Today, two of the most joyous bits of Isaiah…
Here’s a key thing about reading old testament books: we grasp them better if we first figure out how they break into sections, and what each section’s about. This one, it seems to me, runs from 9:8 to 12:6, and its joyful point is this: darkness doesn’t have the final word, it will be swamped by Christ’s cosmic restoration!
So in chapters 9 and 10 Isaiah pulls back the covers from `Israel`’s everyday spiritual darkness and injustice: we see (and recognize??) the arrogance with which they plan to rebuild their nation without God (9:10); the self-proclaimed prophets teaching lies (9:15); everyone in this culture speaking `vileness` (9:17); the rulers issuing oppressive decrees, depriving the poor of their rights, and withholding justice from them (10:2). (God cares about these things!) Then, from 10:5, there’s something very important if we want to understand history: God’s judgment will be allowed to come on `Israel` (the northern kingdom) soon through the vicious Assyrians; but, that certainly doesn’t mean the Assyrians have God’s approval.
And then from 10:20, more important still, and now very practical for us, an idea central to these chapters: there will be a counter-cultural, godly `remnant` (raising the question, am I willing to pay the price to be part of it?…) And that remnant might have every reason to look around and be very frightened (last part of ch10) (we might too? climate change?) But God is looking after them; unlike the now-pagan northern kingdom who would be destroyed `in a single day` (9:14), as they were by the brutal Assyrian invasion very soon afterwards. To Judah – or at least the godly remnant within Judah – God’s word is very different: `O my people who live in Zion, don’t be afraid of the Assyrians` (10:24), because the Lord will destroy them as thoroughly as he destroyed the hordes of Midianite invaders back in Gideon’s time (10:26; cf 9:4). And we’ll watch exactly that deliverance from Assyria in ch37.
But there’s a far greater, cosmic deliverance to come! And here the prophecy leaps from the issues of 7th century BC politics, helpful as they are in showing us how to live by faith among frightening global issues, to the colossal glory we’re awaiting… The joy that will come for the remnant who live by faith has two aspects, set out marvellously in ch11. First, the starting point has to be (as we’ve seen in our last two posts, in ch7 and ch9) the coming into our darkness of Messiah, Christ (vv1-9). `A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse [ie, the house of David]; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.` Messiah, Christ, will embody, or (more precisely here) emerge from, the remnant, the `stump`, the `holy seed` (6:13). And what is crucial is that He will be full of the sevenfold `Spirit of the Lord` (11:2; cf Rev 4:5/5:6); we’ll see that developed wonderfully when we come to chapter 61. Hence, whereas Israel’s national life has been plagued by unjust rulers (10:1-2), He, just as 8:13 commanded, `will delight in the fear of the Lord`, that is, be passionate about obedience to God. (Lord, may that increasingly characterize me!) And because of this, v4, `With righteousness He will judge the needy, with justice He will give decisions for the poor of the earth!` (Again, God cares about that, and we should too!)
But it gets better still: far better! Vv6-16 reveal the colossal restoration King Christ will bring about. (By His second coming, we know – Isaiah combines the two here as he does elsewhere, eg 61:1-3.) One key part of this is the total fulfilment of God’s promises to Israel (including even the disastrous northern kingdom, v13), despite their sins that have been so obvious in these chapters. Christ will `gather the exiles of Israel; He will assemble the scattered people of Judah from the four quarters of the earth` (v12 – something that also occupies 14:1-2, 43:5, 66:20, Ezk 37:21-22 and 39:28 and Zec 10:9-10). Why? – surely so that they can fulfil their amazing destiny as God fulfils His old testament purposes as well as His new testament ones; when Jerusalem becomes, as Jesus said, the city of the Great King (Matt 5:35), the centre (Isa 2:3, Jer 3:17-18, Rev 20:9) of His wonderful reign on earth; and when the Jews become the bringers of `life from the dead` to a hugely damaged world – something apostle Paul describes as amounting (amazingly and almost inconceivably) to blessing greater even than salvation extending to the Gentiles in his lifetime (Rom 11:12,15)!…
But there’s yet more still; nothing short of cosmic restoration, the transformation of everything that was ruined all the way back to the Genesis Fall. I love this, it’s marvellous:
`The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
and a little child will lead them.
7 The cow will feed with the bear,
their young will lie down together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
8 The infant will play near the cobra’s den,
and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.
9 They will neither harm nor destroy
on all My holy mountain,
for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the LORD
as the waters cover the sea!` (Isa 11:6-9, NIV).
Glorious! It’s worth letting our imaginations run free as to how marvellous God’s world will be once all this is fulfilled, when Christ is `King over the whole earth` (Zec 14:9), and all the results of our idiotic rebellions are reversed. Satan doesn’t win even in this world; on this planet, and not only by the coming of a new earth, God’s triumph will be made fully manifest. `God didn’t create the earth to simply screw it up like a piece of paper and throw it away’, writes Roger Forster; Satan will never be able to say to Christ, `But that beautiful world, at least, I ruined permanently; you never got it back.` I take this to be the Satan-free golden age of Revelation 20, because the stage after that of God’s purposes, Revelation 21’s totally new cosmos, will clearly be radically different from what we either have now, or will have in Isa 11, and in ways we can’t imagine (see Matt 22:30, 2 Cor 12:4). But first, after Jesus returns as King (coming back down from heaven to Jerusalem, Acts 1:11, Zec 14:4), this earth, this one, will become a transformed paradise where death happens but is a rarity (Isa 65:20), where the wolf feeds with the lamb (65:25), and this earth is full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (11:9). When Jesus comes back as King, all heaven will break loose!
But lastly — there’s a terrific finale – for us now! – to these Isaiah chapters- ch12, a marvellous, joyous song of triumphant faith. (Faith – `I will trust`, v2, cf 7:9, 8:17.) I love the fact that, as Motyer says, despite all the evil and injustice Isaiah has uncovered, darkness shall never have the final word. This is for us – so shout indeed for joy! Stand up & read it triumphantly aloud, to the Lord and to whoever else is listening!:
`In that day you will say:
“I will praise You, O LORD!
Although You were angry with me,
Your anger has turned away
and You have comforted me.
2 Surely God is my salvation;
I will trust, and not be afraid!
The LORD, the LORD Himself, is my strength and my song;
He has become my salvation!”
3 With joy you will draw water
from the wells of salvation…
4 In that day you will say:
“Give praise to the LORD, call on His name;
make known among the nations what He has done,
and proclaim that His name is exalted!
5 Sing to the LORD, for He has done glorious things!
Let this be known to all the world!
6 Shout aloud and sing for joy, people of Zion,
for great is the Holy One of Israel among you!” (Isa 12, NIV)
PS What‘s said above about the Jews in Isaiah 11 is only one view; see the post on the millennium in`Other Useful Stuff`. But what seems clear here is that `that day` (v10) of the cosmic restoration of the preceding verses, is also the same `that day` when, `a second time`, God will `reclaim the remnant` of His formerly jealous and divided old testament Jewish people, regathering them from the `four quarters of the earth`, this earth (vv11-12). The way this is written doesn’t really sound like it’s about the Church, does it. Nor is it about heaven; the heaven of Revelation 21 is something better still that follows afterwards!
