Community Bible Study -- Isaiah

Text of Presentation, Lesson 18, Isa 54:1-55:13

Click Here to return to Isaiah Home Page

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 people’s sin problem and restore them to himself; everything necessary to satisfy God’s righteous anger at human sin is accomplished (cf Jn 19:30)!

Hence Isaiah’s 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 God’s 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," God’s “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 woman’s contributions to society were made through her husband; a widow was a burden. Hence God says Israel’s “Maker” has become her “husband (54:5). 54:5 emphasizes her status by reciting her “husband’s” 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. Man’s 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; man’s 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. That’s 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. David’s 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 God’s 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 wouldn’t want to share heaven with them! And on a personal level, there may be people who have been so hurtful to us that we wouldn’t like to see them in heaven, either! Such feelings are understandable, but they miss the point . . . as stated in the New Testament after the Messiah’s 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 man’s 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. Let’s 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 God’s promise, even though the promise still stands. That’s the case if we choose to live outside God’s grace. There isn’t 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. It’s an earnest appeal with no less than twelve imperative verbs in the first seven verses. The Messiah’s 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, it’s 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 God’s 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 God’s 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?

It’s not a mystery to us . . . but it’s 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 God’s "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 king’s 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 don’t 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 it’s good for us! We want God to serve us, supplying our needs as we dictate; we even cite God’s 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 tonight’s 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 God’s word will bear the fruit he intends in wonderful ways in our lives!