The Glorious Hope of Isaiah (#5: Judgment First)

I want to show you something in Isaiah 6 that you may not have seen before, but I ‘ll just note in passing that the reason that I am skipping Isaiah 5 is not because it’s not good.  In fact, it fits my understanding of the book very well.  But since this is already my 5th post, and I haven’t yet arrived where I expected to start this series, I am trying to move it along.  Furthermore, the point made in chapter 5 is very similar to what we ‘ll see in chapters 7 and following.

If you know anything about Isaiah, you probably know that chapter 6 is about the vision of the holiness of God.  If you went to The Master’s College, you probably heard a (good) sermon on it about once a year.  But I want to move beyond the familiar part to the point of the commissioning service.  After Isaiah is devastated by the glory of the Lord, he is purified.  After that, God asks whom he will send.  Isaiah is willing, and this is what God calls Isaiah to do:

Isaiah 6:9-10 (ESV) “‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand; keep on seeing, but do not perceive. ‘ 10 Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.”

Now this is a very strange commission.  You almost have to ask, what’s the point?  Why bother?  If my message is only going to be rejected, then perhaps it’s better to not go at all.  But God insists; Isaiah’s deliverance of the message is critical.  It would not be the same if the people did not hear.  This is because the message itself will harden the people. 

Jesus, of course, will quote this same passage when the disciples ask him why he started speaking in parables (Matt 13:10-17).  Jesus told these “silly stories” so that those whose hearts were hard would not understand the great truths of the teacher.  But note, Jesus was able, with the same story, to reveal truth to some (believers) and hide truth from others.  Isaiah is doing the same thing, I believe, in the rest of his book.  That is to say, the reason why some things don’t just jump out at you was because Isaiah was deliberately using ambiguous language and difficult concepts so that guys like Ahaz, who rejected the truth, would not be reveling in wonderful truths that they did not deserve and would not receive.  But, it’s absolutely not true (here picture me jumping up and down yelling and screaming) that no one could understand prior to some magical (that is, unwarranted) New Testament interpretation.  One clear proof that people could and did understand is Simeon (Luke 2:25-35).  I ‘ll develop that later, after we look at the passages that were Simeon’s “glorious hope,” but for now I want to make the simple point that some people could understand and some people could not understand, and this was intentional.

The next question in the narrative is important.  Isaiah, realizing he is doomed to giving a message that will harden people asks, “How long, O Lord?”  The answer is:

Isaiah 6:11 (ESV) “Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is a desolate waste,”

In other words, Isaiah will preach a hardening message until judgment comes.  To say it another way, the next thing on the timetable is judgment.  Isaiah may be giving words of hope at point (and yes he is!), but those words of hope will be fulfilled after judgment has come.

This is very critical, in my opinion, for understanding the Immanuel prophecy of Isaiah 7:14.  (Ok, you can live without it in this passage because I think it’s evident in others, but I point it out here as yet another evidence that Isaiah was not prophesying Immanuel as some present-day solution to their problem.)

Now, two more points, as quickly as I can.  First, I believe, and maybe nobody else in the world does, I don’t know, that Isaiah 6:11-12 are an outline of the book.  That is to say, 6:11 predicts the devastation of the land, and this begins to be fulfilled by the Assyrians beginning in chapter 7 and going to chapter 38.  6:12 predicts the exile of the people and this is fulfilled in chapters 39 to the end.  This point is not critical to this series, but it’s something I picked up that seems to hold true.  To pull it together, the people’s hearts are indeed hardened such that there is no reprieve from judgment and the land is destroyed and the people carried off.

The second point is that even here, even in the commissioning message, Isaiah is given a word of hope.  Now, it’s a faint glimmer.  Very faint.

Isaiah 6:13 (ESV) “And though a tenth remain in it, it will be burned again, like a terebinth or an oak, whose stump remains when it is felled.” The holy seed is its stump.”

But a faint light at the end of a tunnel is light nonetheless.  Though the judgment will be massive, God will not completely destroy his people.  The “holy seed” will remain.  We will get a glimpse into this “holy seed” in the following chapters, where a child is born into an impoverished land but rises to become a righteous ruler.