Today’s chapter, Isaiah 60, is radiantly triumphant, and very helpful!
“Arise, shine, for your light has come,
and the glory of the LORD rises upon you!
See, darkness covers the earth
and thick darkness is over the peoples,
but the LORD rises upon you
and his glory appears over you!
Nations will come to your light,
and kings to the brightness of your dawn`… (NIV)
What’s all this about? And how does it feed us?
Well: I suggest that, if we grasp this chapter, we’ll have a much better grasp of God’s plans for our world’s future. That, after all, is one of the things prophecy is meant to give us. But also, if we look at the context, the previous chapter 59, it shows us the way to this joy. Isaiah’s hearers had `hands stained with blood… They give birth to evil… Acts of violence are in their hands… The way of peace they do not know.` Not great! And let’s note that these don’t sound like verses written about the Church; indeed Paul quotes them in Romans 3 as describing the unsaved. And sure enough they make sense if we realise Isaiah is speaking to the nation of Israel.
So what is the path for people like Israel to the joy of ch60? First, it’s realization and confession of sin (59:12-13). Then, there’s the direct intervention of God on behalf of those who repent (v20) – although, let’s notice, unlike ch53 this intervention isn’t about payment for their sins, this time it’s about deliverance from the nations attacking them (v18). Then, in God’s unearned and undeserved favour (60:10), His intervention leads to Israel’s lost children being brought back `from afar, with their silver and gold` (60:9). `To you the riches of the nations will come… Foreigners will rebuild your walls, and their kings will serve you!` (vv5,10). God is promising a glorious future for the Israel that has suffered so much because of their sin and folly: `Though in anger I struck you, in favour I will show you compassion. Your gates will always stand open, they will never be shut, day or night, so that people may bring you the wealth of the nations — their kings led in triumphal procession. For the nation or kingdom that will not serve you will perish; it will be utterly ruined.`
We may read all that and think, wondrously joyous indeed, but what do I do with this chapter, how do I apply it to myself? And the answer (I believe) is, we don’t directly – but, once we grasp what it is about, we’ll have the big picture of where the world is going, and this is something we surely need!
Let’s get one thing straight: just as we saw with chapter 59, these words –
`Foreigners will rebuild your walls… their kings led in triumphal procession. For the nation or kingdom that will not serve you will perish` don’t sound like they are about us the Church, and still less about heaven. (Although, a couple of verses, 60:11 and 19, do sound like the new Jerusalem, so evidently what’s being promised here involves a serious dose of heaven on earth!) So unless we want to engage in a huge amount of interpretative gymnastics, I suggest we’ll take chs 59 and 60 absolutely straight: they’re about Israel, and (because all this evidently hasn’t happened yet) Israel at the time of the End. (See likewise 61:9 and 62:12.) They’ve sinned, horribly yes (ch59), but ultimately, as Paul says of ethnic Israel in Romans 11, `God’s gifts and His call are irrevocable`. (Remember that God gave Isaiah these prophecies exactly when He had also made clear that, because of Israel’s unending sin, their nation’s and their temple’s destruction had to be inevitable (Isa 39); and yet, after that, this glorious future still remained a certainty.)
And all this fits with the massive number of old testament promises to ethnic Israel; where God promises to bring them back together even from the `four quarters of the earth` (like the return just from Babylon, but now `a second time`, on an even grander scale, 11:10-12). We find this `bringing your sons from afar` spelled out here in 60:4-9, but it’s also the theme (have a look) in 14:1-2, 43:5, 66:20, and Deuteronomy 30:3-6, Jeremiah 3:18 and 23:3-8, Ezekiel 37:21-22 and 39:28 and Zechariah 10:9-10. Likewise, the centrality of the land of Palestine to this endtime era is made clear in Isaiah 2:1-4, Jeremiah 3:17 and 33:9 and 16, Ezekiel all the way from chapter 36 to chapter 48, Daniel 9:24-27, and the ends of Amos, Obadiah, and Zechariah. (I list all these so that we see this – the triumphant completion of God’s age-long purposes with Israel – is a really major biblical theme!!) So we find that then God’s purpose is to make them the centre of a restored paradise, with Jerusalem at last becoming, as Jesus called it, the `city of the Great King` (Matt 5:35), the centre and heart (Isa 2:3, Jer 3:17-18, Zec 14:16, Rev 20:9) of His wonderful reign on earth; and when the Jews become the bringers of resurrection `life from the dead` to a hugely damaged world (Rom 11:12,15) – more about that in a moment. For in the new testament too, God in Romans 11 makes clear that He has a future purpose for ethnic Israel, and that their repentance, after `the full number of the Gentiles has come in`(v25), will be followed by something dramatic enough to be described as `life from the dead` (v15); something (bizarrely!) of even greater impact than the gospel’s spread to the Gentiles (v12)! In Acts 1:6 the disciples ask Jesus when He will `restore the kingdom to Israel`, and His answer is not that that no longer applies, but that it is not for them to know the time (v7); Isaiah and Paul show us the huge glory of what that means!
So then: where is history headed? Well, to `life from the dead`, glory beyond anything we’re used to! We’ve previously looked at Isaiah 11, and seen how the time when God brings His people back to Israel `a second time` from the ends of the earth, `from Cush, from Elam, from Babylonia, from Hamath and from the islands of the sea` (vv11-16), is also `that day` when `the wolf will live with the lamb… They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord` (vv6-9). Ch65 likewise will show us a restored paradise centred on Jerusalem, delivered forever from the evils and invaders of the past: `No longer will they build houses and others live in them… I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy. I will rejoice over Jerusalem… Never again will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his years; the one who dies at a hundred will be thought a mere child; the one who fails to reach a hundred will be considered accursed.` (But the deaths in that passage show us, let’s note, that it too is obviously not about heaven!)
But how will history take us from here to there? Or, how does this all link with the preceding verses that describe God’s judgment on the nations? (`According to what they have done, so will He repay wrath to His enemies and retribution to His foes; He will repay the islands` [the far-off countries] `their due. From the west, people will fear the name of the LORD` (59:18-19).) Why? Well, let’s remember what God through Isaiah also shows us about the endtime, that before He brings about this restored paradise – that is, before Christ returns – there will be a dark time when `The earth will be completely laid waste… The Lord has spoken this word… Earth’s inhabitants are burned up, and very few are left` (24:3,6; cf 13:12). When we reflect on this, it sounds surely like what Revelation shows us – a time when God in judgment briefly (and for a carefully limited [Matt 24:22] period – Revelation and Daniel keep describing it as 1260 days = 42 months = 3.5 years), allows humankind to experience the full terrible consequences of our desired autonomy; when He lets us experience what it means to live outside His kindly reign, that has been holding back so very much evil. Isaiah’s `very few are left` may sound like the mass deaths in Revelation (eg Rev 9:15), that may even leave us wondering whether, once God in judgment no longer restrains our evil, we’re looking at a nuclear exchange (Matt 24:22? ? Ezk 39:6?? Zec 14:12?? Rev 6:4, 9:15??) – and anyway at the ruin of our planet (Rev 6:8, 8:7,9,11, 16:3). After this the world will surely need colossal restoration. So this presumably is why God’s purposes for his old testament people feature so much in the prophets; it’s important for all nations, because, one day the Jews will (as Romans 11 says) become in some unimaginable, presumably supernatural way (by prayer??) the bringers of transformational `life from the dead` to a world that will desperately need it – bringing it on, astonishingly (such is God’s power!), to near-paradise…
Let’s note something important here: As we think of history’s final crisis, Bible Christians do disagree as to whether Scripture teaches we must ‘arm our minds’ to live faithfully – true ‘radicals’ – through such a situation. Some say yes; others remind us that Christ will return suddenly, when we least expect (Matt 24:44); and since the judgments of Revelation would so clearly herald the End, all true believers must have been taken to safety first by the `rapture` described in 1 Thessalonians 4:15-18. These events, they suggest, may come at any moment; that deliverance is (now) our `blessed hope`; and only after it, with all true Godly influence (the preservative ‘salt of the earth’) removed, will all hell break loose (2 Thessalonians 2:6-8). It may be so. But Scripture is ambiguous – and perhaps because both possibilities are beneficial for us. I think a good case can be made for both sides (see the post on the rapture on this site in `Other Useful Stuff`). I wonder whether God has deliberately left it unclear; so that, as we look ahead to history’s climax, on the one hand we live in a way appropriate to the fact that before tonight, or tomorrow, God really may take us home forever, and all that will matter will be what we’ve invested in his kingdom (which certainly focuses the mind!); while on the other hand, training ourselves and our families for the possibility of very serious persecution that is clearly part of the final crisis (Rev 13). Like I say, both possibilities can be highly beneficial for us!
But that’s not in today’s passage. Both in Isaiah and Revelation, global judgment is absolutely not how it finishes! Both books reveal a final time of thoroughgoing evil and destruction; but this is not the end! This time of judgment that reveals the full implications of our desired independence from God will be replaced by Christ reigning as King of all the earth (Isa 24:14-15, cf Zec 14:9, Rev 20:4-6). And that of course must lead to the earth’s glorious restoration (Rom 8:21, Isa 32:15, Isa 35, Ezk 47)……
So then: as we absorb this huge panorama, let’s rejoice over how – even though the following act of the drama, in heaven, will be better still, indeed unimaginably so! – God will complete, in this world, his age-long design (as Roger Forster says, `God didn’t create the earth to simply screw it up like a piece of paper and throw it away’!); fulfilling all his old testament purposes as well as his NT ones; carrying out His promises of glorious destiny to the people of Israel who have been such a significant `worked example` of His grace, His glory, and yes, His judgment. Whatever you make of these chapters, enjoy the sense of glory, and respond in worship! Because as Isaiah says to Jerusalem in 60:6, all this is to the glory of God who so faithfully keeps His promises to Israel, and will be equally faithful to us!:
`No longer will violence be heard in your land,
nor ruin or destruction within your borders…
Your sun will never set again,
and your moon will wane no more;
the LORD will be your everlasting light,
and your days of sorrow will end.
Then all your people will be righteous
and they will possess the land forever.
They are the shoot I have planted,
the work of my hands,
for the display of my splendour!` (NIV)
We know where history’s going! And as we watch the Master Dramatist fulfil His masterly, age-long purposes, we must surely want to say, as we do after so many chapters of Isaiah: Hallelujah!
(PS This account of Isaiah obviously matches the perception of Revelation 20 as describing what happens after Revelation 19 when Jesus returns as King and destroys His enemies, and depicting a wonderful thousand years (`millennium`) when Satan (the `god of this [current] age` as Paul describes him in 2 Cor 4:4) has been bound and cannot deceive the nations any more (20:4). (Surely that is not the situation now: see 1 Cor 7:5, Eph 2:2 or 1 Peter 5:8.) So, Satan doesn’t win even in this world!; on this planet, and not only by the next wonderful phase, the coming of a totally new earth (Rev 21:1), the triumph of God will be made fully manifest. Jesus comes back as King, so now all heaven breaks loose! And in Revelation 20 this golden age, when for a thousand years this world is freed from Satan’s works and becomes what it was made for, is evidently centred on the `city [God] loves`, surely Jerusalem (v9), just like in so many parts of Isaiah. S till, these are hotly debated issues, and on this too, if you’d like a more in-depth study, please look at the post on the millennium in `Other Useful Stuff`.)
