In this weeks lesson we get more of the verses, some memorized by generations, that have a fulfillment in BC and then again in Christ and then again at the end of our age.
O Lord, you are my God; I will exalt you; I will praise your name, for you have done wonderful things, plans formed of old, faithful and sure. For you have made the city a heap, the fortified city a ruin; the foreigners’ palace is a city no more; it will never be rebuilt. Therefore strong peoples will glorify you; cities of ruthless nations will fear you. For you have been a stronghold to the poor, a stronghold to the needy in his distress, a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat; for the breath of the ruthless is like a storm against a wall, like heat in a dry place. You subdue the noise of the foreigners; as heat by the shade of a cloud, so the song of the ruthless is put down.
Isaiah 25:1-5
God has always shown Himself to be the God of our salvation. His plans for the restoration and His plans for your salvation are “plans formed of old, faithful and sure”. The civilizations that we've read about are seen in this prophecy to be ruins and never to be rebuilt. God proves Himself faithful in keeping us when we are poor, when we are in distress, and when we are in the storms and fiery trials of life. He is the shade we live under (Psalm 91:1; 121:5).
The first and most natural application of these verses is too Babylon and the restoration of Israel and the rebuilding of the temple years after Isaiah but the next few verses turn the view down through history to Jesus and even to the end of our age.
On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.
Isaiah 25:6
This verse looks back to the covenant banquet of Israel's elders (Exodus 24:11), forward to Communion and the blood of the covenant (Matthew 26:26-28) instituted by Christ and yet spiritually something that we participate in right now.
But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.
Hebrews 12:22-24
But this verse also points forward to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb at the end of our age.
Then I heard what seemed to be wthe voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure”— for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” And he said to me, “These are the true words of God.”
Revelation 19:6-9
These next verses are some of the most beautiful descriptions of what happened on the Cross I think in the Bible. The poetry even comes through the translation.
And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken. It will be said on that day, Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us. This is the Lord; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”
Isaiah 25:7-9
This veil or shroud of death is swallowed up (Verse 8 quoted in 1 Corinthians 15:54). The victory of death is gone. He did not turn away from the cup in the garden (Matthew 26:39; Mark 14:36; Luke 22: 42; John 18:11) given Him by the Father. He swallowed up the shroud of death that covered us. The reproach of our sin nature and death with the power of sin in the law ends as God gives us victory through Jesus our Lord.
Think of the faithful Simeon and Anna waiting in the reconstructed temple 700 years later. Anna came out of her fasting and prayer and the infant Jesus was presented in the temple to speak of Him to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem. Simeon held Jesus, Blessed God, and said;
“Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.”
Luke 2:29-32
This is our God, we have waited for Him that He might save us. He is in us a light to the unsaved and He is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.
In the next verses God reminds us that the wisdom of men will not be rewarded. Remember that Moab (the cousin nation) was offered refuge a few chapters back (16:6). It was refused and they sought their own solution.
For the hand of the Lord will rest on this mountain, and Moab shall be trampled down in his place, as straw is trampled down in a dunghill. And he will spread out his hands in the midst of it as a swimmer spreads his hands out to swim, but the Lord will lay low his pompous pride together with the skill of his hands. And the high fortifications of his walls he will bring down, lay low, and cast to the ground, to the dust.
Isaiah 25:10-12
It is foolish to trust in your own way and in your own strength. Moab becomes an example of people who refuse the direction and refuge of God and suffer the consequences. The banquet is real and so is the straw trampled down into a dunghill. Our culture loves the lone ranger doing his own thing and winning against all odds but if that lone ranger doesn't acknowledge his complete dependence on God and even on the Body of Christ it is just an error that God will eventually deal with. This city of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” is then contrasted with the City of God.
In that day this song will be sung in the land of Judah: We have a strong city; he sets up salvation as walls and bulwarks. Open the gates, that the righteous nation that keeps faith may enter in. You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you. Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock.
Isaiah 26:1-4
Thinking back to the first comments about Ahaz and his worry with additional water supplies it seems that this is the redeemed city of Jerusalem. God sets up salvation as a wall and bulwark around His people. They are in perfect peace (peace peace) because He is the rock they run to. Ahaz trusted fundamentally in a combined military, political, and engineering solution to his security problem. He could never have perfect peace that way. What he was doing was not fundamentally bad but placing his trust in his solution and not in God was fundamentally bad.
The following verses could be Babylon, could be Nineveh under Sennacherib but could also be the unredeemed Jerusalem under Ahaz. I think it makes more sense as the unredeemed Jerusalem representing man's best shot without God's blessing. Think of the coming judgment and listen to the perfection of heart in Isaiah as he looks toward judgment.
For he has humbled the inhabitants of the height, the lofty city. He lays it low, lays it low to the ground, casts it to the dust. The foot tramples it, the feet of the poor, the steps of the needy. The path of the righteous is level; you make level the way of the righteous. In the path of your judgments, O Lord, we wait for you; your name and remembrance are the desire of our soul. My soul yearns for you in the night; my spirit within me earnestly seeks you. For when your judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness. If favor is shown to the wicked, he does not learn righteousness; in the land of uprightness he deals corruptly and does not see the majesty of the Lord. O Lord, your hand is lifted up, but they do not see it. Let them see your zeal for your people, and be ashamed. Let the fire for your adversaries consume them.
Isaiah 26:5-11
For someone facing God's judgment for the sins of their nation I can't think of a better heart attitude than to say, “In the paths of your judgments, O Lord, we wait for you; your name and remembrance are the desire of our soul.”
The blindness of sin is shown by Isaiah. Blessing for the wicked does not result in righteousness. In fact, he sins by dealing corruptly in an upright place. God judgment did eventually bring back a righteous people to the land.
Isaiah then begins to describe the blessing that made them a nation and mourns the lack of blessing they were to those around them by bringing salvation.
O Lord, you will ordain peace for us; you have done for us all our works. O Lord our God, other lords besides you have ruled over us, but your name alone we bring to remembrance. They are dead, they will not live; they are shades, they will not arise; to that end you have visited them with destruction and wiped out all remembrance of them. But you have increased the nation, O Lord, you have increased the nation; you are glorified; you have enlarged all the borders of the land. O Lord, in distress they sought you; they poured out a whispered prayer when your discipline was upon them. Like a pregnant woman who writhes and cries out in her pangs when she is near to giving birth, so were we because of you, O Lord; we were pregnant, we writhed, but we have given birth to wind. We have accomplished no deliverance in the earth, and the inhabitants of the world have not fallen.
Isaiah 26:12-18
Isaiah praise God for all he did to bring them out of Egypt and make a nation of them and expand their borders. But they sought God in distress in the midst of God's discipline and then it was a strained whisper. They didn't seek Him early, they sought Him late. They cried out then as a woman in childbirth. Certainly even in Isaiah's day the Northern Kingdom was crying out under the oppression of the Assyrians. Given the context and Motyer's comments on the words used it is likely that the last line should read, “and the inhabitants of the world have not come to new life.” The particular word translated “fallen” here can mean “born”. I think that for each of us we can have a “Saving Private Ryan” moment here and ask if we've been faithful to use all that God has given us. He blessed Israel and they gave birth to nothing. Clearly our opportunities to serve Him are to be sought out and handled with all the Grace we can pray into the situations of our lives. We've seen deliverance on the earth and we've seen the inhabitants born into new life but we need to pray that God would make it possible for us to not drop the ball and have an attention to His works in our lives.
Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a dew of light, and the earth will give birth to the dead. Come, my people, enter your chambers, and shut your doors behind you; hide yourselves for a little while until the fury has passed by. For behold, the Lord is coming out from his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity, and the earth will disclose the blood shed on it, and will no more cover its slain.
Isaiah 26:19-21
People argue a bit about these verses. They get excited about an individual resurrection versus a national resurrection. I think we should take it both ways here (purposeful ambiguity). Those who serve God and die in the path of judgment will live. They will rise. On the other hand. The Nation (those who are righteous in Judah and Israel) will need to hide for a while as the judgment is poured forth. Knowing what is going on they need to cling to God as they did in Egypt during the Passover. God will recover His remnant but He will also raise the dead.
The promise of a physical resurrection is one of our most precious hopes in God. We will not be disembodied spirits playing harps on clouds. We will have resurrection bodies similar to the physical body that Jesus now has. I'm especially blessed to have God tell me these things through Scripture in the wake of our recent loss of Bubber Skruggs.
No comments:
Post a Comment