Reading: Isaiah 65-66, Psalm 121
When reading the prophets, it is not unusual to hear comments about how the repetition of judgments and confusing imagery make it almost impossible to understand. The prophetic writings in the Bible are thousands of years old, in a different language, and from a totally different culture than ours, so really this makes sense. In fact, if we could very easily understand it, it would cast doubt on it’s authenticity. On the other hand, I believe it is very possible, with some effort and the resources of thousands of years of other people struggling to understand these writings, to get a handle on what it going on. It is my hope that this journey through Isaiah you have taken with me makes it just a little bit easier to do so.
The closing chapters of Isaiah are God’s response to Isaiah’s plea from the reading yesterday. Recall that in chapter 64 Isaiah asks God to rend the heavans and come down, to not only forgive his people’s sins but to transform their hearts. It is Isaiah’s declaration of dependence. His acknowledgment of the need for God to undo the human problem. Today God responds: I was ready to be found. God was never absent in all the long history of the family of Jacob, but the people were rebellious, acting all the time as if they were faithfully following their covenant with God, but in reality doing as they wished. But then God turns to a restorative and creative word: I create a new heavens and a new earth. Despite the fair indictment of the people that Isaiah has begged for, God will create out of them a new world, devoid of the curse. Who will come to this new heavens and new earth? He who is humble in spirit and trembles at my word. Who will not enter it? Those who have chosen their own ways. God could not be making a more clear divide between those whom he will save and those whom he will judge. The saved recognize God as the authority. The judged go their own way.
Isaiah gets a final vision from God of the day of the Lord’s favor and the day of the vengeance of our God, and as we saw yesterday, they are not two separate events. The creation of the new heavens and new earth is made and inhabited in the midst of God bringing justice to the oppressors and false worshipers. Those humble in spirit are told that your brothers who hate you will be put to shame. God is going to deal with pain and suffering inflicted by human evil. The final state of peace in God’s new world will come about through the just recompense to God’s enemies.
Then God will come and gather all nations and tongues. They will come see the glory of God, then carry word throughout the world of what they have seen. But Isaiah’s people, the descendants of Jacob, will not be left out. They will come and some of them will be priests and Levites. God’s chosen people will persist, but in the midst of an international kingdom ruled by God directly. The end of the book makes again the point that the new world and the justice of God are inseparable: all flesh shall come to worship before me, God says, and then they shall go out and look on the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against me. For their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh. God will not leave those who go their own way unpunished, and he will not leave those who humbly submit to his will unrewarded.
The book of Isaiah has been quite a journey. It opened with a covenant lawsuit against Israel, proceeded to Isaiah’s arguments and signs for repentance for Israel in the days of the kings, which peaked in the reign of Hezekiah. But Hezekiah lets Isaiah down. Then God gives him a future vision, allowing him to see the Servant of God, who will fulfill all the promises made to Isaiah’s ancestors, as well as somehow become the sacrifice that brings forgiveness for them. And that isn’t all, as God declares it too small a thing for his Servant to save only one people. Isaiah gets to see that the Servant will be the means of salvation for all humanity, and even the animals and nature. The Servant will not have the human problem. He will tell the people who they are. His heart will match his actions, and by him God will make all things new. Isaiah has given us our fifth great theme in the story. God’s Servant is the solution to the problem. His identity is hidden in the palm of God’s hand, but Isaiah has gotten to see that he exists. The other prophets will get their own glimpses of the character, but none as extensive of Isaiah’s. From Isaiah on, the people of God are looking for the appearance of God’s Servant, the Anointed One, their savior.