In our journey through the 66 books of the Bible we come today to the book of the prophet Isaiah…
Author & Date
Isaiah, son of Amoz, sometimes referred to as Isaiah of Jerusalem, is traditionally thought to be the author of the entire book bearing his name. Isaiah means “Yahweh saves”. Isaiah was a contemporary of Amos, Hosea, and Micah. His ministry began around 740 BCE, the year King Uzziah died (6:1). According to an unsubstantiated Jewish tradition (see the apocryphal Ascension of Isaiah), the prophet was sawn in half during the reign of Manasseh. (See also Hebrews 11:37.) Isaiah was married and had at least two sons, Shear-Jashub (7:3) and Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz (8:3). He probably spent most of his life in Jerusalem, enjoying his greatest influence under King Hezekiah (37:1-2) Isaiah is also credited with writing a history of the reign of King Uzziah. (See 2 Chronicles 26:22.)
Many scholars today challenge the traditional claim that Isaiah of Jerusalem wrote the entire book that bears his name. Contemporary scholars recognize that most of chapters 1 through 39 were written by Isaiah of Jerusalem. But since the time of Abraham Ibn Ezra, the great rabbinic commentator of the Middle Ages, it has been recognized that chapters 40 and following reflect another setting altogether, and therefore these chapters must have been written by a different author or authors. Most scholars today refer to the author of chapters 40-53 as Second Isaiah writing sometime during the exile (586-538 BCE), and they refer to the author of chapters 54-66 as Third Isaiah, writing sometime after the return from exile (so after 538).
Themes
Isaiah of Jerusalem wrote during the stormy period marking the expansion of the Assyrian empire to the north of Israel and the decline of Israel itself. Under King Tiglath-Pileser III (745-727 BCE) the Assyrians swept westward into Aram (Syria) and south into Canaan. In the year 733, the kings of Aram and Israel tried to pressure Ahaz, king of Judah, into joining a coalition against Assyria. Ahaz chose instead to ask Tiglath-Pileser for help, a decision condemned by Isaiah (7:1). Assyria did assist Judah and conquered the northern kingdom of Israel in 722-721, carting the northern kingdom into an exile from which they would never return to the Promised Land. The Assyrian conquest of Israel made Judah even more vulnerable, and in 701 King Sennacherib of Assyria threatened Jerusalem (36:1). The godly King Hezekiah prayed earnestly, and Isaiah predicted that God would force the Assyrians to withdraw from the city (37:6-7), which they did.
Nevertheless, the book of Isaiah carries a warning for Judah that her sin will bring captivity at the hands of the Babylonians. The visit of the Babylonian king’s envoys to Hezekiah set the stage for this prediction (39:1,6). Second Isaiah assumes the demise of Judah and proceeds to speak of the restoration of the people from captivity (40:2-3). Second Isaiah also tells of the rise of Cyrus the Persian, who unites the Medes and the Persians and conquers Babylon in 539 BCE. (See 41:2.) The decree of Cyrus allows the Jews to return home in 538, a deliverance that prefigures the greater salvation from sin that we know through Jesus. (See Isaiah 52:7.)
Isaiah is a book that unveils many dimensions of God’s judgment and salvation. God is presented in this book as the Holy One of Israel who must punish sin, but who also will redeem his people. Israel is portrayed in this book as a nation blind and deaf, a vineyard that will be trampled, a people devoid of justice. The awful judgment that will be unleashed upon Israel and all the nations who defy God is called “the day of the Lord”. When we get to the New Testament, we see this “day of the Lord” associated with Christ’s second coming and the final judgment.
The book of Isaiah presents the promised restoration of God’s people as something like a new exodus. Judah’s mighty creator will make streams spring up in the desert as he graciously leads his people home. The theme of a highway for the return of the exiles is a prominent one in the book of Isaiah.
Peace and safety will mark the new “Messianic” age (11:6-9). A king descended from David will reign in righteousness (9:7; 32:1) and all the nations will stream to the holy mountain of Jerusalem (2:2-4). The Lord calls the anointed king “my servant” in chapters 42 to 53, a term also applied to Judah as a nation (41:8-9; 42:1). It is through the suffering of the servant that salvation in its fullest sense will be achieved. The Messiah will deliver humanity from sin (52:13-53:12) and become a light for the nations (42:6).
Structure
I. The Book of Judgment (1-39)
A. The sins of Israel and Judah
B. Judgment against pagan nations
C. God’s purpose in judgment
D. Jerusalem’s true and false hopes
E. Events during the reign of Hezekiah
II. The Book of Comfort (40-66)
A. Israel’s release from captivity
B. The future redeemer
C. The future kingdom
Key Concept—Here Am I, Send Me
I would like to take the rest of our time together today to read you one of my favorite passages in the Bible—Isaiah 6. This passage is all about the call of Isaiah to be a prophet. Without Isaiah’s call, we would not have anything else in this wonderful book. The same is true in our lives, without God’s call, nothing else can happen that really matters. Listen for God’s word to you from Isaiah 6, beginning with verse 1…
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”
At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.
“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”
Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”
Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”
And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
We can break this passage down into four parts or steps. Each step leads to the next. Let’s look at these steps one by one…
A Vision of God
I think it is no accident that Isaiah saw the Lord in the year that King Uzziah died. I think it is often the case that we see the Lord most clearly amidst suffering, amidst grief, amidst the shattering experiences of life. When we have good leaders, like Uzziah, it is all too easy to get attached to them in such a way that we put our trust in human beings rather than in the Lord. Sometimes, I think, the Lord needs to shake us out of such a false perspective and false trust. Perhaps that is what the Lord did in Isaiah’s life. And the Lord speaks to Isaiah, through a vision…
Isaiah sees the Lord sitting on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of God’s robe fills the temple. The people of Judah thought of the Lord as being enthroned on the wings of the cherubim that stood in the Holy of Holies, the innermost part of the Jewish Temple where the Ark of the Covenant resided. The wings of the cherubim extended over the Ark and the mercy seat on top of the Ark where the high priest would present the blood of the sacrifice on the Day of Atonement. Isaiah was not the high priest and so could not have physically entered the Holy of Holies, but his vision may be based upon knowledge of what the Holy of Holies looked like.
Alternatively, there may be in this vision a merging of the earthly and the heavenly. It may be that what Isaiah saw was God seated on his heavenly throne, and the train of his robe reaching to the temple, the mere hem of his robe filling the earthly temple in Jerusalem. Whatever way one interprets the vision, whether it be about something earthly, or heavenly, or a mixture of both, it is an awesome vision.
In addition to seeing the Lord, Isaiah sees the seraphim. Usually, we think of seraphim as angels and perhaps a cute and cuddly picture comes to mind. But the word “seraphim” literally means a serpent or a dragon. These are flying dragons in Isaiah’s vision! These dragons each have six wings. With two they cover their faces (presumably to shield their faces from the holiness of God), with two they cover their feet (which may be a euphemism for genitals), and with two wings they fly.
This vision of flying dragons may have been occasioned by something Isaiah saw in the temple. 2 Kings 18:4 tells us that the bronze serpent fashioned by Moses in the wilderness still stood in the temple until the time it was destroyed by King Hezekiah. The king destroyed the bronze serpent because people had begun to worship it.
Well, whatever it was that gave rise to this part of Isaiah’s vision, these flying dragons call out to one another…
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.
So, the message of these dragons is that the Lord is thrice holy. In other words, the Lord is holy to the max. Holiness in this instance expresses “the mysterious, incalculable, unapproachable quality of the divine in contrast to the human.” (A. S. Herbert) God’s holiness involves not simply moral perfection but also transcendence.
Secondly, the seraphim utter God’s personal name. Our English translations refer to “the Lord Almighty” but in Hebrew text we simply have God’s personal name: Yahweh.
Thirdly, the seraphim tell us that the whole earth is full of God’s glory. The shekinah glory of God (appearing as a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night) is what guided the Israelites in their wandering through the wilderness. Perhaps the seraphim are telling us that all of creation shines with God’s shekinah glory: his greatness, his creativity, his wonder, his beauty.
The voices of these flying dragons are so loud that their utterance shakes the doorposts and the thresholds of the temple. And the temple is filled with smoke. Of course, this would be a frequent occurrence in the temple even under normal conditions. There would be the smoke of incense rising, and the smoke of the burning sacrifice. But apart from this experience of Isaiah, I doubt anyone ever felt the doorposts and thresholds of the temple shake until the time that the temple was later destroyed.
A Confession of Sin
Isaiah responds to this awesome vision with a confession. He says, “Woe is me! I am ruined!” Personally, I like the translation “undone” instead of “ruined”. It conveys the idea of “coming apart at the seams”.
Why does Isaiah feel destroyed? He feels this in response to God’s holiness. He feels this way because, as he says, “I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”
One of the natural responses, it seems, throughout Scripture, to an encounter with the holiness of God, is to realize one’s own sinfulness. But why does Isaiah focus on the uncleanness of his lips? Perhaps this is what Isaiah thinks of first because he is, or is going to be, a prophet. The main thing he has been or will be doing is declaring God’s word with his mouth. So, Isaiah is especially aware of the sinfulness, the unholiness, of his own speech, and the speech of his people.
Isn’t it often true that the thing in life which is our greatest strength can also be our greatest weakness? I can relate to Isaiah. I think my main spiritual gift has to do with speaking. But my mouth can also get me in a lot of trouble. I mean, who else do you listen to for a half hour every week? I can get in a lot of trouble by what I say in a half hour. Becky is usually the first to point out to me something that I’ve said that has gone awry. I can think of at least one time when Becky was not in church with me and I went home and told her what I said in the sermon and she said to me, “You didn’t!” And I said, “I did!” And then I realized, “Oh no! I really blew it when I said that.”
Well, at any rate, Isaiah realized that if he was going to be a prophet, he needed his lips to be cleansed of sin. And that is exactly what happens next in his vision.
A Cleansing of the Lips
One of the flying dragons takes a burning coal from the altar in the temple and he touches it to Isaiah’s lips and says, “There, that ought to take away your sin!”
That had to hurt! It’s as if God is saying, “You have sinful lips? I have the solution to that. Let me burn them!”
What a dramatic picture this is of how we are forgiven of our sin. Barry Webb says,
The altar … symbolizes the entire provision which God had made in the temple and its services for the sins of his people. Isaiah is cleansed, not by his own efforts, but purely by the grace of God.
The whole sacrificial system of the Old Testament points forward to the one sufficient sacrifice of our Savior on the cross. The whole New Testament is at pains to point this out to us. Jesus is the one who is sacrificed on the altar for us. It is his blood that brings forgiveness, and a covering for our sin, in a way that no animal sacrifice could ever really do. Paul tells us in Romans 3:25 that Jesus is our mercy seat.
So, how does the burning coal from Jesus’ sacrificial altar get to us, to burn away our sin? Well, it happens certainly through faith, through our trusting in Christ’s sacrifice for us. But the gift of Jesus’ forgiveness is received quite literally by our lips every time we partake of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, trusting in Christ to forgive us.
A Commissioning of the Prophet
It is only after the vision, the confession, and the cleansing, that Isaiah can receive his commission. And how does he receive it? I love the way this happens. Isaiah doesn’t simply hear God’s call to service. He overhears it. It is as though Isaiah gets to be a fly on the wall in God’s heavenly court and he overhears God saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”
And Isaiah is practically alone in his response to God’s call. Remember Moses’ response when God directly called him to go and speak to Pharaoh and say, “Let my people go!”? Moses said, “Send somebody else, please.”
In a few weeks we will read the story of Jonah. God calls Jonah to go and preach to the Ninevites. What does Jonah do? He runs the other way as fast as he can!
But what does Isaiah do? He says, “Here am I. Send me!” That is the response of a heart that is soft, that is tender, toward God. That is the response of a heart that loves God and wants to do God’s bidding, no matter what.
I love what Barry Webb says in conclusion about this passage. He writes,
As well as giving us an awesome view of God, this chapter provides us with a succinct portrait of his servant Isaiah. He was a man with a big vision of God (1), a deep awareness of his own sinfulness (5), a profound experience of the grace of God (7), and a willingness to spend and be spent in his service, whatever the cost (8). May God help us to be more like him.
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