Isaiah 66:24

The last chapter of Isaiah! And what a chapter. Not the most ‘uplifting’ or ‘encouraging’ chapter in the Bible, or even in Isaiah. But definitely very applicable to us. It is really a summary of the main themes of the whole book: it starts with the reasons for God’s imminent judgment of Israel (hypocrisy and idolatry), and then goes on to promise future restoration and glorification.

Much of the book has been about hypocrisy. That is, Israelites who worshipped God in their words but not with their thoughts or deeds. They offered sacrifices with being obedient. They said ‘Let the LORD be glorified’ but they didn’t mean it. The first four verse of this chapter are an excellent summary: God does not need a temple to live in on Earth – because He made everything on Earth anyway. What He wants is a heart, broken and contrite, poor in spirit. And that is what He is not getting in Israel. He goes on to list ways they are sacrificing which make Him angry rather than pleasing Him.

The question is asked of us: what is our worship of God like? Is it dry and dead, with no meaning, with no life? Is it based on a proud heart that takes pleasure in the ‘blessing’ that it can offer God? For both of these do not please the LORD – the act of worship He requires is merely a broken and contrite heart, ready to be obedient to Him at all times. Someone who ‘trembles at His Word’ (vs. 2). This implies a deep and genuine respect and fear for who God is – that we should tremble at His very words.

But for those whose worship is from the heart, true and obedient, they are the faithful, and to them God promises that they shall be restored, in much more glory than they can imagine. And they will rejoice when God comes with fire to destroy evil (vs. 14 and 15), because it will mean justice and a new start for them. And they will be set up as the dominant nation, and their name will remain forever (vs. 22). You might think that the book would close on this triumphant, joyous note. But the last verse is:

‘And they shall go forth and look
Upon the corpses of the men
Who have transgressed against Me.
For their worm does not die,
And their fire is not quenched.
They shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.’ (Isaiah 66:24)

Whoever said the Bible was a soft feel-good book?! Isaiah finishes the book with a final reminder of the utter seriousness and graveness of his message. This is not a joke or a game. This is not some political manoeuvring or motivational speech. This goes beyond even life and death. This is absolutely serious, and completely true: those who are not cleansed by the blood of Jesus when they die are an abhorrence to all flesh. There is a penalty for sin, a grave one. We all take sin too lightly. Much too lightly. But it’s sin that started this whole mess, it’s sin that Jesus died to pay for, it’s sin that separates us from God, it’s sin that separates us from people, it’s sin that causes wars and the manifold problems we have in our world. No, sin is not to be taken lightly. No sin. We can only thank the Lord that He came to cleanse us from the sin we commit, and from the sinful nature that burdens us.

Isaiah 64:1,6,7,8,12

Isaiah is pleading for Israel. When you think about it, this is slightly unexpected. Because Israel is the nation that is sinning, the nation that doesn’t hear or believe Isaiah’s words, and yet here is Isaiah, pleading wholeheartedly for that very nation. Indeed, the very first verse shows us his heart (by the way, the first verse of the chapter is not the first verse of the prayer):

‘Oh, that You would rend the heavens!
That You would come down!
That the mountains might shake at Your presence’ (Isaiah 64:1)

Isaiah is firstly pleading for God to come down and make Himself known to Israel’s enemies. To come down and relieve them of their oppression. To do a mighty work. Isaiah’s reasoning is simple: since the beginning of the world there has been no other god that could ever do such works, there is none who blesses righteousness. Therefore God is the only One able to do such things. But Isaiah concludes that God is indeed angry (vs. 5), for Israel has sinned, and in these ways continue, and they need to be saved. So his second plea is for salvation of a moral or inward kind (as opposed to relief from physical oppression).

Then we have the famous verse:

‘But we are all like an unclean thing,
And all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags;
We all fade as a leaf,
And our iniquities, like the wind,
Have taken us away.’ (Isaiah 64:6)

Notice the word ‘all’ in here – referring to all Israelites (and indeed all humanity). ‘All’ of us are like an unclean thing, and ‘all’ the right things we do are merely filthy rags in God’s eyes. This statement shows God’s incredible standard of righteousness, and our own incredible poverty. This is one reason to never get proud about all the good things you do! But still, Isaiah pleads for salvation, He calls for mercy for Israel. The next verse carries on with some reasons:

‘And there is no one who calls on Your name,
Who stirs himself up to take hold of You;
For You have hidden Your face from us,
And have consumed us because of our iniquities’ (Isaiah 64:7)

In all of Israel, there was no one who stirred himself up to take hold of Him. No one was filled with passion so much for God, that he defied the situation around him and took hold of God and God only. No one would wrestle with God (like Jacob in Genesis), no one would take hold of the prize. No one grasped with all their might on the Truth. A sad sad state for a nation, but look at our own. How many people can you truly say have taken hold of God, grasped the Truth? Who can be stirred up from the deep slumber that is over the West and rely on God?

‘But now, O Lord,
You are our Father;
We are the clay, and You our potter;
And all we are the work of our hand’ (Isaiah 64:8)

This is the contra positive of the verse before. Instead of us taking hold of God, God takes hold of us, shapes us and molds us, like we are clay and He is the potter. As clay, we do not have any say over what the Potter shapes us as – but surely the Potter knows the clay, what consistency it is and what it best will form. We do not have to worry about figuring out the best thing for us, the best career path, the best ministry, what we are best at. We don’t have to tell God what we want to do with our lives. Let Him form you. Let Him do with you as He pleases. But surely He will not waste His clay. And surely He is a good potter, one who knows the best way to form the clay He is working with.

So on the one hand we have the exhortation to ‘hold on to God!’, and on the other we have the knowledge that it is God that holds us, and forms us, and that we are merely bits of clay in His hands. Both are equally and simultaneously true. One seems to deal with our direct relation to God – that indeed we merely let Him shape us, and we don’t presume to tell Him what to do. The other seems to refer to the relationship with God we have in society – that we hold fast to God, and let nothing else shape us, that we stir ourselves up from the dead sleep we have in the world and hold fast with all our might to the Truth of God.

And so Isaiah continues his prayer of penitence, pleading for the sake of Israel, until the final verse, after mentioning the tragedies that had occurred to special things in Israel (such as the temple):

‘Will You restrain Yourself because of these things, O LORD?
Will You hold Your peace, and afflict us very severely?’ (Isaiah 64:12)

Isaiah’s final plea is for God to intervene because His special things are being destroyed and laid waste. Isaiah asks how God can restrain Himself. He implies that if God does not intervene, it would be a severe affliction for Israel. That God would hold His peace (which we often think of as a good thing), would be a severe affliction for the Israelites.

Thus Isaiah finishes his pleading, and God answers in the next chapter!

Isaiah 63:3,5b,7

Who is our God? That is an impossible question to answer, but there are many attributes that we can at least start to understand or appreciate. However, usually we find ourselves focusing on one or two attributes or characteristics, which gives a poor description of God. However Isaiah 63 looks at two very different sides of God, and meshes them into one.

The first six verses are almost scary in how angry and punishing God is. For instance verse 3:

‘I have trodden the winepress alone,
And from the peoples no one was with Me.
For I have trodden them in My fury;
Their blood is sprinkled upon My garments,
And I have stained all My robes’ (Isaiah 63:3)

He is talking here about Edom and Bozrah (vs. 1), the enemies of Israel who are His redeemed (vs. 4). But why is God so angry?

‘…Therefore My own arm brought salvation for Me;
And My own fury, it sustained Me.’ (Isaiah 63:5b)

This is salvation for His redeemed that He is bringing about, by the destruction of the evil that surrounds them. So although this is an angry scene, it is for the salvation of His redeemed. Verse 7 is a complete (and surprising) change of tone:

‘I will mention the lovingkindnesses of the LORD
And the praises of the LORD,
According to all that the Lord has bestowed on us,
And the great goodness toward the house of Israel,
Which He has bestowed on them according to His mercies,
According to the multitude of His lovingkindnesses.’ (Isaiah 63:7)

This is straight after the mention of God treading down the peoples in His anger, spilling their blood and making them drunk in His fury (vs. 6).

You see, God is a merciful God all the time. That is who He is. But God is also a God that hates sin, and is completely just. Losing either one of those attributes loses the other. For in effect, the first 6 verses of this chapter are a complete act of mercy towards Israel, as expressed so lovingly in verse 7. And thus, without justice, there is no mercy.

There is no point in focusing only on the ‘lovingkindnesses’ of our LORD. Because without the severe punishment and application of justice, these lovingkindnesses have no meaning. Neither is there point in dwelling upon the judgment of the LORD, for we have been saved from it! No, it is best that both are remembered and praised, for God is glorious as a whole, in all His attributes, not just those that we find comfortable.

Isaiah 34:1,6,7b,9,10b

Isaiah 34 is pretty heavy. It is a judgment on all the nations. So far in Isaiah, most of the judgment has been directed at a particular nation. More often than not it is Israel. However, the very start of this chapter makes it very clear that all nations (excepting Israel) are involved in this judgment.

‘Come near, you nations, to hear;
And heed, you people!
Let the earth hear, and all that is in it…’ (Isaiah 34:1)

I think it may be a prophecy concerning the very end of time, because it is very complete. You can read for yourselves the whole chapter, to get the picture of how incredibly angry God is, but I will put a few verses here:

‘The sword of the LORD is filled with blood,
It is made overflowing with fatness,
With the blood of lambs and goats,
With the fat of kidneys and rams.
For the LORD has a sacrifice in Bozrah,
And a great slaughter in the land of Edom.

…

Their land shall be soaked with blood,
And their dust saturated with fatness.

…

Its streams shall be turned into pitch,
And its dust into brimstone;
Its land shall become burning pitch.

…

For generation to generation it shall like waste;
No one shall pass through it forever and ever.’ (Isaiah 34:6, 7b, 9, 10b)

This seems pretty final – ‘forever and ever’, so we can expect that this hasn’t happened as yet. There are many things in the chapter to ponder, but I think, as an overarching theme, one of the most important things to see is just how serious God is. How angry He is at the nations. All nations. He is angry at the whole earth. And it is not some passing, fleeting anger. It is serious. We see great slaughter, so much so that ‘the mountains shall be melted with their blood.’ (verse 3). We see Edom (as a representative of all the nations) becoming a volcanic wasteland full of streams of pitch and dust of brimstone, so much so that no-one passes through that area any more. We see the ‘hosts of heaven’, the heavenly bodies, falling out of the sky, the heavens being rolled up like a scroll. This is big, big stuff.
I think often through the daily grind of life and our happy-go-lucky friendships we come to some sort of acceptance that God is just there for us, He’s our friend in time of trouble, and He’s a good person to follow. But God is so much more than that. God is serious. When you follow God, you approve of the verses of this chapter. You say ‘Amen!’ when God talks of destruction of the ‘nations’. It is, in the humanly speaking sense, brutal. But God is serious when it comes to sin. He hates it. And, likewise, so should we. DO you ever think to yourself, in the same sort of words used in this chapter, that you hate the sin in your own life? Does sin really upset you? Because, as followers of Jesus, God, we not only grow to be more like Him by loving others more, being nice to people, caring for their needs and so on, but we grow more like Him in our detestation of sin in all its manifestations.

Let’s think about that for a bit today!

Isaiah 4:3-4, Romans 3:25-26

Verse 4 says:

‘When the Lord has washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and purged the blood of Jerusalem from her midst, by the spirit of judgment and the spirit of burning…’ (Isaiah 4:4)

My question is: Does this terrify you, appall you, excite you, embarrass you or make you happy? This is a judgment God, a Just God, that we see here. But, rightly so, this is the same Just God we see in every chapter of the Bible! He is still slow to anger, abounding in mercy etc. It should fill us with joy that God does this. It should make us happy that God will wash away the filth of the daughters of Zion (who, from the last chapter, are vain and haughty), and that he will purge the blood of Jerusalem. It should make us glad that he is a spirit of BURNING! Why? I mean it's all good to think that it should make us happy that God is a loving God, abounding in mercy, faithful and wise and so on. But just because He is a judging God doesn't mean we have to like it, right?

Enter Romans 3:26 - (well lets start from 25) - '[Christ Jesus], whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in is forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.'

The very fact that we are saved and reconciled to God is a function of His Justice. If we are happy therefore that we are saved, then we should be equally happy when God shows that same justice in washing away filth and being a spirit of burning. Indeed, we are to be like Christ, right? Then are we not to abhor sin? If we truly abhor sin for what it really is, then too right we will be happy when God judges it accordingly.

One last thing: Verse 3 reads:

'And it shall come to pass that he who is left in Zion and remains in Jerusalem will be called holy - everyone who is recorded among the living in Jerusalem.' (Isaiah 4:3)

Notice that it doesn't say 'will be holy' but it says 'will be called holy'. Does this remind you of us? See there is no need to fear the judgment of the Lord for Christians. It is something to be praised. It is an attribute of God that adds to His glory! God's justice and mercy saved us, and we are in Jesus, where we are called holy!

The challenge for us is to view the world from God's eyes. To think as God thinks (how's that for a challenge!).If we do that, I'm convinced that our behaviour will be different, we will have different focuses, and more of the Bible will make sense to us.

Isaiah 3:8-10

There's a lot of judgment in chapter 3 of Isaiah. Isaiah was a pre-exilic prophet, which means he went about the streets of Jerusalem proclaiming God's Word before Judah was taken into captivity by Babylon. He speaks during the time when Assyria was a world-power (and they captured much of the Northern Kingdom) This makes it often hard to understand because much of the judgment and 'things to come' can be misread as either being appropriate to the coming exile, or the latter days (the Great tribulation) if you don't read it carefully. Sometimes it is one of those and sometimes the other. But at least realise that it was during times of these struggles that Isaiah spoke these words:

‘For Jerusalem stumbled,
And Judah is fallen,
Because their tongue and their doings
Are against the LORD,
To provoke the eyes of His glory.
The look on their countenance witnesses against them,
And they declare their sin as Sodom;
They do not hide it.
Woe to their soul!
For they have brought evil upon themselves.’ (Isaiah 3:8-9)

Now realise here that Jerusalem and Judah, indeed Israel a a whole, is God's inheritance and He will never completely forsake them. The nation is His, just as nowadays we individually are His, and He won't let us go. However it says Jerusalem has stumbled and Judah has fallen. Why? Because their tongue and their doings are against the LORD! Their speech, what they talk about and how they say it are not of the LORD (for us that does not only mean that we swear or talk rudely, but perhaps we talk idly about silly matters or talk avidly of something that shouldn't matter because it is not of the LORD). Also, what they do is against the LORD, which i suppose is often a result of saying things against Him.

How does God know this? 3 reasons:
a) It provokes the eyes of His glory - ie. He sees us in the light of His perfect and amazing glory and sees that we are filthy and sinful.

b) The look on their countenance witnesses against them - the chapter spends a great deal of time judging haughty people (especially vain women in vs 16-23) and this expression i believe means that God can tell (obviously He already knows because He is omniscient - but maybe this is how we can tell as well) that they are against Him because they are proud of their sin. (Prov 6:16-17a 'These six things the LORD hates, Yes, seven are an abomination to Him: A proud look....') Are we proud of our own sin? I'm sure that sometimes we are. Are we ever proud? Then we are proud of our own sin.

c) They declare their sin as Sodom - Sodom declared her sin quite boldly and clearly if you read Lot's story, and their list of common sins was appalling. That Judah is declaring her own sins as clearly and boldly as Sodom should be a wake-up call to its people. These ways that God knows Jerusalem has stumbled seem to get more and more clear and more and more damning. But sadly I think we too declare our sin as Sodom (probably not the same sins), and what's more, around unbelievers who will take that as a reason that they don't have to be saved.

And what is the outcome of such behaviour? 'Woe to their soul! For they have brought evil on themselves!'. Nevertheless, God still has not forsaken His people. The judgment foretold here is not eternal, only temporary, a chastisement. And we can be sure that in Jesus Christ we have no eternal punishment to fear, because of God's unconditional love. Notice what it says on the next line:

'Say to the righteous that it will be well with them, for they shall eat the fruit of their doings' (Isaiah 3:10)

Let's not stumble as Judah and Jerusalem did, because we have the power of the risen Christ within us to help us make the right decisions, to keep us from evil.