Community Bible Study -- Isaiah
Text of Presentation, Lesson 18, Isa 54:1-55:13
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Invitation to Reconciliation
Shout for Joy
Tonight we discuss chapters 54-55 . . .
concluding another subdivision of Isaiah (chapters 49-55).
Through the self-sacrificial suffering and death of the Messiah
(52:13-53:12), God has fulfilled His promises (chapters 49-52) to
fix his peoples sin problem and restore them to
himself; everything necessary to satisfy Gods righteous
anger at human sin is accomplished (cf Jn 19:30)!
Hence Isaiahs tone changes to celebration and invitation.
Chapter 54 is a love song by God to Zion, his estranged bride,
telling her everything he is going to do in restoring her. Then
Chapter 55 invites the bride to forgiveness and restoration.
Together they have been called one of the most beautiful pieces
of literature in the Bible. Jesus will not be born for 700 years
after Isaiah writes this . . . but the revelation is now
complete; those who accept the promise know reconciliation is
coming! The barrier to God has been torn down; although mankind
is still subject to condemnation and punishment, we can now
approach Gods holiness!
As the chapters open (54:1-10), God speaks to Israel as a
disgraced woman: barren (54:1-3), widowed (54:4-5), divorced
(54:6- 8). To each God promises restoration and hope, underscored
by the assurance that even if the mountains (are) shaken
and the hills removed," Gods unfailing love for
you will not be shaken, (54:10).
In the ancient Near East it was a mark of shame for a woman to
have no children. This idea runs through the Bible from Genesis
to Galatians. But in 54:1-3 God says those who have experienced
His grace will have more descendants" than they can
count even if they are biologically barren.
Widowhood was also considered a disgrace in many parts of the
ancient world (54:4). A womans contributions to society
were made through her husband; a widow was a burden. Hence God
says Israels Maker has become her husband
(54:5). 54:5 emphasizes her status by reciting her husbands
titles: He is the Creator, the One who has all the host of heaven
at his command (YHWH of heaven's armies; NIV, "LORD
Almighty"), Israel's "Holy One" (whose holy nature
is turned to redemption ["Redeemer"] rather than
judgment), the "God of all the earth." This is the One
who has taken the widow Israel as his wife! Who could be sad?
Divorce was an even worse disgrace than childlessness or
widowhood. A widow was left alone involuntarily, but a divorced
woman was willfully "rejected" (54:6). Israel had
failed God and was cast out, but God has brought her back. His
"anger" was for a "moment," but his
"compassion" is "everlasting" (54:7-8). In
the work of the Messiah the righteous anger (justice) of God is
satisfied, so His "unfailing love" (54:10) can find
expression to those who will receive it.
In 54:11-17, the image changes from disgraced women to a ruined
city. The people are like a city "lashed by storms"
(54:11), subjected to "tyranny" and "terror"
(54:14) and "havoc" (54:16). But since God brought all
that to pass (54: 16), He can change it (54:15,17). In place of
weathered, broken walls stained with smoke, "battlements of
rubies" will glitter in the sun. In place of tyranny and
terror, there will be "peace" (shalom),
"righteousness," and security; the people will be
disciples taught by the LORD (54:13) . . . wonderful
blessings for those who become "servants of the LORD."
Chapter 54 seems to show the heart of the gospel of the Messiah:
God has reconciled His lost world. Mans sinfulness created
the breach with God, yet man is powerless to bridge the gap and
get back. God could justifiably wait in the lonely
isolation of his moral perfection for man to come to him, but it
would never happen; mans sinfulness makes it impossible:
The soul who sins. . . will die" (Ezek 18:4). So God
reaches out to man.
An amazing thing about God is that he gets no satisfaction from
the richly deserved death of a sinner (Ezek 18:32; 33:11). Some
family members of the Oklahoma City bombing victims demanded the
satisfaction of seeing Timothy McVeigh put to death, but God gets
no satisfaction from the death of even the most heinous criminal.
Instead, there is grief in his heart, like the grief of David who
went into mourning over the death of his son Absalom, who lead a
revolt which briefly overthrew David and even tried to
kill David!
This group has hotly debated this topic; many of us want to draw
a line at the worst of the worst. Thats quite human; in
fact, when David mourned the death of Absalom, it upset his
soldiers who risked their lives to restore him to the
throne. Davids commander, Joab, told him: "You have
humiliated all your men, who have just saved your life. . . . You
love those who hate you and hate those who love you (2 Sam
19:5-6). We seem to feel the same way about God sometimes. We ohh
and aah about Gods love shown in the parable about a
shepherd leaving 99 sheep to search relentlessly for one that is
lost (cf Mt 18, Lk 15) . . . but what if that lost sheep is one
of the brutal dictators living today, like Fidel Castro, Kim Jong
Il, Robert Mugabe, or Saddam Hussein in his jail cell? Why would
God go after these men? Most of us wouldnt want to share
heaven with them! And on a personal level, there may be people
who have been so hurtful to us that we wouldnt like to see
them in heaven, either! Such feelings are understandable, but
they miss the point . . . as stated in the New Testament after
the Messiahs death:
All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Ro 3:23).
The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (Ro 6:23).
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (Jn 3:16)
We are all guilty of sin; we are all condemned to
death. God differentiates between big sins and little sins (cf Mt
23:23), but the punishment is the same. And God offers eternal
life to all sinners who believe in Jesus . . . also without
differentiation. But to gain eternal life, we need to first
swallow our pride and accept Jesus!
The true face of God is not a stern, implacable Judge
dispassionately reciting our endless crimes and grimly exacting
the punishment we deserve. The "Maker," the "God
of all the earth," is our Father, who will go to any lengths
to see we do not get what we deserve. In a remarkable act defying
mans logic and sense of justice, the Judge takes our
punishment, and proclaims there are no more charges outstanding
against us! From God's perspective, He will never pronounce
judgment again (54:9); "no weapon forged against" his
people will ever succeed again (54:17). No further punishment or
discipline is necessary because it has all been taken by God
himself.
But that is from God's perspective. Suppose we do not continually
live under his grace and mercy. Suppose we decide to use that
grace to persist in a life of sin: an endless cycle of deliberate
sin and insincere confession. Lets use another analogy . .
. suppose God cleans out the garbage dump where we live and turns
it into a lush vegetable garden, then says: "You will never
be sick and hungry again." That is true from God's
perspective. But it assumes we will continue to live in the
garden and care for it. If we let it go to weeds or decide
to move to another garbage dump it will be hard to claim
Gods promise, even though the promise still stands. Thats
the case if we choose to live outside Gods grace. There isnt
anything else God needs to do for his "covenant of
peace" to be ours forever. The punishment that brought
us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed"
(53:5). But for us to experience that covenant forever, we must
continually choose to live under its terms!
Chapter 55 progresses from the announcement that all is forgiven
to the invitation to experience that forgiveness. Its an
earnest appeal with no less than twelve imperative verbs in the
first seven verses. The Messiahs sacrifice has changed
everything; the bride is restored, the city is rebuilt.
Everything is been done; the tables are set, all is in readiness
for the banquet. How tragic it would be if those invited fail to
come . . . if those for whom the Messiah died fail to come to
God. They must come!
55:1-5 expresses the invitation in the strongest terms. It begins
in physical imagery (come to the waters," come,
buy and eat," 55:1-2) and moves onto a more spiritual plane
(that your soul may live," 55:3). God's invitation is
not merely to satisfy bodily needs, but to satisfy a person's
whole being (NIV "soul"). As in 54:10, the language of
everlasting covenant" is used. The old covenant was
broken; hence after the allotted punishment, its legally
annulled. But God promises another covenant on the pattern of the
unconditional one given to David (55:3) . . . in fact, in some
sense this everlasting covenant" is Gods
covenant with David, for what David was in part a
witness to the peoples" (55:4) the nation Israel now
brings to fulfillment (cf 43:8-13), and the nations of the world
flock to restored Israel because of their God (55:5).
This is exactly what was predicted in Isaiah 2! This everlasting
covenant, made possible by the suffering Messiah, means God's
people will be enabled to fulfill the servanthood promised to
them at the beginning of the book. But they must accept what God
has done for them. A banquet is worse than useless if the invited
guests are too proud or too ashamed to come and eat.
53:6-11 address the universal problem of people who hear Gods
invitation with clarity. They cannot deny the choice before them:
to stay where they are in unbelief or to go forward in immense
uncertainty. For people in Isaiah's day and those who read his
words during the Exile, the message of 52:13-53:12 was a mystery.
Who is this person, and how can what he did make it possible for
God to be reconciled to his people?
Its not a mystery to us . . . but its still not easy.
God challenges people to exercise faith first and let
understanding come afterward. God promises that what He says (his
word," 55:11) is reliable; forgiveness and blessing
can be had now and in the future . . . by only seeking him
sincerely and unreservedly. If the wicked" turn from
their way" and thoughts" (55:7) to God's
ways" and "thoughts" (55:8-9), they will be
pardoned and restored even if Gods "ways"
and "thoughts" are not perfectly intelligible to them.
All of this is brought to a close in 55:12-13. While much more
than deliverance from physical captivity is talked about, the
imagery of the Exile communicates it vividly. All nature will
rejoice in the redemption of humanity (cf 42:10; 44:23; 49:13);
in place of sorrow and sighing there will be "joy" and
"peace" (cf 35:10; 51:11 ) as the captives return to
their God.
There is great similarity between Jesus parable of the kings
banquet (Lk 14:23) and chapter 55. Jesus uses the same intensity
of invitation: when those invited to the banquet refused to come,
the king told his servants to go out "to the roads and
country lanes and make them come in, so that my house will be
full." God has made all the preparations, and he will find
people to respond to his invitation even though, as Paul
says, not many of these will be mighty or wise or noble, as the
world defines those terms (1 Cor 1:26-29). The mighty, wise, and
noble demand that God's ways and thoughts be intelligible to them
first. But the lowly, the helpless, and the broken don't need to
have things explained to them; they simply see the open door and
tables loaded with food!
From Abraham to the present, the nature of faith has remained the
same. Why did God call Abraham to start a journey without knowing
his precise destination (Gen 12:1)? Because nothing has changed
since the Garden of Eden; we want to decide for ourselves what to
do. We dont want to be told by God that something is wrong
for us when it appears so delightful! We want to avoid doing
something that takes a lot of effort and may be painful
even if God says its good for us! We want God to serve us,
supplying our needs as we dictate; we even cite Gods
promises in scripture that He will answer our prayers as
justification! Hence faith always involves letting go of
apparently secure footholds and doing things God's way.
God's invitation is in reality a plea to jump from the apparent
security of pride and self-sufficiency into his arms. Yet life
outside God only appears secure and abundant; to remain in its
hold is, in reality, to choose to live in defiance of the Holy
One who made us, and that can only lead to loss in the end.
The exiles return to Jerusalem from Babylon was led by
Zerubbabel, an ancestor of Jesus (Mt 1:12-13, Lk 3:27). When the
going got rough, God assured Zerubbabel through the prophet
Zechariah: Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit
(Zech 4:6). Peter grasped this as he stepped over the side of the
boat to walk on the surface of the water (Matt 14:29). If we
insist that everything about God's ways and plans is known to us
before we act on his invitation, we will never act. If, however,
we surrender our right to decide what is best and allow God to
determine it, we are on our way home. We have turned the critical
corner of surrender, and are allowing God to be the Creator and
to dictate to us the terms under which we operate. Hence God's
invitation comes to all of us . . . not just those who have never
entered a relationship with Him.
The essence of tonights lesson is God's urgent invitation
to leave our comfortable worldly ways and launch out in paths of
service and living that do not depend on our strength . . . but
on His. God calls us to jump out of what is only appearance into
what is reality: from hunger to food, from thirst to water, from
sadness to joy, from death to life. We may think we already have
food, and water, and joy, and life . . . but the fruits of faith
are only apparent after the fact when, looking back, we can say,
Wow, what I thought I had was only an illusion!" And
thus Gods word will bear the fruit he intends in wonderful
ways in our lives!