Inspiration in Isaiah: God's Logic

This morning I am beginning a series of sermons on the great book of Isaiah. Isaiah was probably the greatest of the writing prophets. Let me give you a little background on him. Isaiah was a prophet from 739 B.C. to 681 B.C., at the time when the nation of Israel had been divided into the northern kingdom of Israel, and the southern kingdom of Judah. The northern kingdom was destroyed during Isaiah’s lifetime by the Assyrians in 722 B.C., and the southern kingdom was in danger of the same fate because of their sin.

Isaiah lived in the southern kingdom, during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and the godly king Hezekiah. He was a contemporary of the prophets Amos and Hosea in the north, and Micah in the south. He probably lived in Jerusalem. We know that he was married, and had at least two sons.

There are two main sections in this book, which is the longest of the Old Testament prophets. Chapters 1-39 have to do with events during Isaiah’s lifetime, and chapters 40-66 are God’s predictions of life in the future for Israel, after they returned from exile in Babylon. In this sense, the last part of Isaiah is like the book of Revelation, where God gives His man a vision of what was to come in the future. The name Isaiah means “the Lord saves”, which is appropriate, because the theme of the book as a whole is deliverance—God’s deliverance of His people from various forms of danger and bondage.

My plan for this sermon series is not to go verse by verse through the book of Isaiah –I think that would kill all of us, including me! But the book of Isaiah is quoted often in the New Testament, and many of the verses are extremely familiar to us and powerful in their spiritual insights. So I’m going to pick the highlights, the passages that I think are most inspirational, and look at those with you. This will be something like a guided tour: you won’t see everything; you won’t be able to stop and browse wherever you want; but we will definitely get a feel for this giant among the Old Testament prophets and his message for us today. I hope you enjoy the trip.

Chapter one begins with what might be called a State of the Nation address. The Lord Himself speaks, and describes the state of the people in very sad terms.

It strikes me that this description of Israel in these and the following verses is a lot like the condition of America today. The United States had a solid foundation in God, through the religious pilgrims who came to settle this new world. By His grace, we have experienced at least two Great Spiritual Awakenings, and many lesser ones, in which we have renewed our compact with God. The national motto, printed on all our money, is, “In God we trust.” The Pledge of Allegiance (so far, anyway, still) includes the phrase, “one nation under God.” The national anthem includes these words in the last verse:

No one thinks that every American was a Christian at any given time in our history, any more than all the Jews were believers in Yahweh. But there was a heritage in this nation as a whole that sought and trusted God, just as there had been in Judah.

But at the time Isaiah was writing, this was no longer true. In general, the nation had turned away from God, much as we have in our country. God would say to America, as He did to Judah, You were my children; I reared you and brought you up, but you have rebelled against me. You knew me once, but now you are as dumb as an ox or a jackass—dumber, because these animals, which are not noted for their intelligence, at least know their own master. But you do not know me, your Lord and Master. Just as teenagers sometimes do with their parents, you have forsaken me, spurned me, and turned your back on me. That’s a really good description of America today.

As a nation, we too are wounded, sick, morally and spiritually unsound. God does not allow rebellion to go unpunished, and He rhetorically asks, Why do you keep doing the things that result in punishment? Do you like being beaten? Why keep doing that?

Sin results in punishment, but I think we often misunderstand the nature of God’s punishment. Romans 1:18 says that, “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men…21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened… 28…since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. [29] They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, [30] slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; [31] they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.”

We tend to think that these behaviors listed here are the sins that God is going to punish in some way in the future, typically at the judgment. He will do that, but the fact is that the natural consequences of these behaviors are God’s punishment for them here and now. “The wrath of God is being revealed” against sin now. The fundamental problem is the attitude of people that insists on being independent of God: they do not glorify Him or give thanks to Him for all His gifts and blessings. God calls it rebellion in Isaiah 1. So God gives them over to the control of their depraved minds and that results in behaviors like these. Without the restraining influence of God, this is where human nature will always go. When God removes His hand, and gives us over to our sinful nature, the results are disastrous.

A culture that acts like this (as ours does) will inevitably suffer all the negative consequences of those acts: a breakdown in society at every level. Let’s just consider one or two of the sins in this list. Take deceit. What is the natural consequence of being deceitful? People don’t trust you. But society runs on trust. I had an experience a few weeks ago in which I rented a car to a man who said he needed to get to Denver for a job interview. I rented it for one day, but he kept it for 12 days, running up a huge tab on my credit card. He deceived me. In his case, the negative consequence of that is that I had him arrested; and I will certainly never trust him again. Society is broken by deceit.

Or take gossip. What happens when a group of people indulge in the sweet morsels of gossip? It fractures the friendships in that group; it creates distrust, and suspicion between people, because if you gossip to me about Sue, it makes me wonder what you are saying to Joe about me. The joy of unity is lost forever. We could illustrate the same thing with every one of these behaviors listed here in Romans 1.

God says to Judah, and to us, why should you keep on being beaten by your own actions? Why not listen to me and live the way you should?

The interesting thing about Judah in Isaiah’s day is that even though they were far from God, they kept practicing their religion. God, however, was not impressed. Look at what He said: Isaiah 1:11-15,

What’s going on here? Aren’t these the very religious practices that God commanded Israel to do? He’s the one who established the sacrificial system, and now He says He takes no pleasure in their sacrifices. He’s the one who instituted the Sabbath and the feast days, and the use of incense, and prayer. So how come He now says these things are a burden to Him, and that He’s tired of putting up with all that?

To help us answer that, let’s ask another question: Is there any sense in which God might say this to us today? For example, what could make our attendance at church a mere “trampling of His courts”? I think when we come simply as a matter of habit, without really seeking His face and coming to worship and hear what He has to say to us. If we are just going through the motions, we are no more than a herd of cattle, following the cow in front of us, trampling through God’s courts.

What would make our offerings “meaningless”? When they are given without any heart, when they are so small as to cost us nothing. Seriously, folks, many of you are extremely generous with your offerings to the Lord, and He is surely pleased with that. But for many others of you, the amount you give is embarrassingly small compared to what you could give. Your heart is not in it; you’re just putting a few dollars in the plate so you can salve your conscience and tell yourself you gave something. But as far as God is concerned, it would be better if you gave nothing, if that’s all you care about Him. Your offerings are meaningless.

God is concerned about our hearts. If our hearts are far from Him, all our worship and praise and religious activity is just so much empty ritual. King David said in

Just as many people today are not impressed with organized, institutional religion, God was not impressed with all the rituals and ceremonies they were going through in Judah. And the reason is pretty much the same: their hypocrisy. You hear people today say that they have no interest in church because of all the hypocrites there, and that hurts, because we really want to live lives of integrity. But look at what God says to the Israelites in the very next verses: Isaiah 1:15-17,

God was not impressed with all their religious activity because their lives did not show true devotion to Him. They said they were believers, but their lives didn’t match their words. They didn’t “walk the talk” as we say. God’s exhortation to them, and to us if the shoe fits, is to get our act together, to live as true followers of God should. What, specifically, does that mean? “Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.” We have the most litigious society in the world; people today are all about seeking “justice” for themselves. But God’s desire is that we would seek justice for those who have a hard time getting it: the oppressed, the fatherless, the widow, the people who have no one to go to bat for them in the power structures of the culture.

Who are those people today? Who has a hard time getting justice today? Who are the oppressed we should care about?

· The poor, certainly. Money buys the best lawyers, who have a phenomenal record of getting guilty people off the hook; the poor are stuck with court appointed attorneys who often can’t do as good a job. The House of Neighborly Service, and InterFaith Hospitality Network do a wonderful job of caring for the poor, and they are always in need of volunteers.

· Widows and orphans are at a distinct disadvantage in our society, and the church ought to be doing all we can to support them.

· “At risk” teens might be another group of people who have trouble getting a fair shake. They need someone who will be their advocate, who will spend time with them, building character and respect for others. We have teens in our youth group who do not have Christian parents, who need godly mentors.

· Unborn children are the most defenseless people in the world, and they are facing a murderous onslaught by a culture that considers them a blob of tissue; who will stand up for them?

· People with physical and emotional and mental handicaps certainly need others to be their advocates.

· On a shorter term, we have friends who are oppressed by their circumstances –they are out of work, or sick or injured, or going through a divorce, or their boyfriend just broke up with them, or their parent is near death, or they themselves are in a nursing home or shut in. These are also people we are called to encourage.

So the challenge from God to us is to look around and see who is oppressed, and do what we can to come alongside them, to be their advocates, their supporters, their encouragers. In short, the challenge is to get our eyes off ourselves, and onto those who need our help. This is the life Christ lived and He calls us to follow in His steps.

If we will do that, God says, then we will experience the incredible blessings of His wonderful logic.

The word translated reason here means “to decide a case in court”, and it harkens back to the first words of this prophecy in v.1, where God calls heaven and earth as witnesses to His complaint against His people. God says, OK, let’s think about this situation like we would in a court of law. What is the evidence? What exactly happened? And then finally, here’s my judgment in the case. There isn’t any question about our guilt: our sins stand out like crimson threads, or like blood on the snow. But look at the decision the Judge renders for us: "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.”

I’ve asked Kent Rickard, the Great Zucchini, to come up and illustrate this wonderful verse with an illusion. [red silk goes into an empty bag, pulls white silk out, bag still empty]. God’s forgiveness is just that thorough: the scarf has no trace of red in it now. The contrast between being sinful and being forgiven is absolute. And God’s forgiveness is just that quick: the moment we ask for His forgiveness (assuming we are sincerely repentant), our sins are gone. This trick is just an illusion, but God’s forgiveness and cleansing is no magic trick: it’s absolute reality. One minute we are guilty; the next we are innocent. Praise God.

Why will God do that? What’s the logic behind this transaction? How reasonable is it to forgive guilty sinners in a court of law? Let’s be clear: it is not because we cleaned up our act so that now we deserve His forgiveness. It is not that we have heard His call to an other-centered life, changed our ways, and now have nothing to be forgiven for. No, our change in behavior has to reflect a change in heart, and our heart is always what God is most interested in. This is what John the Baptist called for from the Pharisees: fruit in keeping with repentance. The proof that our heart has changed is not in our words, not in our religious rituals, but in our actions. The actions He is calling for are evidence of our repentance.

But even so, if God is just, how can He forgive our sins? A just judge can’t simply ignore our sin, or pretend we didn’t do it. How can God forgive our sins and still be just? Isaiah will tell us in chapter 53: Isaiah 53:5-6,

Someone was coming, the Servant of the Lord, the Messiah, Jesus the Christ, who would take on Himself the punishment we deserved for our sins. So that when we repent, and come to Him, and ask for His forgiveness, our sins are washed away. No matter how bad they are, no matter how dark the stain, or how brilliantly they stand out, God’s grace in Jesus Christ is more than sufficient to take them all away.

So today, we come to the Lord’s Table, the place where we appropriate the grace that is offered us in Christ. We call this sacrament “communion”, indicating that this is a time of intimate fellowship with God. That fellowship, that communion, is possible only because of His forgiveness which is so thorough and complete. And that forgiveness is made possible because Jesus, the Lamb of God, has taken on Himself our sin, and suffered for it. Let us come with reverence and gratitude to the Lord.

[1]Cf. Isaiah 43:25, "I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.”

Isaiah 44:22, “I have swept away your offenses like a cloud, your sins like the morning mist. Return to me, for I have redeemed you."