Isaiah 1:1-4
“Isaiah’s Difficult
Message”
Today,
we begin a new series of sermons dealing with the Book of Isaiah. And the reason we are studying the Book of
Isaiah, is because it is the Season of Lent.
During the Season of Lent, we focus on the significance of Jesus’ death
and resurrection for our lives. And some
of you may be wondering, “If we are going to focus on the death and
resurrection of Jesus Christ, then why are studying an Old Testament book? Why aren’t we studying one of the Gospels in the
New Testament?”
Well
I’d like to remind you, that up until 50 – 70 A.D. most Christians did not have
access to a Gospel, because none of the New Testament existed prior to
that. Prior to that time, the Early
Christians’ Bible was the Hebrew Bible … what we call the Old Testament. When Early Christians wanted to read a book
that would help them to understand why Jesus came and to make sense of his
death and resurrection, they turned to the Book of Isaiah. Eighty-five times in the New Testament, the writers
quote or allude to the Book of Isaiah.
That’s more than any other book of the Hebrew Bible. When the Apostle Paul is writing his
masterpiece, the Book of Romans, he quotes from or alludes to the Book of
Isaiah eighteen times. The Book of
Isaiah was the source book for Early Christians to understand the Christian
faith.
In the
earliest sermon that we have record of Jesus preaching in the town of
So,
during this season of Lent, we are going to be like the Early Christians and we
are going to try to understand what this Book of Isaiah teaches us about who
Jesus is and why he came. But this is
not as easy of a task as it might sound.
The Book of Isaiah is a difficult read.
Much of the writing is in poetic form and he is addressing the issues of
his own day and time, as well as what was coming in the future. So, Isaiah is a tough read, but it is not
impossible. And if you have certain
keys, it can help you to understand it better.
So, to begin with, I want to give you a little background introduction
to the Book of Isaiah, which will hopefully enable you to understand it and
appreciate it in a way that you never have before.
First of
all, let me tell you a little bit about the Nation of Israel. In your Sermon Notes I have provided “a Time
Line” that will help you understand the context of Isaiah. The Nation of Israel, at its zenith, was
governed by two Kings … King David and King Solomon. (Map) On the screen you can see the extent of
their kingdom. Even in its zenith, it
was a relatively small piece of land. But all the major highways linking the
East to the West and the North to the South passed through this territory. And this made this territory very strategic
and important. Every time one of the major
nations fought against each other,
But after
Solomon died, his son took over as King.
And in 922 A.D. the Northern part of the Kingdom rebelled against the
Southern part of the Kingdom and they named their own King. (Map) On the screen you can see how they were
divided between the
Now, this
is important information for to know in order to understand what is going on in
Isaiah’s writings, because Isaiah was prophesying in the Southern Kingdom of
Judah. Isaiah lived in
And
during this time, the greatest military force in the world was the
Assyrians. And here’s what they did.
They said, “We’ll allow you to remain as a kingdom, as long as you pay us to
protect you … from us. You pay us to
protect you from us and we’ll all be happy.”
And every year, they would collect this money from all the little
kingdoms.
But every
so often, the kings of these other kingdoms would get together and say, “We’re
tired of paying all this money to the Assyrians. And you know what? If we all got together, we could probably
fight off the Assyrians and stop this.”
And every so often they would do this.
Well, during Isaiah’s day, the Kingdoms around
And when
they refused,
Now,
we remember that scripture from Isaiah, because it is quoted in Matthew’s
Gospel and we know that Matthew is referring to Jesus. And it is about Jesus’ coming as “Immanuel”, but it is also about Isaiah’
prophecy against the nations of
You
see, when you read the Book of Isaiah, you have to read at three different
levels. You have to read it, thinking
about what was happening in Isaiah’s day.
But we recognize that all of this has something to do with Jesus also.
So, we read it asking, “What does this
have to do with Jesus?” And thirdly,
we recognize that God’s Word always speaks to our lives today. So, we also read Isaiah asking, “What does this have to say to my current
experience and life today?”
This
is how the Early Christians read Isaiah.
They understood that these words of Isaiah were addressing the
oppression in Isaiah’s day. But as they
were facing oppression from the Romans, they found in Isaiah’s words, words of
hope and comfort for their lives. When
they heard Isaiah talking about, “a child
that would be born, whose name will be called ‘Emmanuel – Prince of Peace –
Wonderful Counselor”, they understood these words were about Jesus. And this is how we are to read Isaiah as
well.
Well,
all of this is information that will help us as we study the Book of
Isaiah. But as you look at your
timeline, there are a couple of other bits of information that are important
for us. After
As
you read Isaiah, you will experience how he prophesies all through these
events. Chapters 1 – 39 are often
referred to as “1st Isaiah” because they deal with the rise and fall
of
Now,
I know that you didn’t come here today for a history lesson. What we want to know is, what does this Book
of Isaiah have to say to our lives today?
And so, today we look at those first 39 chapters of Isaiah and what we
will find is that Isaiah had a very difficult and unpleasant message to
deliver.
Some
years ago, I remember sitting in a courtroom with a family whose son was being
charged for a crime he had committed.
They brought the young man into the courtroom in an orange jumpsuit and
ended up sentencing him to six months in jail.
I remember how the father tried to remain strong and he tried to give
his son a look of encouragement as he was taken out. But as the door closed behind his son, I will
never forget how that father broke down and wept bitterly.
I
think all of us who are parents have experienced times when our children have
rebelled against our wishes and expectations.
I rebelled against my parents growing up. I didn’t like having someone tell me what I
could and couldn’t do and so, there were times when I would refuse to do what
they wanted me to do and I would say hurtful things. I didn’t understand their love. I just didn’t like being told what to do and
so I chaffed under their authority.
I
really didn’t understand this, until I was a grown-up and had my own kids. When you have a child look you in the eyes
and say, “I hate you. I wish you weren’t
my parent.” I remember how when I
was angry, I said that to my parents as well.
Well,
chapters 1-39 in the Book of Isaiah are dealing with that kind of context. In chapter 1:2 God says, “I reared children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against
me.” God had claimed the people of
In
that day, the people worshipped God with their lips on Sunday, but their lives
were a far cry from what God wanted.
Great was their iniquity and unholy living! And the scripture say that as God watched all
this, his heart grieved. This is the picture we have. It’s the picture of a God whose heart is
broken. “What do I have to do to get you to listen to me?”
What
did your parents do to you? I lived in
the days before “time out”. We didn’t
have “time out” or “go stand in a corner” when I was growing up. When I disobeyed, my dad said, “Go get me a belt” or “Go cut me a switch.” And you knew that you better not come back
with a small one. They’d go cut down the
whole tree then! And my parents would
always say the same thing when they were about to spank me. What did your parents say? We had the same parents! “This is going to hurt me more than it is going to hurt you.”
Well,
this is the model of discipline many of us had growing up. There was a punishment involved. Now, if I just made a mistake, my parents
didn’t spank me for that. But if I knowingly
and consistently did the wrong thing, they’d say, “We don’t want to do this, but somehow you have got to learn that there
are consequences to your actions and that you need to stop doing this.”
Now,
there’s comes a point where we become bigger and spanking doesn’t work
anymore. So, parents have to find other
ways to discipline. Like taking away
your allowance, or the car keys, or grounding you for life.
And
then, there comes a point where you say, “You
can do whatever you want, but you can’t control me. You can’t lock me in the bedroom
forever. I’ll do what I want.” And finally, the parents say, “You’re right, I can’t control you. I’m trying to do what is best for you,
because I care about you. But if you
refuse to listen and you refuse to follow the rules, then you’re on your
own. I don’t know what else to do. But you’re going to find yourself in pain at
some point. And when you’re sleeping out
on the street, because there is nowhere else to go, you call me, and remember
that I didn’t want this to happen to you.”
This is
the picture we have in the Book of Isaiah.
It is a picture of a God, who loves his people, but his people
continually turn their backs on Him. It
is about how God brings punishment and judgment upon his people, trying to
discipline them and to get them to turn from their sins. But finally, it is a picture of how God says,
“Okay, you are going to experience what
it is like to be without my care.” So,
God allowed the Assyrians to rise up. He
didn’t turn the Assyrians into the bloodthirsty people they were. They did that on their own. But God allowed them to rise up and God
withheld his protection from the people in
Throughout
these 39 chapters, we hear Isaiah prophesying this judgment of God, saying, “Please, listen to me! Stop trusting in yourselves and doing things
your way. Follow God’s way. If you refuse, these things are going to
happen.” Isaiah had the terrible
task of seeing and then translating the vision of what God was about to allow
the Assyrians to do. So, in almost every
chapter, we hear these words of warning and judgment, but then, somewhere in
there, we hear God’s words of promise and forgiveness.
So you
see, Isaiah is the perfect book for us to study during the Season of Lent,
because part of the purpose of Lent is for us to examine our lives and
understand why it is that we need a Savior.
Why do we need what Jesus offers us on the Cross? What in our lives is broken? Well, this is what Isaiah is trying to teach
us.
If we
look at some of the sins the people were committing in Isaiah’s day, we see
that they are not too far away from us today.
In verse 4 of our scripture lesson, we read: “Ah,
sinful nation, people laden with iniquity, offspring who do evil, children who
deal corruptly, who have forsaken the Lord, who have despised the Holy One of
In verses
13 & 14, God says, “I see you
worshipping me, but I am sick of your worship.” He says: “Stop
bringing your offerings to me; your incense is an abomination to me. -- I
cannot endure your solemn assemblies with iniquity. Your new moons and your appointed festivals
my soul hates; they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them.”
– (Isaiah 1:13-14). Can you imagine God
saying that? So, hypocrisy was part of
the sin of the people.
In
verses 16 & 17 God says, “Wash
yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before
my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the
oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” So, they were not caring for
those in need.
In
verse 23, we read about the corruption of their leaders: “Your
princes are rebels and companions of thieves. Everyone loves a bribe and runs
after gifts.” Sound familiar?
In
verse 29, it says: “For you shall be
ashamed of the oaks in which you delighted.” The “oaks”
are where the people went to worship idols.
Now today, we are not in danger of worshipping things made with our
hands as though they are deities. But we
do practice idolatry when we give our hearts and our lives to acquiring
material things and we put them in the place of God.
We
could go on and on. Many were the sins
of the people in that day. They even
made fun about what they were doing.
They had television shows and entertained themselves with the things
they were doing against the law of God.
But in
chapter 2:11, Isaiah says, “The haughty
eyes of people shall be brought low, and the pride of everyone shall be
humbled; and the Lord alone will be exalted in that day.” In other words, judgment was coming.
Now,
there are two questions that we need to ask whenever we are studying the
Bible. The first is: “What is God really like?” And the second is, “What does God expect of me?”
These are the two questions that
scripture seeks to answer.
Let’s
look at the first one: “What is God
really like?” In the Book of Isaiah,
we are given two very different pictures of God and these two pictures of God
need to be held together. But often we
choose one or the other to our detriment.
The first picture is what we see in chapter 1 of Isaiah … that God is “a
loving father”. God loves us and cares
for us and we can have an intimate relationship with this God of love. When Jesus talked with God, he called him “Abba”, which means “daddy.” This is the kind of
intimacy that we can have with God.
Some of
you grew up in churches where all you heard about was the judgment of God and
you never heard about the mercy, grace and love of God. And how sad that is, because you grew up
thinking that guilt and fear were the trademark of the Christian faith …and you
never experienced that intimate relationship we can have with God. But if all we have is the grace, mercy and
love of God emphasized, we have a tendency to turn God into our best
buddy. But God is more than just our
buddy or our pal.
In Isaiah
6, there is the beautiful picture of the holiness of God. Isaiah said:
“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting
on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each
had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered
their feet, and with two they flew. And
one called to another and said: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the
whole earth is full of his glory.’” And Isaiah said, “Woe is me! I am lost, for
I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips;” – Isaiah 6:1-3, 5.
The
holiness of God. We need to know both of
these images of God … that God is a loving God, full of grace and mercy, but
God is also a holy God that is to be revered and honored, and he has
expectations of us. If any of us were to
stand before the holiness of God today, like Isaiah, we too would fall on our
faces, recognizing our unworthiness.
Well,
we understand some of the sins of the 7th Century, but what about our
sins? What are the things that we
wrestle with in the 21st century?
Well, what you need to know about Isaiah, is that Isaiah is always
talking about sin at two levels. He
talks about social sins and personal sins.
When
ee talks about “Social Sins”, he is referring to what society was doing
wrong. You see, there were good and
righteous people in Judah who suffered, not because of their personal sins, but
because of the sins of their society.
Like everyone else, they paid the price for what was happening in the
society.
Well,
what might Isaiah point out about our society today? Is it any wonder that our children struggle
with sexual immorality when this is how we entertain ourselves on television
every night? The things that we see at
the movies and on the television are very different pictures than what the
Bible teaches us about human sexuality or about how we relate to one
another.
Why
are we surprised about the physical abuse we see and how men violate and abuse
women, when we hear about this in the songs that are played on the radio?
Why
does it surprise us that we live in a violent culture, when we entertain
ourselves with video games that are filled with violence?
Or
why should it surprise us that we live in a world where we’re afraid of
terrorists, when there is such injustice between those who have and those who
don’t have? As long as such disparity
exists, those in extreme poverty will be easy prey to evil people who tell them
to do awful things as a way of changing their situation.
I
think, if Isaiah were speaking today, he would be condemning some of these
social sins. He’d be telling us, “Here’s the handwriting on the wall. All this stuff is coming and it is because of
the way we as a society and a world have lived.
Something has got to change.”
Now
of course, when it comes to our own personal sins, we remember the words of the
Apostle Paul when he says, “We are all
sinners who have fallen short of the glory of God.” There is something that is broken in all of
us. We have the tendency to do the
things that are wrong and not to do what God wants us to do. This is part of
who we are and this manifest itself in a lot of ways.
And
we could make a long list of personal sins that we see in others. But you know, the purpose of Lent is to
examine our own lives. And I have
discovered that the most obvious sins are not necessarily the most dangerous
sins. Every year as I examine my own
life, God shines the spotlight of his Holy Spirit in my life and reveals things
I wasn’t aware of. The sins that I
wrestle with are the more insidious sins, like “pride” and “hypocrisy”. The kind of hypocrisy where we don’t even
realize, that we are saying one thing, but we are doing something else. These are sins that eat away at the core of
who we are.
And so,
when I read Isaiah I hear in every chapter a word from God to me. But what do you hear? What are the sins that you wrestle with? You see, these are the questions of the
Season of Lent. It is essential that we
understand these things that Isaiah is talking about in these first 39
chapters, because until we understand the state of our lives and state of our
sin, we will never understand what we celebrate on Good Friday and Easter. Good Friday and Easter say to us, that we
don’t have to despair because of our sins.
God loves us and he came to deal with the sin in our lives. Because of what God did through Jesus on the
Cross, we can repent of our sins and God will offer us reconciliation and
hope.
This is
also the message we find in Isaiah. In
every chapter, we hear words of warning and judgment. And just when it seems as there is no hope to
be found, Isaiah offers us a word of grace and hope. Like in verse 17, he says, “Come now, let us reason, says the LORD:
though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow.” And in chapter 25, we read: “The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears
from all faces; he will remove the disgrace of his people from all the
earth. In that day they will say,
‘Surely this is our God; we trusted in him, and he saved us.’” – Isaiah
25:8-9
This
is the Word of the Lord from the first 39 chapters of the Book of Isaiah.
Prayer:
There are secret sins in your life
and things that you wrestle with, and perhaps you sense God saying to you today,
“I am not pleased with this.” So, in your own words, I invite you to pray
to God: God please help me. Forgive me.
Help me not to be this way any more. Take it away. Cleanse me.
I invite you to pray in silence for a few moments.
O
God, we are grateful that you are our Heavenly Father …that you love us more
than we can imagine or believe. And we
confess with the people of Isaiah’s day that we are hypocrites through and
through. We worship you with our lips,
but our hearts are far from you. There
are even times when we laugh and brag about the sins in our lives. There are times when we know your will, but
we turn our backs on you. There are time
when we are proud, and arrogant, and haughty people. There are times when we
are materialistic and focus on the things that we possess or want. There are times when we have pursued pleasure
that has brought us such pain. Please
forgive us and make us whole. You are our salvation. Help us to trust in you and not be
afraid. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.