermon that I preach on Isaiah, we're going to spend a good amount of time talking about structure.

14:59 And the reason we do that is because understanding the structure of these prophets and how they do things is just absolutely indispensable to understanding their message. I think most of the time we come to the Old Testament prophets and we basically just think that they're throwing spaghetti against the wall, right? They talk about this and they talk about that and they talk about that. Oh, look, there's a messianic meatball that's stuck to the wall, right? It's, you know, those are our favorite ones. That's the ones we put on the Christmas cards. Unto us a son is born, right? We like those, but everything else is just mess. That's generally how we think about the prophets. But for the most part, the prophets are not like that at all.

15:35 Now, Jeremiah kind of is. I mean, people have compared Jeremiah to a Jackson Pollock painting, right? Where you just got splotches of color everywhere. And your job in Jeremiah is to try to see how the patterns of color fit together. Isaiah's not like that at all. Isaiah's more like a sword. Isaiah has a structure. He's got a weight. He's got a point and a hilt. And there's a balance to the book. And you can see it even in that threefold, you know, three different books, King, Conqueror, Servant, that I gave you a minute ago. He's got a point and a structure. And each little piece of the book also has a structure.

16:06 So we're going to end up spending a lot of time talking about structure. Take a look at this handout if you've got one of these. I don't know if these were in your bulletins or if they were beside the bulletins. At any rate, you should probably look for one of these in most of the sermons that we're going to preach in this series. Because I think just having something like this in front of you will help. What's remarkable about these first five chapters is that unlike the rest of the book, they don't have any like time markers.

16:40 Other than verse 1, which is introducing, you know, the whole rest of the book. These five chapters don't have any time markers. So what that tells us is that these five, the first time marker comes at chapter 6, verse 1. So what that's telling us is that these five chapters form a kind of prologue to the entire book. They introduce some of the themes that are going to unfold for the next 61 chapters. And basically what these chapters are doing is just kind of setting the stage, I think, in an extremely dramatic way for what's coming.

17:13 Now, I know a lot of times when you open up a book, right, there's a preface at the beginning of the book. And a lot of times we as readers see that little word preface there, and it's like a chapter-long thing. And we have a tendency to just skip the preface, right, and go straight to chapter 1. You should not do that with Isaiah's prologue. You should read his prologue and understand it, which is what we're going to do today, hopefully, because this prologue has its own message. And the message that it's trying to get across is that for the southern kingdom of Judah, The darkness is closing in, and it's closing in fast.

17:49 And the way Isaiah makes that point is in three big sections. If you look at the handout, you can see them. Three big sections there. Chapter 1, the Lord making his case against his people, right? You can see that he does it. Charges them in court. Charges them with religious sin. Charges them with social sin. Then in those two verses, 25, 26, you get this just, after all that, this shocking promise that sort of, nevertheless, I'm going to save you, right? It just kind of comes out of nowhere. And then in 2731, a call to repent. Second big section, we'll talk about it in more detail later. But it's basically giving you a picture of the Jerusalem that should be and will be, right?

18:23 But then there's the Jerusalem that is. And it's not all it's cracked up to be. That's what he does in that section. So, you know, there are 2, 1 to 4, and 4, 2 to 6. You've got it bookended by the Jerusalem that should be and will be. And then in the middle, for most of it, you've got the Jerusalem that is. Chapter 5 finally is the gathering darkness where God compares his people to a vineyard. He says this vineyard has created no good fruit at all. All it's done is create this stink fruit, bad grapes, wild grapes.

18:57 And then at the end of that chapter, you've got the results of rebellion. We're going to look at some of that. The main idea of this whole section of Isaiah, this whole prologue is this. Sin brings devastation and its consequences are inevitable. Sin brings devastation and its consequences are inevitable, but there's hope because God offers mercy. Say it one more time. Sin brings devastation and its consequences are inevitable, but there's hope because God offers mercy. So what we're going to do today is just divide this sermon up according to these three major sections right here. Here they are. Number one, a plea for reason.

19:39 Number two, a promise of mercy, that's chapters two to four, and then the gathering storm for chapter five. So a plea for reason, a promise of mercy, and a gathering storm. So let's dive into it. Number one, chapter one, a plea for reason. The first section, you're going to want to kind of keep your eye on this handout, I think, because that'll keep you sort of oriented to where we are in the book. But the first section, first big section of this prologue is just the whole of chapter one. And essentially the best way to understand it is that it's just really four, you might call them oracles because we're in a prophet.

20:16 You might just call them poems. But they're basically four oracles or poems that have been stitched together into a whole, probably we think by Isaiah himself. So Isaiah would go out and preach and his oracles, his prophecies, his poems would get written down. And then he would come back at some point later and stitch them together into these extremely brilliant, well thought out pieces like we're going to look at today. So let me show you what the four big oracles are. You've got verses 1 to 9 there, this court setting in which the Lord calls his people to account, charges them with these crimes.

20:49 Those crimes come in verses 10 to 20, and then 21 to 26, which basically indict the people for their false religion first. That's 10 to 20. And then their broken society. That's 21 to 26. And then in the last part, 27 to 31, he calls his people to repent. So let's read a little bit of it and just kind of get the flavor of it. Look at Isaiah chapter 1, verse 1. The vision of Isaiah, the son of Amos, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

21:24 Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken. Children have I reared and brought up, but 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 understand. Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly. They have forsaken the Lord. They have despised the Holy One of Israel. They are utterly estranged. Why will you still be struck down? Why will you continue to rebel? The whole head is sick and the whole heart faint.

21:56 From the sole of the foot even to the head, there is no soundness in it, but just bruises and sores and raw wounds. They are not pressed out or bound up or softened with oil. Your country lies desolate. Your cities are burned with fire. In your very presence, foreigners devour your land. It is desolate, it is overthrown by foreigners. And the daughter of Zion is left like a booth in a vineyard, like a lodge in a cucumber field, like a besieged city. If the Lord of hosts had not left us a few survivors, we should have been like Sodom and become like Gomorrah.

22:28 Now, I mean, that's just a thunderous opening to this book, right? I mean, look how it begins in verse 2 there. God basically calls the entire cosmos, the heavens and the earth, and everything that he's created in them, he calls the cosmos as witnesses against his people and their sin. It's a thunderous beginning to the book. And look at verse 2. Look how verse 2 puts it. Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken. In other words, if the Lord has spoken, if that's true, then the whole cosmos is supposed to fall silent because God speaks.

23:09 They talk about something sometimes in the military, talk about it in the business world. You've got to have it in parenting too, and that is the voice of command, right? And when you as a parent, when you as a mom or dad, when you as a drill sergeant or a boss need to get the attention of the room, you use what's called the voice of command. Listen to me. The whole room goes quiet, right? Wait, what? Some of you were not paying attention until I did that, and I saw your heads pop up because I used that parental voice of command. Well, that's what God is doing here. He's using the divine voice of command to call the universe into silence.

23:44 And it's no wonder. I mean, you read about the voice of the Lord throughout the scriptures, and what you see is that the Psalms and the prophets and everybody always depict the word and the voice of the Lord as unspeakably powerful. It's the voice of the Lord that shatters the cedars of Lebanon, which were these enormous thick trees. It's the voice of the Lord that removes mountains from their roots and throws them into the sea. It's the voice of the Lord that tells the waves of the ocean where they must stop and not overwhelm the land.

24:15 And what's frightening about that is that it's one thing to talk about the voice of the Lord shattering the cedars of Lebanon. It is an entirely different thing to think about the divine voice of command being turned against you. Listen, and I'll tell you who you are. It's terrifying, isn't it? And imagine the voice of God that created the stars out of nothing, turning to you and saying, listen to me.

24:48 That's what's happening to Judah here. You know, Paul in our scripture reading today from Romans says that that's true ultimately of all of us. You remember that verse from Romans chapter 3? When we stand before the judgment seat of God, Paul says, every mouth is going to be silent and the whole world held accountable to God. Listen to me. Friend, what's it going to be like when the voice that created the universe turns to you and speaks against you for your sins.

25:24 How well do you think you'll hold up? You look down through what we just read, you can see how Isaiah depicts the people here as just utterly helpless in their sin. Verses 5 and 6 there, he describes this wounded man, wounded from the sole of his foot to the top of his head, and yet his wounds are, they're not bound up, they're not bandaged, they're not softened with oil, nothing, it's a man who's just stumbling forward, completely wounded and almost dead, and yet he doesn't even realize it. That's how he describes the nation of Judah. Seven to eight describes Judah as this war-devastated country.

25:57 Cities are all destroyed. Everything's razed to the ground. Everything is gone. But then look at verses eight and nine. I mean, at first, the image that you get in there in verse eight is just pathetic. It's like this little booth or this shack in the midst of a cucumber field, right? It's like Jerusalem is just all by herself with nothing but nothingness all around her. That's what verse eight is saying. She's isolated. There's nobody to help her. She's not connected to anyone, just a shack in a cucumber field. But then look in 9. Because there in 9, right there at the bottom of the page, you get the first glimpse of the Lord's mercy.

26:32 If the Lord of hosts had not left us a few survivors, we should have been like Sodom and become like Gomorrah, which were wiped off the face of the planet by fire falling from heaven. The people of Judah are recognizing if God had not saved us, we would have been like Sodom and Gomorrah. Think about that for a minute. How often is that the story between God and us as human beings? That if it were not for God's mercy, if it weren't for a little patience and forbearance on God's part, we would be wiped out completely.

27:10 It is so often like that. It was like that in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve didn't deserve to be clothed in animal skins and sent out of the garden, they deserved to be crushed. Noah didn't deserve to be on that ark saved. He deserved to be crushed just like the rest of the world. The patriarchs didn't deserve to get the promises of God. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they were all scoundrels, and yet God gave them the promises anyway. The nation of Israel spent its entire history grumbling, and yet God let them persist in that grumbling for hundreds and hundreds of years.

27:44 You read about it all in the book of Kings. Why did God do that only and strictly out of mercy? Well, how often is that true of you, too? That God could and maybe should just completely wipe you off the face of the planet. Just have the earth open up and swallow you in your sin. And yet here you still are. Still on the planet. Still breathing. Still offending God. You know you don't deserve that, right?

28:16 you know you don't deserve to still be here Judah didn't deserve to still be here if the Lord of hosts had not left us a little bit we'd have been like Sodom and become like Gomorrah we'd have been wiped off the face of the planet that's what they deserved and friend it's what you deserve also in your sin you know right that the fact that you have not already dropped into hell for eternity is strictly and solely because of God's mercy to you well starting in 10 and running through the rest of the chapter You've basically got these three poems.

28:48 You can see them on your handout. Three poems that underline Israel's sinfulness in different ways. So in 10 to 20, the focus is on her false and sinful religion. Let's read a little bit of that. Verse 10. Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom. Give ear that he's not talking to Sodom. He's talking to Jerusalem right there. He's just calling them Sodom. Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom. Give ear to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah, still talking to Israel. What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices, says the Lord? I've had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of well-fed beasts.

29:20 I don't delight in the blood of bulls or of lambs or of goats. When you come to appear before me, who's required of you this trampling of my courts? Bring no more vain offerings, incenses and abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations. I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates. They've become a burden to me. I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands in prayer, he means, I will hide my eyes from you. Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen, for your hands are full of blood.

29:52 Now, I don't want you to miss the importance of this. What kind of religion is God saying that he hates here? You're going to say empty and false. That's true. We'll talk about that in a minute. But is it pagan religion that he's saying he hates here? No, and that's what's so astonishing about it. This is not pagan religion that God is saying he hates. What he's saying makes him sick. What he's saying is an abomination to him is the stuff that he told him to do in the law.

30:27 It's right religion that he says he hates. Well, why, why? Why, because all of those outward acts which were in themselves right and commanded, which in fact were to show these people again and again and again who they belonged to and how they were there for to live, these outward acts had just become empty, mindless gestures to these people. They had no power in their lives. They had no effect on their affections for God or for other people.

31:01 So God says there in 15 that their hands are full of blood. He says in 12 that their acts of worship are just a trampling of the courts. All you're doing is coming in here, and it's just a pitter-patter of feet on the floors of my temple. It's all it is to me. So let me ask you a question. I wonder why you've come here today. I wonder why you've come into these courts, so to speak.

31:33 I wonder what all of this, all the singing, the scripture readings, the preaching, everything that we do, I wonder what this does in your heart and why you do it. I mean, you do realize, right, that it is possible to come to church. It is possible to do all the stuff, to sing all the songs, to sit politely through the sermon, and for all of it to be nothing more than just the pitter-patter of feet on the pavement. for it to be empty and useless.

32:10 And I wonder what you'd hear from God if he were to call you up to heaven. Like Paul, 2 Corinthians, right? He was caught up to the third heaven. What would he say to you about what's going on in your heart this morning? Would he say something kind of like this in chapter one? Don't sing any more songs to me. Your hymns are an abomination to me. Your prayers of praise make me sick. Your sermons make me sick. Friend, it's worth examining your heart today.

32:45 It's worth examining what's going on in your heart today. Even as you go through the motions of worship that God commands. Take a minute to see. Take a minute to look down deep and see what all of this stuff is doing. To see if the songs and the prayers and the readings are doing anything to ignite your heart and affection toward God. Or if it's all just little sparks falling on wet pavement. If that's you, friend, don't be content with that. Don't be okay with it. Do something about it.

33:18 So what do you do? What do you do if you do this kind of self-examination? And what you find is that, yeah, my soul is dead. Well, look with me at 16 through 20, the end of this poem about Judah's empty religion. Because it's in 16 to 20 that God tells his people exactly what they should do. Look what he says here. Wash yourselves. Make yourselves clean. Remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes. Cease to do evil. Learn to do good. Seek justice. Correct oppression. Bring justice to the fatherless.

33:50 Plead the widow's cause. Come now. Let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. If you're willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land. But if you refuse and rebel, you shall be eaten by the sword, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. Now, let me show you what's interesting about this. You've got these commands that are kind of piled up there in 16 and 17, but there's a certain structure to them. Those commands in 16 and 17 are divided into three groups of three commands.

34:25 Do you see that? Three groups of three commands. You've got wash, make, and remove. That's the first one. Wash, make, and remove. Then you've got cease, learn, and seek. That's the second one. And then you've got correct, bring, and plead. That's the third one. Okay. What's interesting about that, what I think is just fascinating, is that all three of the commands in that first group, wash, make, remove, All three of those verbs are ceremonial words that come straight out of the law for Israelite worship.

35:05 Now, why is that so interesting? It's so interesting because what God is saying is that the first thing you've got to do to wake up a heart that's sunk in dead religion is do religious stuff. Do you see that? First thing he says you've got to do, if your heart is sunk in dead religion, you've got to go do the normal religious stuff. In other words, you've got to put yourself under the appointed means of grace. The ways that God typically gives life and grace to his people.

35:38 Now that is intensely counterintuitive, isn't it? Because normally what we would think is if my heart is sunk in dead religion, if I'm coming to church and my heart is dead, then what I need to do is go get out in nature for a few weeks and commune with God on my own. And then maybe I'll have the fortitude to get back into church where it's boring. That's generally what we think. I've got to get out. Then my soul will come to life. But no. That's exactly the opposite of what God tells his people to do. He tells his people here, look, you know what you need to do with a dead heart? You know what you need to do if you find your heart dead in doing the religious things that I've commanded of you?

36:11 You need to go do the things I've told you to do. You need to put yourself under the regular means of grace. only now, let it affect your life. And then he goes on in those next verbs to tell us what that means. Stop doing evil stuff. Learn to do good stuff. Seek justice, which is a very broad word for just the will of God in total, right? That's what that word justice means. And then, of course, in those last three, you'll start to see the new life in your soul affecting how you treat other people too.

36:43 The oppressed, the fatherless, the widow. Friend, do you feel like your soul is dead? Do you feel like you've gotten a hold of some empty religion? What do you need to do? You need to keep coming and putting yourself under the normal means of grace, but with a new prayer and determination to let it affect your heart. It keeps going. It tells you more about what you need to do in 18 to 20. There's just this extraordinary plea for God's people to reason with him.

37:14 It's just an extraordinary thing because you don't think of God saying, can we talk this out, please? But he's an eminently reasonable God. And so he says, look, you need to think about it. Think about what I'm offering you. If you'll just come to me, if you'll just repent and take mercy from my hand, I'm offering. Even though your sins are like crimson, like that wounded man, I'll wash you white as snow if you'll just come to me. Why will you not think about that? Why will you not be reasonable about that?

37:45 It's an amazing promise. He doesn't say exactly how he's going to do it yet, right? I mean, Isaiah is kind of pitching the rest of his book. He wants you intrigued. How is God going to do that? And he'll tell you later. But the promise here is that he will, he will take your crimson, scarlet sin and make it white as wool. If you come to him and ask for his mercy and repent of your sins. Well, that's point number one. The rest of that chapter there, if you look down through it, what it's doing essentially is describing the society-wide sin of Judah and then giving them a call in 27 to 31 to abandon their idolatry.

38:28 But point number two, starting in chapter two, running really all the way down through chapter four, a promise of mercy. So chapters two to four form the second big section of this prologue. And this one too, if you look at the handout again, You can see it's made up of a bunch of poems or oracles. You've got five of them in there this time. And they're stitched together to make a point, right? So you can see them. At the beginning and end, 2, 1 to 4 and 4, 2 to 6, you've got a vision or an image of the Jerusalem that should be and will be, right? And then the same thing at the end. And then in the middle, you've got these three poems that reveal the Jerusalem that is.

39:03 And it's very different from the Jerusalem that should be. So in the middle, you've got religious unraveling. There's a lot of talk about idols there. We'll talk about them here in a minute. Nothing gods, Isaiah calls them. First half of chapter 3, you've got social unraveling. And then 16 through the beginning of 4, you've got basically the humiliation of the rich women of Judah. This section really works like a kind of magic mirror for Judah. I mean, you know Snow White, right?

39:34 The wicked witch says, mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest one of all? Or whatever. And it shows her a vision of herself. and she thinks that she's the most beautiful until the mirror shows her snow white, right? It's a magic mirror. Harry Potter's got a magic mirror too. You know, his is different. You look into the magic mirror and it shows you, if I remember right, your greatest desire, right? So Harry looks into the mirror and he sees himself with his parents who are no longer dead. That's his greatest wish, his greatest desire. These chapters work like a bit of a magic mirror, only it's a kind of morbid thing that it does.

40:07 Because what this mirror is doing to Judah is that Judah looks into it, and in the first few verses, what they see is what they should be in God's sight. I mean, you can imagine looking into a mirror, and it shows you what you ought to be as a human being, right? You're beautiful. You're in shape. You're gorgeous. You're, you know, you're buttoning up your suit coat, and everything's great. Your character is awesome. This is what God intended you to be from the very beginning. In every detail, that's what the mirror shows you, but then it shimmers right starting after that first person it shimmers and then the mirror shows you not what you should be but what you are it's just it's just awful right because you watch the image of the ideal you give way to the image of what you are the reality of who you are and it's revolting because you see yourself for who you really are that's what that's what happens in this chapter. Look at chapter 2, 1 through 4. I'll show you what Israel is supposed to be.

41:11 The word that Isaiah, the son of Amoz, saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. This is what they should be. It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be lifted up above the hills, and all the nations shall flow to it. Many people shall come and say, come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways, and that we may walk in his paths for out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem he'll judge between the nations he'll decide disputes for many peoples and they'll beat their swords their swords into plowshares their spears into pruning hooks nation shall not lift up sword against nation neither shall they learn war anymore it's just an amazing vision of what Judah should be and it's even set in the in the you know the language of what they will be in the future. Zion, the mountain on which Jerusalem sits, has made the highest mountain in the world there. People from every nation stream into it to learn the ways and the word of the Lord. I mean, and then more as you read down through chapter 2 verse 4. The world's at peace. Swords are beaten

42:14 into plowshares. And at the end of verse 4, even the art and strategy of warfare are not even being learned anymore because there is no need for it. That's what God intended for his people. That's what the mirror is showing them of what they should have been but then there's five verse five oh house of jacob come let us walk in the light of the lord now that's not saying just do a bunch of things that are right come on jacob let's do a bunch of things that are right read your bible and pray at the beginning of the day and after meals and brush your teeth and you know it's it's not saying just do right things what it's saying is oh house of Jacob come on let's turn the lights on let's see what really is and who you really are and then he does so starting in verse six running down really through four one you can look at your handout but you got three

43:15 poems that hold the mirror up to Judah's face this is who you really are now I don't want to look at all three of those. You can read them, but you can see what they do. You know, you've got religious unraveling. I do want to look at that one a little bit. Social unraveling is just telling you just how the nation in its social fabric is coming apart. And then 3.16 to 4.1, the humiliation of the rich women. In the first one though, let's look at 2.6 through 22. What he's doing is going after their religious practices again. And this time it's different though, because the focus isn't on right religion that's been corrupted. The focus here is on idolatry and the pride of the people that allows and fuels that idolatry. So I think we can see that connection best in the first few verses here. Look at six and seven. He says there, you've rejected your people, the house of Jacob, because they are full of things from the east. So all of that is idolatry. The stuff from the east is bad. Fortune tellers like the Philistines, they strike hands. They make deals with the

44:16 children of foreigners. Their land is filled with silver and gold. There's no end to their treasures. Their land is filled with horses and there is no end to their chariots. Their land is filled with idols. So you see what's going on there in 6 and 7. You've got idolatry coming in from the east. Then you've got this talk in 7 about silver and gold, no end to their treasures. Their land is filled with horses and chariots. So they've got these mighty armies that they've built up. And what are all those things? That's stuff a nation can be proud of. If you're a nation that's got money, you can be proud of that. If you're a nation that's got horses and chariots, you can be proud of that. And it all comes to a head in verse 8 there when they're proud of their idols. Not only have they made money, not only have they made a military, they have made gods.

45:10 And they're proud. But look what God says about that in verse 9. So man is humbled and each one is brought low. Do not forgive them. Because of their pride, because of their making and setting up and worshiping of other gods, they are debased. They are lowered. They are made less than what God intended them to be. Do not forgive them.

45:42 You see what he's saying there? All these things, all these things that we take pride in, that we're tempted to take pride in, actually degrade us and make us lower. The things we think we ought to be proud of, the things that we think we ought to have pride in, actually debase us and bring us low and make us something less than what God intended us to be when he made us in his image. You don't have to watch the news very long to realize that it is really hard to deny that our own nation, the United States of America, is experiencing this kind of thing right now at a breakneck pace.

46:19 We are, as a nation, diligently about the work of abandoning the almighty God of the Bible and constructing our own gods, our own ideals, our own values for what's going to bring us happiness in this world. And we are, as a nation, proud of what we have done. Friends, we have even named an entire month of the calendar after our pride in our new gods.

46:55 But here's what the God of the Bible says. You're not lifting yourselves up with this. You're not freeing anybody. you're not liberating anybody you're degrading yourselves you're grinding your own faces into the dirt you're stomping on the image of god in your own souls and shattering it even worse than you've shattered it before but it won't last forever look at verse 12 chapter 2 for the lord of hosts has a day against all that is proud and lofty against all that is lifted up and it shall be brought low.

47:37 Friends, what idols do you need to cast away? And that's what this whole section is about. Cast those false gods away. Those empty worthless gods. Cast them away. What's your mind captured by? What are you worshiping? What are you thinking falsely will bring you freedom and liberty and yet all it's doing is grinding your face in the dirt. Is that thing really, really worth anything to you? I can tell you right now, if that thing is not the God of the universe, then know it is not worth anything. Put it away and come to the one who is worth everything. I want you to look at the last of these poems because it's there, the sort of magic mirror, as it were, kind of shimmers again.

48:34 And what you get is not a glimpse of the people as they are, but you get a glimpse of what God is going to make his people. So look at chapter 4, verse 2. Chapter 4, verse 2. This is after all these poems of judgment, right? He says there, In that day the branch of the Lord shall be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the land shall be the pride and honor of the survivors of Israel. And he who is left in Zion and remains in Jerusalem will be called holy. And the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion and cleansed the bloodstains of Jerusalem from its midst by a spirit of judgment and by a spirit of burning.

49:10 Then the Lord will create over the whole site of Mount Zion, that's Jerusalem, and over her assemblies a cloud by day and smoke and the shining of a flaming fire by night and over all the glory there will be a canopy. There will be a booth for shade by day from the heat and for a refuge and a shelter from the storm and the rain. You'll notice a lot of imagery there from the wandering in the wilderness when God was with his people, right? The cloud and the fire and the canopy, all of that's from Deuteronomy and Numbers. It's a beautiful picture.

49:42 And what you realize as you're thinking about this whole thing is that this whole thing is not just the story of Israel, right? I mean, the story that they've seen is they look in the mirror and they see what God intended them to be. Then the mirror shimmers and they see what they've become as they've broken the image of God in themselves. And then it shimmers again, right? And they see what God is going to make them, and it's beautiful. That's Israel's story. It's not just the story of Israel, though. It's the story of humanity. It's the story of you and me. And you realize that's like the whole story of the Bible.

50:15 God intended you to spend all of eternity worshiping and glorifying him and enjoying him forever. That's what you're made for. but you've ruined it by chasing after other gods, by chasing after worthless things that can't fill you up with joy. You've ruined that image that God had for you. No, but God doesn't stop there. He doesn't just cast you off. In love and in mercy and in compassion, he acts to make the mirror shimmer again so that he shows you what you can be. And how does he do it? How does he do it? How does he take you from what you are to what you can be? How does he do it? Well, it's just a mystery now, but look at verse 2. See that phrase? In that day, the branch of the Lord shall be beautiful and glorious. What does that mean? Well, some of you know what it means because you've read other portions of the Bible, but if you were just reading the Bible in kind of chronological order, right, like read them in the order that these books were written in, no one at all in the whole

51:18 history of the Bible, so far when Isaiah is written, has said anything about a branch. This is the beginning of it. So what is it? Well, it's a theme that's going to swell and show up again and again through Isaiah's book, but this is the beginning of it. And what it is, just to kind of give you the answer, is that it's referring to a family tree and one branch of that tree. Well, whose family? Well, again, Isaiah's not telling us now, but you know the answer. It's David's family tree, right? It's the dynasty of King David. And what he's saying is that going from who you are to what God intends you to be depends on one branch of David's family tree. And that is, of course, Jesus of Nazareth. Isaiah's going to reveal that later on.

52:07 Friend, if you want to go from what you are to who God intends you to be, there's only one way to do that. That's by coming to this one branch of David's family tree and saying, Your Majesty, I can't do this myself. But you can. You can stand in my place. You can live the life that I should have lived. You can die the death that I deserve because of my sin. Because of my shattering of the image of God. You can die for me. And then when you do, my crimson sin can be washed white as snow.

52:42 You want to go from what you are to what God intends you to be? Come to Jesus and take mercy from his hand and do it today. Well, here's point number three. A gathering storm, just looking at chapter five. Chapter five is the last section of this prologue, but it's very different from the first two. And I'll tell you why in just a few minutes, but it starts out sounding okay. right look at look at one and two let me sing from my beloved my love song concerning his vineyard my beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill he dug it cleared it of stones planted it with choice vines built a watchtower in the midst of it and hewed out a wine vat in it and he looked for it or waited for it is actually the word to yield grapes he sits back after doing all of this loving work and he sits back and he waits on his vineyard to produce grapes but then look at the end of two but it yielded wild grapes.

53:45 Now, the phrase there, wild grapes, doesn't quite get it. Literally what lies underneath that in the Hebrew is a word that literally means stink fruit. It's two nouns stuck together. Stink and fruit to create a brand new word that has not been seen anywhere called stink fruit. That's what he says. It produced stink fruit. This vineyard that the Lord so diligently and lovingly prepared has produced nothing but disgustingness from start to finish. And then verses 3 and 4, sharp. Now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard.

54:20 What more was there for me to do for my vineyard that I haven't yet done in it? When I looked for it to yield grapes, why did it yield stink fruit? Friends, some of you need to hear those questions being asked by God of you. What more could God do for you that he has not already done? How many more people does he need to surround you with who are calling you to put your faith in Christ? How many more times does he have to work out providentially that you're going to sit here in this church hearing this gospel preached?

54:56 How much more can he do for you than he's already done? And why do you just keep producing stink fruit instead of the fruits of the spirits? And look at 3. I mean, verse 3 there doesn't pull any punches. Now, O habitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. In other words, there's no third option here. Something's gone wrong. My vineyard is producing stink fruit. And the fault has to be either in me, God, or in you, the vineyard. Okay, standing before the judgment bar of God at the end of time.

55:31 With all your stink fruit before God. Whose fault is that? You're going to look up at the God of the universe and say, that's on you. No, you're not. Judge between me and my vineyard. And the whole of the universe is going to say, oh God, it is not you. It is him. Which do you think it is? God? Are you? Well, starting in verse 8, you got this poem in which the Lord basically holds up.

56:05 It goes on through the rest of the, almost the rest of the chapter anyway. Basically holds up six clusters of this stink fruit. And each one of the clusters is set off by the phrase, woe to those who. So you can see it in verse 8, 11, it goes on from there. So six clusters of this stink fruit. I'm not going to go through them all, but it would be a really good fun exercise for you to do at church or at lunch or this afternoon, whatever. Just spend some time. Look at each one of those clusters of stink fruit and see if you can put a headline on them. Like the first kind of stink fruit is this sort of person.

56:36 The second one is this one. It'd be a really good thing for you to do and see if you see yourself in any of those. I don't think it'll be too hard to put a headline on it. Well, in 24, Isaiah comes to the final kind of home stretch of this whole prologue. It starts with therefore, right, in 24. In other words, because my vineyard has produced nothing but bad fruit, because they've made a mockery of what I intended them to be, therefore, what I'm about to say will be the result. And then he tells them what it's going to be. In 24, it's just this kind of short, hot promise of judgment, right?

57:09 Everything's going to be burned up. Fire's going to fall from heaven. It's like Sodom and Gomorrah, right? The nation's going to be totally destroyed. In 25, you've got another therefore, but this one's longer. It goes all the way down through the end of the chapter. And it's almost psychedelic what happens in these verses. It's like these verses are like a deepening fever dream where you just have this kaleidoscope of images of darkness and destruction and foreboding and fear folding in and over each other. One of them giving way to the next. So look at it.

57:41 It starts with this earthquake in verse 25, which then gives way to this terrifying, almost supernatural invading army in 26 to 28. God will raise a signal for the nations far away, whistle for them from the ends of the earth, and behold, quickly, speedily they come. None is weary, none stumbles, none slumbers or sleeps. Not a waistband is loose, not a sandal strap broken. Their arrows are sharp, all their arrows are bent, their horses' hooves seem like flint, and their wheels like the whirlwind. You're just supposed to see this army rushing in, and they're almost supernatural in their ability to get there, to destroy.

58:16 But then look what happens in 29, the kaleidoscope. what happens in 29 is that the roaring of this army morphs into the roaring of lions as they seize the prey and drag it away to kill it. And then in 30, the kaleidoscope turns again and the roaring of the lion fades again into something else, only this time it's the roaring of the sea as the storm closes in. There's an amazing picture, and notice what it is. It's not someone standing on the shore looking out at the sea. It's someone in the middle of the sea looking at the land and watching it disappear he's got nowhere to run there's nowhere to go for safety he's just being swallowed up in this gathering storm and that's how it ends see what's different about chapter 5 as opposed to 1 through 4 is that there are no flashes of hope here that's that's what's different about it the whole thing ends with judah's sin crying out for judgment

59:16 and then darkness falling. So the question that you're left with is this. Is it hopeless now? Is there nothing else that can be done? I mean, you've had flashes of mercy and hope and grace in the first two sections, but nothing like that in chapter 5. So is Isaiah saying that Israel's sin has finally worn out God's mercy? And do you ever worry about that? that your sin has finally worn out God's mercy, that maybe you've done so much, maybe you're so sinful that all the little sparks of hope and mercy, even the smallest ones, have gone completely out for you.

1:00:02 Well, friends, that's the fear and the foreboding and the distress that Isaiah wants to leave you in. He wants to leave you in that kind of darkness and questioning. But just for half a moment, Just for half a moment, because look at 6-1, the very next verse. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting up on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple. See, all of a sudden, all that darkness that rolled in, it's shattered by this light of God sitting on the throne.

1:00:36 High and lifted up with the royal train of his robe filling the temple. Friends, that was true for Judah. Isaiah shattered the darkness with that word. And it shatters the darkness for you, too, if that's where you're sitting. And if you're sitting in fear that God can't save you, if you're sitting in fear that your sin has finally outdone God's mercy, you need to see this. God is still on his throne, and his hand is still outstretched. Take it and find salvation. Let's pray.

1:01:08 Our Lord, we thank you and praise you for this word from Isaiah. We pray, O God, that you would help us to learn its lessons, and we pray that you would lift our hearts to you to find grace and mercy at the foot of your throne. We pray all of this in Jesus' name, amen.