Notes for Bible 101 November 27, 2006—Isaiah 6-10

Review:  As we discovered in reading the first five chapters of Isaiah, we’re reading a literary prophet whose poetic language is filled with metaphors and imagery.  He’s revealing both judgment and hope, punishment and salvation, and yet he does it in a way that’s beautiful.  God gave Isaiah a gift, and he used it for God’s glory.  As we’ll see as we continue to read this book, his words have inspired many composers including Handel to set them to music.

We’ve heard part of the message:  Judah is under threat of destruction because of its idolatry which constitutes rejection of God; it is living outside the covenant God made with his people.  But if the nation repents, it can be forgiven and God will again fight its battles and provide for its needs.  And we got a glimpse of the Messianic age when Jerusalem will be the center of the earth because Jesus will reign there.  All people, from all over the world, will be attracted to this city and its faith, its worship of Jesus and the salvation Jesus provides.  But what about the messenger himself?  We know Isaiah is the son of Amoz and that his prophecy came through visions.  When did he begin?  Chapter 6 answers this question.

Isaiah 6:  “In the year that king Uzziah (Azariah) died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple.” In this first verse, Isaiah dates the beginning of his prophetic ministry:  it is 740 B.C., just 18 years before the fall of Israel, the northern kingdom.  Uzziah, whose reign is described in II Kings 15 and II Chron. 26, was generally a good king who did what pleased God.  At least during the time of Zechariah, “who instructed him in the fear of the Lord” (II Chron. 26:5). God blessed him and Judah when Uzziah was obedient.  However, late in his life, he grew proud and unfaithful to God.  He even entered the temple to burn incense (though he was not a priest), and when the priests tried to force him to leave, he refused.  He was punished by God with leprosy and lived the rest of his life in isolation.  His reign spanned 52 years, but for the final 10 years, his son Jotham conducted much of the daily business of the kingdom.  Isaiah would have grieved as the rest of the nation did when Uzziah died, and must have wondered what would happen next.  And God showed him:  He, God, was still on the throne.  God was and always had been the King of Israel and Judah.  And God showed this to Isaiah in a vision of heaven.  What a glorious reassurance from God.  Isaiah sees God on a throne (a seat of authority) “high and exalted” meaning that God is supreme, no one is higher or more exalted.  In Isa. 42:8, God declares “I am the Lord; that is my name!  I will not give my glory to another or my praise to idols.”  God is God; no one else has such glory or is due such reverence.  And Isaiah sees this.  First, he calls God “high and exalted,” and then he says “the train of his robe filled the temple.”  Only a wealthy man, a prince or king, wore a robe with such a long train.  It would prevent a person from working; such an individual had servants to do the work.  Third, Isaiah describes the beings around God:  “Above him were seraphs each with six wings.”  These angelic creatures (also called seraphim) were hovering around God on his throne, and each one had two wings to cover his eyes, two to cover his feet, and two to use for flying.  Note the proportions here:  four of the wings were covering themselves out of humility; two wings were used for serving God, going and coming at his bidding.  As Spurgeon says “Thus they have four wings for adoration and two for active energy; four to conceal themselves and two with which to occupy themseves in service, and we may learn from them that we shall serve God best when we are most deeply revrend and humbled in his presence. . . Adoration must exceed activity.” 

Isaiah 6:3:  The seraphs are calling to each other “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty.”  Why the repetition?  That’s a means of emphasis in Hebrew poetry.  We might also interpret it as a “holy” for each person of the Trinity, God the three in one.  But the emphasis on holy, God’s distinct quality that sets him apart from us—and why he cannot look upon sin—is clear.  God’s glory fills the earth, and  the “temple was filled with smoke.”  This recalls the cloud by day and the fire by night that hovered over the Tabernacle when the Israelites were in the wilderness.  The cloud told them God was with them.  God’s glory, his shekinah glory, is always represented by a smoke or cloud. 

Isaiah 6:5:  What does Isaiah do?  He cries out “woe is me” for he feels unworthy and overwhelmed by his own unholiness.  When we see the glory of God, the holiness of God, our own sinfulness is stark by contrast.  Isaiah continues:  “I am ruined!  For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”  What can he say in response to God except “I am nothing.”  What can he say to defend the nation?  They are sinful; they are lying to God and to themselves, and their deceit is expressed here as their “unclean lips.”  Isaiah is prostrate, humbled before the force of God’s glory and majesty.  Notice he says “my eyes have seen the King,” and we recall that when Moses asked God if he could see him, God told him “no one can see God and live.”  Isaiah believes he will die: having seen The King, he contrasts the statement “In the year that king Uzziah died,” with having seen the living God, the King of the Universe.  What a mixture of emotions Isaiah must feel:  hope, his own unworthiness, the sinfulness of the nation, guilt, shame, and yet, a sense of God’s faithfulness and power.  While prostrate before God, God sends a seraph with a live coal from the altar to Isaiah.  His mouth is touched, and he is told “See this has touched your lips, your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”  God heard his unspoken confession along with his stated one:  “woe is me; I am a man of unclean lips” and God also heard “unclean heart.”  God forgives him and makes him clean and new.  What a picture of what Jesus did for us on the cross:  “God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God,” Paul writes in II Cor. 5:21.  Jesus took our sin and replaced it with God’s righteouness which we accept by faith. 

Isaiah 6:8:  Isaiah has been cleansed and thus made ready to be called and commissioned:  “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying ‘Whom shall I send?  And who will go for us?’”  God wants Isaiah to respond to this question with a definite “I will” and he does.  He says “Here I am.  Send me.”  Isaiah is eager to do God’s work.  He has seen God as king; he knows Israel and Judah still have hope.  But listen to the commission:  “Go and tell this people:”  Is he to tell them about the glorious vision of God as king he’s just seen?  No, he’s to tell them they are stiff necked, unhearing, stubborn people.  Jesus quotes this passage in Matthew 13:14-15 when he explains the parable of the sower.  What kind of message is this?  Isaiah knows the people won’t listen and won’t understand; God has said so.  The prophet asks “For how long, Lord?” And God replies “until their cities lie ruined and the land is  utterly forsaken.”  God will punish Judah for its sins; it’s just a matter of time.  Many will die of starvation when Jerusalem is under siege; many will die in battle; others will die of disease; a great many will be carried into exile.  But God says a remnant will remain so that the “holy seed” will be in the land.  The few faithful who stay in Judah will be all that’s left of the “kingdom of priests and a holy nation” that God told Moses was his goal in choosing Israel and rescuing them from slavery in Egypt. 

Other calls and commissions:  Think back to the call of Abraham in Gen. 12; God tells him to “go to a land where I will show you.”  God told Abraham he would make him the father of a great nation, and through him all the earth would be blessed.  God called Moses from the burning bush, and commissioned him to go back to lead his people out of Egypt.  God called Gideon to deliver his people, calling him “mighty warrior” when Gideon was threshing wheat in a wine press!  He called Samuel to lead Israel as the final judge and the one who would anoint kings.  Think of the recently studied Apostle Paul called on the Road to Damascus, struck down by a heavenly light. Later Paul writes in II Corinthians that he “knew a man” (and we are to think he’s writing about himself), who was caught up into the third heaven and given visions and revelations, “caught up to paradise.”  Like Isaiah, he sees Jesus on the throne. Incidentally, we know this is Paul because he tells us that in order to prevent his pride and boasting, he was given a “thorn in the flesh” which God would not heal even after several requests from Paul.  The Lord told him “My strength is made perfect in weakness”; I’m all you need, Paul.  And Paul went throughout the Mediterranean world in that strength.  And Jesus calls us to “Go into all the world and preach the gospel.” 

Isaiah 7:  The time now shifts to the reign of Ahaz, grandson of Uzziah, skipping the reign of Jotham the co-regent with Uzziah and his successor.  Ahaz was not a godly king; in II Kings 16, he’s introduced as “Unlike David his father, he did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord his God.  He walked in the ways of the kings of Israel and even sacrificed his son in the fire, following the detestable ways of the nations the Lord had driven out before the Israelites. He offered saacrifices and burned incense at the high places, on the hilltops and under every spreading tree” (II Kgs. 16:2b-4).  Remember in Isaiah 1:29-30, God’s condemnation of Judah was their idolatrous worship in “the sacred oaks”  and “gardens.”  Here is King Ahaz not only engaging in such worship outside the Temple and outside the law of God, but also sacrificing his son to Molech.  This was expressly forbidden in Lev. 18:21.  Nevertheless, when threatened by the kings of Israel and Aram, God protected his city Jerusalem.  Isaiah tells Ahaz what God says about these two kings, these “smoldering stubs” whose power is fading and who themselves will be defeated by the Assyrians within just a few years.  God, through Isaiah, offers to give Ahaz a sign that this Godly protection is trustworthy; Ahaz pretends to be too pious to ask God for such a sign.  Isaiah is livid:  “Hear now, you house of David!  Is it not enough to try the patience of men? Will you try the patience of my God also?” (v. 13) Go d gives the sign beginning in v. 14:  “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel (God with us)” and the prophecy continues to give time markers:  when the child is weaned, and when he knows right from wrong. At these the first, the two kings now threatening Judah will be gone, and at the second, Assyria will be threatening Judah.  And God will use Assyria to punish his people for their sins.  Ahaz must have been thoroughly confused:  he’s threatened by the armies of two nations and God says “a virgin will conceive; Immanual,”  but if he’d had “ears to hear” he would know that all he needs is God—Immanual, God with us.

“A virgin will be with child” is a two-layered prophecy:  The Hebrew word for “virgin” meant any unmarried woman.  Isaiah’s new wife does conceive and bear a child with a name that has particular significance just as his father and brother’s names do.  However, because the prophecy continues “and will call his name Immanuel,” now we know this also refers to the Virgin Mary and the birth of the Messiah, “Immanuel,” or “God with us.”  Isaiah’s son’s name is Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz, the longest name in the Bible, incidentally.  It means “quick to the plunder, swift to the spoil,” and has to do with the enemies of Judah and Judah itself.  Matthew quotes Isaiah 7:14 in Matt. 1:22-23, saying that the birth of Jesus fulfilled this prophecy.

Isaiah 7:18:  Why is this the sign God gives Ahaz?  It’s both a comfort and a warning:  the two northern kings will not overcome Jerusalem, but later, their defeat at the hands of the Assyrians means the threat to Jerusalem by the Assyrians is not far behind.  God is still in control; he will ultimately defeat the Assyrians by the Babylonians, who will then defeat Judah.  Judgment for Judah is inevitable; it’s just a matter of time before all that Isaiah predicts will come true.

Isaiah 8: The details of Assyria as God’s instrument are made clear in this chapter following the naming of Isaiah’s son.  Notice that he writes the baby’s name and has his writing witnessed by a priest and another reliable man. Then he marries his wife, and she conceives.  The timing God stated in ch. 7 is then given more details: the Assyrians will devastate the land of Judah, and God is using them to punish his people for their sins.  Nevertheless, God will punish the Assyrians in his time. 

Isaiah 8:18:  Isaiah then speaks to Judah about their contempt for God’s word, and their denial of its truth:  “Here am I and the children the Lord has given me. We are signs and symbols in isarael from the Lord Almighty,” Isaiah says.  And yet, he continues, the people of Judah would rather put their trust in fortune tellers than in God’s prophet.  It’s more evidence of the nation’s  apostasy.

Isaiah 9:  As occurs frequently throughout this book, Isaiah prophesies doom followed by comfort, and the first half of ch. 9 is familiar to most Christians as a prophecy of the Messiah.  We hear these words in Handel’s Messiah:  “He will be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace”—all names of the Messiah that indicate his royal heritage and his eventual reign on earth.  In beautiful poetry, Isaiah writes words of hope for the future.

Isaiah 9:8:  But then the tone changes, and judgment is once again expressed, this time on the nation of Israel.  Throughout the book, Isaiah uses both Israel and Judah to refer to the southern kingdom, where he lived and prophesied.  But this time, the prophecy is against the nothern kingdom of Israel.  He describes the pride of the people who are trusting in their own strength and military might, their king and gods. But God himself has strengthened their enemies and they will be defeated.  And God’s anger will continue because the people have not learned that it is their own sin, their rejection of God and his covenant with them, that has brought on this punishment.  The covenant, as Moses reviewed it in Deuteronomy, carried blessings and curses (see Deut. 28).  If the people obeyed, God would bless their families and nation; if they did not obey, the curses would fall in degrees, and the final curse would be their destruction.  The destruction will be terrible.

Isaiah 10:  God’s words of judgment continue in this chapter, specifically their unjust laws which oppress the weak and powerless.   Judgment will come, and then, God says “To whom will you run for help?  Where will you leave your riches?”  The old saying that no Brinks truck follows the hearse clearly interprets this indictment of the rich—who trust in their money and not in God. 

Isaiah 10:5-19:  In this section, God declares that he will punish Assyria, “the rod of my [God’s] anger.”  God will use a pagan nation to bring defeat to Israel, and to punish Judah, but then, he will defeat that nation.  God uses the pagan nation’s own sinful inclinations to do his work. Later in Isaiah, we’ll read the fulfillment of this prophecy:  “Therefore, the Lord, the Lord Almighty, will send a wasting disease upon his sturdy warriors” (10:16).  This occurs during the reign of Hezekiah (ch. 38-39; II Chron. 32).  The key here is to keep in mind that God uses many different means to punish sin—the sin of his own people, who knew better, and the sin of the pagan nations who refused to acknowledge that God was truly God.

Isaiah 10:20-end:  The remnant of God’s faithful people survived the attacks on Jerusalem, and a remnant of the faithful will return to Jerusalem from Babylon.  God always preserves a remnant; in ch. 6, it was called “the holy seed will be the stump in the land” from which the nation will repopulate, and God will use these faithful people to teach new generations about him.  This part of the chapter is also a message of hope”O my people who live in Zion, do not be afraid of the Assyrians who beat you with a rod and lift up a club against you. . . very soon my anger against you will end.”  God will punish them, and then punish their enemies, and peace will return to those who earnestly seek to follow and obey God.

Next week:  We’ll continue with Isaiah’s prophecies, this mixture of judgment and hope.

Homework for those who want to go deeper: 

1. Read Matthew 1 starting with Jesus’ genealogy and notice the many references to OT prophecy, and in particular to Isaiah,which Matthew includes.

2.  How does God’s description of Israel’s sin describe our society?  Or does it?

3. Think about all the names of the Messiah and what each means (Isaiah 9).  How do we see each made real in Jesus himself?