A Big Holy God Who Lives with Little Broken People

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on A Big Holy God Who Lives with Little Broken People from Isaiah 56-57.

It is an enormous privilege to be back with you here at Crieff Hydro. I think it’s been five years since I was here the last time, and remarkably, none of your faces seem any older. Besides, as a friend of mine in Australia likes to say, none of us is suffering from anything that a good general resurrection can’t fix. Now, I am sure not least with a state of Christian confessionalism in Scotland that some of you have come from remarkably discouraging contexts. Some of you are just stressed because of fatigue. And undoubtedly, some here are encouraged in the ministry that they’re pursuing buoyed up and happy in the Lord, and that’s fine too.

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But I have no doubt that there are a lot of burdens that are being felt whether you’ve remained within the Church of Scotland or have become independent. These are hard, difficult, challenging times and my earnest hope and prayer as we work together through these chapters, Isaiah 56-66, is not only that you’ll be able to go away with another chunk of scripture, better absorbed, better understood, especially in its relation to the whole message of the book of Isaiah that you’ll come away feeling instructed and encouraged. But because of this, a better knowledge of God Himself, a better understanding of the times in which we live, a greater confidence in the gospel of God.

The passages that we are studying together are long. So at the beginning of each section, of each session, we will take the time to read the passages. There is perhaps still too little Bible reading in our churches, I don’t mean amongst the individual members of our churches, but time to read significant chunks of scripture publicly. So I’m going to begin this afternoon by reading all of Chapter 56 and 57. Tomorrow morning, all of 58, 59, and 60 and so on all the way through. So if you want this evening to read ahead a little and absorb some of the content, better yet, but the focus of these expositions is going to be to tease out the flow of the argument. We’ll pause here and there for particular passages, but to follow the flow of the passage is strengthened if we take time to read extensive units.

“So hear then the word of the Lord. This is what the Lord says. Maintain justice and do what is right for my salvation is close at hand and my righteousness will soon be revealed. Blessed is the one who does this, the person who holds it fast, who keeps the Sabbath without desecrating it, and keeps their hands from doing any evil. Let no foreigner who is bound to the Lord say, The Lord will surely exclude me from his people and let no eunuch complain, I’m only a dry tree. For this is what the Lord says to the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, who choose what pleases me and hold fast to my covenant to them I will give within my temple and its walls, a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters. I will give them an everlasting name that will endure forever. And foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord, to minister to Him, to love the name of the Lord and to be His servants, all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it and to hold fast to my covenant. These I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer.

Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar. For my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations. The sovereign Lord declares he who gathers the exiles of Israel, I will gather still others to them besides those already gathered. Come all you beasts of the field, come and devour all you beasts of the forest. Israel’s watchmen are blind, they all lack knowledge. They are all mute dogs, they cannot bark. They lie around and dream, they love to sleep. They are dogs with mighty appetites, they never have enough. They are shepherds who lack understanding. They all turn to their own way, they seek their own gain. ‘Come,’ each one cries, ‘let me get wine, let us drink our fill of beer and tomorrow will be like today, or even far better.’

The righteous perish and no one takes it to heart. The devout are taken away and no one understands that the righteous are taken away to be spared from evil. Those who walk uprightly enter into peace, they find rest as they lie in death. But you, come here you children of a sorceress, you offspring of adulterers and prostitutes. Who are you mocking? At whom do you sneer and stick out your tongue? Are you not a brute of rebels, the offspring of liars? You burn with lust among the oaks and under every spreading tree, you sacrifice your children in the ravines and under the overhanging crags, the idols among the smooth stones of the ravines are your portion. Indeed they are your lot. Yes, to them you have poured out drink offerings and offered grain offerings. In view of all this, should I relent? You have made your bed on a high and lofty hill. There you went up to offer your sacrifices. Behind your doors and your doorposts, you have put your pagan symbols.

Forsaking me, you uncovered your bed, you climbed into it, and opened it wide. You made a pact with those whose beds you love and you looked with lust on their naked bodies. You went to Molech with olive oil and increased your perfumes. You sent your ambassadors far away, you descended to the very realm of the dead. You wearied yourself by such going about, but you would not say it is hopeless. You found renewal of your strength and so you did not faint. Whom have you so dreaded and feared that you have not been true to me and have neither remembered me nor taken this to heart? Is it not because I have long been silent that you do not fear me?

I will expose your righteousness and your works and they will not benefit you. When you cry out for help, let your collection of idols save you. The wind will carry all of them off, a mere breath will blow them away. But whoever takes refuge in me will inherit the land and possess my holy mountain. And it will be said, build up, build up, prepare the road, remove the obstacles out of the way of my people, for this is what the high-end exalted one says, He who lives forever whose name is holy, I live in a high and holy place, but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.

I will not accuse them forever, nor will I always be angry for then they will faint away because of me, the very people I have created. I was enraged by their sinful greed, I punished them and hid my face in anger. Yet they kept on in their willful ways. I have seen their ways, but I will heal them, I will guide them, and restore comfort to Israel’s mourners, creating praise on their lips. Peace, peace to those far and near, says the Lord, and I will heal them. But the wicked are like the tossing sea which cannot rest, whose waves cast up mire and mud. There is no peace, says my God, for the wicked. This is the word of the Lord.”

Now, to understand these chapters well, we need to grasp exactly where they fall in the prophecy of Isaiah. Isaiah is divided into three parts, three parts that emphasize two layers of themes. There’s a historical level and what we could call a Christological level. Historically, the first part from Chapter 1 to the end of Chapter 37 focuses especially on Israel’s struggles with Assyria, the regional superpower that was controlling much of the Middle East at the time that Isaiah served. And under Assyria, the 10 northern tribes were captured, defeated, taken off into captivity, and still mighty military, cruel Assyria pressed farther south and destroyed most of the tribes of Judah and surrounded, threatened Jerusalem. But of course, Assyria was stopped, and Jerusalem was spared.

Now on that canvas, there is the promise of a coming Davidic king. For to us, a child is born. To us, a son is given. He will reign on the throne of his father, Jacob, of the increase of his kingdom there will be no end. He will be called the wonderful counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Or in Isaiah 11 from the stalk of Jesse, a shoot will spring up, a branch, and he will introduce this spectacular way of life, transformed existence of apocalyptic vision after apocalyptic vision in which the wolf lies down with the lamb. And a little child will play over and asps, oh, and there will be knowledge of God all over the earth. The earth will be covered with the knowledge of the Lord as the sea is covered with water. Spectacular imagery as the messianic king is figured against the background of this historic portrayal of the tension between God’s covenant people and the surrounding superpower. That’s the first part of Isaiah.

The second part runs from Isaiah 38-55. Here the focus is on events that began about 140 years later. Israel, the northern tribes fell in 721, the southern tribes fell in 586 B.C. And now, historically, the focus is on the regional superpower at that time, which is, of course, Babylon. Babylon had destroyed Assyria and Nineveh and now this wicked superpower with all of its wealth and idolatry threatens Jerusalem. And Jerusalem in fulfillment of prophecy falls, is destroyed, the temple is razed to the ground. And now the focus is on God’s broken covenant people in the wake of this cataclysmic destruction at the hands of Babylon. And the vision runs forward another few decades to the beginning of the return, the return as the people of God start coming back to the promised land. That’s the second part.

And on this canvas, a slightly different picture of the ultimate Messiah is painted. Now, he comes portrayed not so much as the king, as the suffering servant, especially climax in the passage we know so well, Isaiah 53, or better 52:13-53:12. He is the one who suffers and dies and yet shall see the travail of his soul and be satisfied. He conquers through His own death. So here the canvas of Judah’s defeat and beginning return is the platform on which this structure of a Christological suffering servant is built. And now we come to our passage. Here in Chapters 56-66, Isaiah now probes the experience and circumstances of the returnees. And now that becomes the canvas on which the third portrait of the Messiah is painted, namely the picture of a great conqueror, a conqueror who consummates his victory over all of his foes and ultimately brings in the new heaven and the new earth.

Now, there are many other intertwining details, I’ll try to point out some of the connections that bring the book of Isaiah together, but you need to keep bearing in mind those two levels. We’ll refer to them again and again and again over the next two days. At the one level, the historical level, Assyria in the first part, Babylon and the exile and the returnees and the second part. And then the circumstances, the experiences, the triumphs and the weaknesses, the failures, the division of the people of God as they wait for the consummation. And against that series of three portraits is a threefold picture of the coming messianic king, suffering servant, and triumphant conqueror.

So akin to our situation today, there is a kind of tension at one level with the picture of the king in the first part and the picture of the suffering servant in the second part who will see the travail of his soul and be satisfied, He pays for their sin. He is wounded for our transgressions yet at the same time, the kingdom hasn’t been consummated. This is what the Lord says, 56:1, “Maintain justice and do what is right for my salvation is close at hand.” The situation is not unlike what we experience today. At one level we say salvation has been paid for, Christ has died. The kingdom is inaugurated, Jesus is reigning. Every niche shall bow, but the fact of the matter is we still die. Sin is very powerful, even we who name the name of Christ are sometimes appalled at our own deceptiveness.

And we look at the surrounding culture and think, how low can we go? And we say with Isaiah and Isaiah 6, we’re complicit in these things too. We are people of unclean lips and we dwell amongst the people of unclean lips. So there’s a tension between what God has already done and what still remains to be done. And the question is how do we live between those two great events? What should our experiences, our priorities be? We are called to obedient faith. 56:1, “While we wait for the conqueror to triumph in the final showdown with all the hostile powers.”

63:1-6, “Who is this coming from Edam from Basra with his garments stained crimson? Who is this robed in splendor, striding forward in the greatness of his strength? It is I proclaiming victory, mighty to save. Why are your garments red like those of one treading the winepress? I have trodden the winepress alone from the nations, no one was with me. I trampled them in my anger and trod them down in my wrath. Their blood splattered my garments, I stained all my clothing. It was for me the day of vengeance, the year for me to redeem had come. I looked but there was no one to help. I was appalled that no one gave triumph for my own arm achieved salvation for me and my own wrath sustained me. I trampled the nations in my anger. In my wrath, I made them drunk and poured their blood on the ground.”

You see, finally, there is absolute vindication, absolute unyielding justice. Now the conqueror comes and he’s not acting now like the wounded suffering servant. He comes to divide and, as we’ll see through these chapters, to redeem utterly to transform utterly, and to destroy utterly the coming of the day of the Lord brings both triumph and catastrophic, hellish judgment. That is what we press toward. How then shall we live?

So now we come to our text, Chapters 56 and 57. We proceed in three parts for Isaiah paints three portraits to get us into our themes.

1. A Righteous God

Portrait number one, the portrait of a righteous God who welcomes all contrite sinners. On the one hand, verses 1-2, “Maintain justice, do what is right for my salvation is close at hand and my righteousness will soon be revealed. Blessed is the one who does this, the person who holds it fast, who keeps the Sabbath without desecrating it, and keeps their hands from doing any evil.” In other words, here there is severity, strictness. We’ll come to the details in a moment.

But, on the other hand, verses 3 and following, “God welcomes the alien, the foreigner, the eunuch. It’s almost, you might say, so far as the Old Testament law is concerned, a softening of things or a broadening of things, a transformation of things. Here is a portrait of a God who welcomes everyone who is contrite and broken. Yet at the same time, He is a righteous God.” That brings us to these two words that keep recurring. I’ll spend more time on them later. But have you noticed the two words? “Maintain justice,” in Hebrew, mishpat, “for my salvation is close at hand in my righteousness,” from the tzedakah group, “will be revealed.” Those two words Isaiah plays with again and again and again. We’ll see them a little later on in the book.

In the first third of the book, both mishpat and the tzedakah group, justice and righteousness, are very often cast as what we must do, how we must act, hence maintain justice here in this third part as well. That’s something we are supposed to do. In the second part, however, the emphasis is different. It’s on the righteousness, especially with tzedakah that God provides. He provides righteousness precisely through the suffering servant. And now you come to this third part of Isaiah and the two are brought together. So look carefully at verse 56:1, “Maintain justice and do what is right.” That’s what you must do. You must observe the Sabbath without desecrating it as we’ll see in the following verses, that is put on you.

On the other hand, “My salvation is close at hand,” and parallel to that, “My righteousness will soon be revealed.” This is what I am providing. So on the one hand, there is a strong emphasis on what we must do. And on the other hand, you look more closely and it’s a righteousness that God himself ultimately provides. If you focus only on the former, you either become pigheaded, and arrogant, and legalistic, and feel that you’re better than others or you wipe yourself out in grim despair as you see sin for what it really is, maintain justice and, good grief, I can’t do that. But on the other hand, as soon as you’ve got that demand firmly in your mind, God says, “And I provide the salvation. I provide the righteousness.” This tension keeps recurring in this third part of Isaiah. We’ll explore it more in the next couple of days.

This salvation is for the one who keeps the Sabbath without desecrating it. The same phrase occurs in verse 6, it must be important, “All who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it.” I think what is meant, not that you keep the Sabbath so strictly that you don’t desecrate it, I think that it means you keep the Sabbath without being a hypocrite. There’s a way of keeping the Sabbath that actually desecrates it. The Sabbaths are not a delight. There’s a lovely passage in “Gulliver’s Travels,” Dean Swift in the 18th century, who says of certain fashionable ladies of his day, “They were so busy being religious that they had no time to say their prayers.” And it’s possible so to observe the Sabbath with rules and so on, that at the same time, it’s not really the Lord’s day. That’s all on the one hand, this is what you must do.

On the other hand, God welcomes the foreigner and the eunuch. Now, in Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy provision is made in those four books of the Pentateuch to show how a foreigner, an alien, a non-Hebrew can become a Hebrew. There are rites and rituals and circumcision and putting yourself under the covenant and so on, so on, so on. And Deuteronomy 23 speaks of the eunuch who nevertheless can’t become a member of the covenant community. He can’t approach God. Eunuchs are banned from the covenantal assembly. Sometimes they had become eunuchs because they had been castrated in order to serve in pagan contexts. But in any case, there is no familial connection in the next generation. They certainly can’t become priests. They can’t be part of the worshiping community at the temple in Israel.

But now what does God say? “Let no foreigner who is bound to the Lord say, the Lord will surely exclude me from His people, and let no unit complain, I’m only a dry tree, for this is what the Lord says, to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbath and a little farther on without desecrating it, who choose what pleases me and hold fast to my covenant to them I will give within my temple and its walls of memorial and a name better than sons and daughters.”

Now, how powerful that is might escape us at first because we live in an age of such individualism that we don’t think of our real identity being maintained and nourished and fed and gained through our children and our children’s children, and our children’s children’s children. They’re an optional extra. There are a lot of people in the Western world, in particular, who are DINKs, double income, no kids. There isn’t one country in the Western world where the birth rate is 2.1 or better, not one. Because we offer having no children, they’re an expense, you know. They circumscribe what you can do, you know, I don’t know how I’d pay for their education.

So our identity is not bound up with our family the way it was in ancient Israel. So where was the identity of the eunuch? Necessarily excluded, not only from Israel but from all that was held important by the culture in children, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. And God says, “I’m giving you a name that’s better than having lots of kids. To them, I will give within my temple and its walls of memorial and a name better than sons and daughters. I’ll give them an everlasting name. Your real identity is bound up with me, with my salvation, with your name, an everlasting name printed on the walls of the temple of God.”

And as for foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord, to minister to Him, to love the name of the Lord and be His servants who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it and who hold fast of my covenant, these I will bring to my holy mountain. They’re not excluded. I’ll give them the joy of the Lord in the house of prayer. Indeed God promises in words that Jesus himself quotes in holy passion week, Matthew 21 and Mark 11, “My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations. After all, the sovereign Lord declares you gather the exiles of Israel, I will gather still others.” That is, not only the ones who have begun to return, not only Israelites who will continue to return, I will gather others whom you have not seen yet. This is picking up themes that recur early on in Isaiah and keep recurring. I will draw your attention to more of these later.

Do you remember the remarkable passage in Isaiah 19? One of the great Isaiahnic mission texts? In the time that it was given, it must have been shattering. 19:23, “In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. The Assyrians will go to Egypt and the Egyptians to Assyria, the Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together. In that day, Israel will be the third along with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing on the earth. The Lord Almighty will bless them saying Blessed be Egypt, my people, Assyria, my handiwork, and Israel my inheritance.”

That day God will bring in Red China and the Muslim Middle East and they will be our brothers and sisters. And you won’t be thinking of the British Empire or the American version thereof. You’ll be thinking of God’s transformative power to bring in men and women from every tongue and tribe and people and nation. This is a foretaste of Revelation 5 and 7. Indeed, I will gather still others to them besides those already gathered and now one thinks of passages like John 10, where the Lord Jesus says, “In addition to the sheep of this fold, I will gather others in as well and they will be one flock and one people.” So here’s the first portrait, it’s the portrait of a righteous God who welcomes all contrite sinners.

2. An Idolatrous People

Second portrait, the portrait of an idolatrous people whose righteousness is foul, not whose sin is foul, but whose righteousness is foul from 56:9-57:13. It comes in two or three steps. First, the utter failure of the leaders 56:9-12. The watchmen here are leaders, whether political or religious, often you couldn’t tell the difference in ancient Israel. “Come all you beasts of the field come and devour all you beasts of the forest.” That is, you provide judgment and threat. “Israel’s watchmen are blind. They all lack knowledge. They’re all mute dogs, they cannot bark.” How are they described? Well, first of all, they’re blind so they cannot see. Number two, they’re ignorant, they all lack knowledge. Number three, they are unable to issue warnings. They’re like mute dogs that cannot bark. Does this begin to sound like Ecclesiastical leaders and political leaders in our day?

Blind, you lay out the actual facts, scientific, biblical-theological, and they cannot see, the worldview has captured them. They all lack knowledge and they certainly don’t warn the people. They warn the people who warn the people. They can’t bark, they lie around and dream with various utopias that cannot possibly take place. Nor is this the first time in history this happens. At the beginning of the 20th century and the rising tide of new technology and scientific breakthroughs, the churches broke down in desperate disarray as there was a kind of triumphalistic conviction that with education and scientific technology, the world is getting better and better.

And some of us actually began to think that World War I, that most stupid of all wars, and the Great Depression and then World War II with even greater extent of the reach of death, would finally shatter our confidence, and then came Vietnam, squeezed into a few years after the Korean War, the Cold War, but eventually the wall fell. And then you had scholars writing books like “The End of History,” which argued that history as we know it, which is a history of conflict and struggle and so on, is now over. Now there will be peace. There may be regional struggles for 300 years, but on the other hand, it’s over.

History as we know it, as a matter of wars and struggle, it’s gone. It’s gone. We’ve achieved stability in the world and democracy will triumph. Does anybody believe that today? With rising strong men here and there, often democracy fleeing, in favor instead of despots. Blind, ignorant, unable to bark, or else they bark at the wrong things. They lie around and dream their utopian dreams. They love to sleep. They’re lazy, they play a lot of golf. They’re dogs with mighty appetites, you don’t see an awful lot of self-discipline, and self-restraint, and self-denial characterizing them. They never have enough. They are shepherds who lack understanding, that is, they don’t really care for the sheep. That’s a constant theme in Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah.

What’s happening today is not new. They all turn to their own way. That can’t help but call to mind Isaiah 53, “We have turned everyone to his own way,” or as a friend of mine used to say, “We are all highly original sinners.” Because the emphasis is on doing your own thing. If you suppress doing your own thing, then you’re not living up to your full potential. It’s another way of overthrowing any external authority. They seek their own gain. “Come, each one cries, let me get wine, let us drink our fill of beer, and tomorrow will be like today only far better.” They can’t read their own times and meanwhile, they are aflame with their own preferred sins and are addicted to them.

There’s a loss of leadership. And, you know, that theme runs right through Isaiah. As far back as Chapter 3 of Isaiah, we get this depiction, “See now the Lord, the Lord Almighty is about to take from Jerusalem and Judah both supply and support all supplies of water and food, the hero and the warrior,” these are things the Lord is gonna take away, ” the judge and the prophet, the diviner and the elder, the captain of 50, and the man of rank, the counselors, skilled craftsman, clever enchanter. I will make mere youths their officials, children will rule over them.” One of the marks of God’s judgment on a wicked and decaying culture is the displacement of leadership and statesmen with kids and stupid people.

Does that sound vaguely familiar? It’s happened before, it’ll happen again. So in this portrayal of an idolatrous people whose righteousness is foul, we find first the utter failure of the leaders. And then secondly, in 57:1-13, a strangely divided society. There’s another one of these on the one hand, on the other hand things. On the one hand, there are righteous individuals, 57:1-2, on the other hand, there is a societal decay. So on the one hand, the righteous individuals, the righteous perish, and no one takes it to heart. The devout are taken away and no one understands that the righteous are taken away to be spared from evil.

Sometimes God gives righteous people early death so they don’t see calamity still to come. That makes no sense at all if you’re a philosophical naturalist, it’s better to be alive than dead. I remember saying to somebody not long ago, of a third party whom we both knew, who had gone through some desperate medical procedures that had been very painful, but he was gradually climbing back up to normal health. I said, “He certainly has been through an awful lot.” And my friend said, “Well, it’s better than the alternative.” Is it? “Those who walk uprightly enter into peace. They find rest as they lie in death.” Death can be configured as the last enemy. Death can be seen to be a horrible enemy, but through a slightly different lens, it’s the place where finally you rest in peace, not because you’re annihilated, but because of what Christians have confessed throughout the centuries as the intermediate state as we wait for the resurrection. We’ll come back to that one toward the end of our sessions together.

So on the one hand, the righteous, there are some individuals and what happens to them is not thought about very deeply by the society at large. But on the other hand, there is this large group of what might be called the perverse, verses 3 and following. The language is striking, sons of witches or sorcerers, the seed of an adulterer and of a working prostitute. This is not trying to say that just because you’re born of a prostitute or just because you’re a bastard, therefore you’re foul. What it’s saying is the entire culture, the entire societal mechanisms are corroded, they’re corrupt. You’re not building up the family and passing on the traditions and the heritage and the confessionalism.

Verses 4-9 are scary. “Whom are you mocking? At whom do you sneer and stick out your tongue? Are you not a brute of rebels, the offspring of liars? You burn with lust among the oaks and under every spreading tree you sacrifice your children in the ravines and under the overhanging crags.” That is a particular reference, of course, to the god Molech. I’m sure most of you’re aware that the god Molech demanded child sacrifice. He was configured as a stone god holding a stone bowl and people put a fire under the stone bowl until it glowed a dull cherry red and threw in their children where they screamed and were burned to death as a sacrifice to God.

And this is part of your worship? The idols among the smooth stones of the ravines are your portion, that’s your whole heritage, this endless idolatry. Of course, we don’t do that to our children, we abort them instead. In view of all this, should I relent? Indeed, you keep pursuing your gods and goddesses, your paganism, you made a pact with those whose beds you love, you looked with lust on their naked bodies. This conjugation of lust and idolatry is pretty common from the book of Deuteronomy on. That is to say, there is a sense in which spiritual adultery, spiritual apostasy can be configured as a kind of spiritual adultery.

So just as the marriage supper of the lamb in the New Testament and the union between Yahweh and Israel in the Old Testament represents marriage as it ought to be, so the book of Hosea and other passages of scripture show that apostasy is a kind of spiritual adultery with all of the hurt, and the anguish, and the hatred, and the deceit, and the lies. So that both our marriages and our divorces are supposed to be speaking to us of what’s going on at a deeper level between the people of God and God himself. They’re exhausted by their own sin, but they aren’t broken down enough to say, verse 10, it’s hopeless, and then perhaps turn to the Lord. They can’t get there, they find renewal of their own strength, renewal to continue in perversity and idolatry.

How many people have we counseled who have been right on the edge of despair, threatening suicide, and so on? But the one thing they will not do is repent. So in Isaiah 40 where God promises renewed strength to even the young men who get weary and are broken and so on, He does provide strength. This group says I can do it my way. I can do it myself. They find strength to pursue their own idolatry. There is no contrition. You found renewal of your strength, so you did not faint. That is in your idolatrous pursuits. What does God finally say of this crowd? Verse 12, “I will expose your righteousness and your works and they will not benefit you.”

The fact remains that our generation with its current moral decisions thinks that it’s on the side of the righteous. It’s bigots like you and me who are on the side of the unrighteous. Those who are pushing transgenderism and making it normative in many strata of the culture do not do so because they think they’re corrupt, they think they’re on the side of the angels. And God says, “I will expose your righteousness.” That’s a theme that keeps showing up in Isaiah. In Isaiah 64:6, and in words that are well known to all of us, “All of us have become like one who is unclean. And all our righteous acts are like filthy rags, we all shrivel up like a leaf and like the wind, our sins sweep us away.”

And it’s not just in the sexual arena, of course. So often our anger, which we think of so frequently as righteous anger, is merely undisciplined hatred, a sense of moral superiority. That’s why in the great farewell discourse of John 14:16, Jesus, when he promises the Holy Spirit, says he will convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment. I think that passage is sometimes misunderstood. He will convict the world of the world’s sin, he will convict the world of the world’s righteousness, and he will convict the world of the world’s judgment. The world’s judgment about Jesus, about right and wrong, and truth and error, and their righteousness. They think that they are protecting the ancient covenantal structures by bumping Jesus off before his false teaching gets out of hand. And Christ, by his death and resurrection, mediated through the power of the coming paraclete, he will convict the world of the world’s sin, of the world’s righteousness, of the world’s judgment. These themes are drawn right out of Isaiah. So here then is a portrait of an idolatrous, people whose righteousness is, frankly, foul.

3. A Persevering God

The third portrait, the portrait of a persevering God who is the only hope for the God damned. Verses 14-21, the important point here is that the people whom God saves are those who are sinners, yet the people whom God condemns in these verses are sinners, there’s a built intention. It’s not that God saves the people who are righteous because God goes to a lot of trouble to show that they’re not righteous, and even their righteousness is foul. So what do we read? Verse 14, “Build up, build up, prepare the road, remove the obstacles out of the way of my people.” That is, this is probably the same imagery that you get in Isaiah 40 that John the Baptist quotes with respect to his function of preparing the way for the Lord. “The Messiah is coming, God is coming for a visit. So knock down the hills that get in the way, and get rid of the bumps, and fill in the holes and make the path smooth, and so on. So build it up. Remove the obstacles out of the way of my people.” Now, this can be the way of my people as they return from exile or the way of the Messiah coming. But in any case, build up the roads, which when you take away the metaphor is saying make righteous existence normative, pronounce repentance, and so on.

For this is what the high and exalted one says, “He who lives forever whose name is holy. I live in a high and holy place, but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit to revive the spirit of the lowly, to revive the contrite of heart. I will not accuse them forever, nor will I always be angry for then they would faint away because of me, the very people I’ve created.” What God wants from them is not simply alleged righteousness because He has just gone to a lot of pains to show that the righteousness is self-deceitful and foul. What He wants from them is contrition, brokenness.

And after all, God Himself cannot treat them as they deserve, the people whom He created. He cannot unless He wipes them all out. “I will not accuse them forever, nor will I always be angry for then they would faint away because of me, the very people I have created. I was enraged by their sinful greed.” He’s still talking about these same people, these sinners. “I was enraged by their sinful greed,” all the disgusting sins of the previous chapter and a half. I was angry with them, I was angry with them and sent them off into exile. I was angry with them when they came back and were so duplicitous again and again and again. I punished them and hid my face in anger, yet they kept on in their willful ways. And what does God say? Verse 18, “I have seen their ways and…” you might expect, and I will punish them some more. But instead, He says, “I have seen their ways and I will heal them.”

And that’s the only hope for Scotland there is. I will guide them and restore comfort to Israel’s mourners, creating praise on their lips. “I will create peace, peace to those far and near,” says the Lord, “I will heal them.” But the striking thing is God also says, verse 20, “But the wicked are like the tossing sea, which cannot rest. But we’ve just seen the first group whom God is going to heal are wretched sinners who are called to repentance, call to contrition, but they still fail again and again and again. And even their righteousness is in sinful rags and God heals them. But now the wicked, well, they’re like the tossing sea which cannot rest.

In Israel’s metaphors, the sea is not a happy place. The Brits are a seafaring people. So you write endless poems about adventure and the high sea and triumph and all around, “I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea in the sky, and all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,” John Mayfield. You have dozens of poems like that. What do the Israelites say? The wicked are like the tossing sea which cannot rest, whose waves cast up mire and mud. So it’s not too surprising therefore that when we come to the picture of the new heaven and the new earth, in Revelation 21-22, the first thing the seer says is there was no more sea.

Well, of course, it’s not a literal, it’s not talking about hydrology, it’s symbolism. There’s no more evil, there’s no more mud and mire, and unrest and danger. But in terms of the flow of the argument, how is it that this tension in verses 18-21 are so strong? On the one hand, God saves sinful people. “I won’t accuse them forever nor will I always be angry.” I was enraged, I punished them. They kept on in their sin, in their willful ways. Verse 17, “I have seen their ways and I will heal them.” And then verse 20, “But the wicked are like tossing sea which cannot rest.” What on earth is going on?

Well, discover that this tension keeps recurring, but perhaps nowhere is it stronger earlier in the canon than in Exodus 34. One of the most condensed pictures of God in the Hebrew Bible. You recall the setting, Moses has come down from the mountain with the tablets of the law, Chapter 32, and he finds the people awash in idolatry with a golden calf. And judgment breaks out, thousands die. God threatens not to go with the people anymore, Moses intercedes and he begs the Lord to show him more of his glory. And God says, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you.” And then in Chapter 34, the events that we focus on here, Moses is hidden in a cleft of the rock, and God goes by and shields Moses from the glory of God because, “No one can see my face and live,” we’re told at the end of 33.

But as he goes by, he intones certain words and after he is gone by, Moses is allowed to peep out and see something of the trailing edge of the afterglow of the glory of God. Now, what are the words that God Himself intones, words that are meant to capture his self-disclosure to Moses? In the context of massive judgment and threat, as he passed in front of Moses, he proclaimed, verse 6, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, forgiving wickedness and rebellion and sin.” How sweet those words must have sounded to Moses in this context yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished. He punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation. And there’s part of you that reads those verses and looks at them again and says, which is it?

And the short answer is that tension simply is not adequately addressed in the Old Testament. There are streams that address it, streams where there is a sacrifice to propitiate God on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, and Passover where the angel of destruction passes over God’s covenant people, and yet something dies, the lamb dies. There are those pictures, but you don’t find this resolution of God coming to His people in merciful goodness, the demonstration of His glory while still preserving utter justice until you come to the cross where God is presented in the words of Paul in Romans 3 as simultaneously just, and the one who justifies the ungodly. Isaiah is glimpsing that.

So what should we take away from these two chapters? Let me suggest three things. Number one, we cannot bring in revival ourselves. Yes, maintain justice, do what is good, keep the Sabbath, all the rest. But you still can’t bring in revival yourself. For a start, so much of our righteousness is nothing more than filthy rags. And by we, I don’t mean we in Scotland, I mean we Christians. Even when we do something really, really generous, there’s a demon on my left shoulder that’s whispering, “Boy, Don, that was pretty generous.” We are such a deceitful people, aren’t we? We wait for the mercy of God.

In that connection, it’s worth reminding ourselves of another passage in Isaiah, Isaiah 6. In the preceding chapters, Isaiah has been denouncing the sins of the people of his day. In Chapter 5, he breaks out his guitar, sings a little song of the vineyard, a little ballad. Everybody likes a ballad with guitar and banjo music. I don’t care how much you like pipe organs, you can’t not like folk music. So he breaks out a little folk music song and sings a song about a vineyard that got away from the master and the master decided to destroy it because it was unproductive, it was irrigated, it was dug up, it was fertilized, and so on. And all it produced were stinkers, no proper grapes. So God destroys it.

And then in the ballad, it’s applied, and then Isaiah thunders a series of woes, woe to you who add house to house and join field to field until no space is left and you live alone in the land. That kind of capitalism which squeezes out little people and has no place for the broken. Woe to those who rise early in the morning to run after their drinks, who stay up late at night until they’re inflamed with wine, shaken, not stirred. Woe to those who draw sin along with cords of deceit and wickedness as with card ropes. To those who say, “Let God hurry, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha,” sneering condescension. “Let Him hasten His work so we may see it, the plan of the holy one of Israel, let it approach, let it come into view so we may know it, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.”

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, that almost defines our age. Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight, that almost defines our age, where then is the brokenness and the contrition? Woe to those who are heroes of drinking wine and champions at mixing drinks, who acquit the guilty for a bribe, but deny justice to the innocent. God have mercy on us. “But in the year the king Isaiah died,” he says, “I saw the Lord, I saw the real king.” And now he says, “Woe to me, I’m undone.” The more he sees of the sheer glory and transcendent beauty of God, the more he identifies with the sinners of his generation against whom is preaching, he’s no longer pronouncing woes on all of the people. He still must do that. His woes were correct. But it’s now it’s God have mercy on us, not just God have mercy on you.

One of the angels flies to him with a live coal in his hand and touches his mouth, this mouth that has been full of unclean things. “See, this has touched your lips. The sacrifice that God has ordained has taken your guilt away. Your sin is atoned for.” And now for the first time God speaks, and God says, “Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me.” Do not misunderstand this passage. Isaiah is not being heroic. “I’m your man. Though others may betray you, not I.” In the light of the sequence of the narrative, it’s saying, “Excuse me, will I do? Please, could you send me? Could you use me?” There’s contrition, there’s brokenness.

And God says, “Go. And this is what you tell the people, this is your message. Be ever hearing, but never understanding. Be ever seen, but never perceiving. Make the heart of these people calloused, make their eyes full, dull, and close their eyes. Otherwise, they might see with their eyes and hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.” How would you like that preached to ordination council? “Your job, my dear Isaiah, is so to preach the word of God that you guarantee people will be blind, and deaf, and stupid.” And Isaiah understands because he says, “But for how long, oh, Lord? I mean is it gonna be like that for 10 years, 20 years, and then revival’s gonna break out, 40 years? I can manage 40 years, Lord, if revival comes at the end of it.”

And God says, “No, no, no, you preach on like that until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitants, until the houses are left deserted and the fields ruined and ravaged, until the Lord has sent everyone far away, that is until the exile comes.” That’s still about 150 years off at this point, way beyond Isaiah’s lifetime. “And although a 10th remains in the land, it will again be laid waste, that’s your ordination message, my dear Isaiah.” For the truth of the matter is there are times when it’s the preaching of the Word of God which guarantees unbelief. Jesus faced that in part of his sector of society according to John 8, “Because I tell you the truth, you will not believe.” Not despite the fact that I tell you the truth, you will not believe, that’s bad enough, but it’s not a concessive, although I tell you the truth, you will not believe. It’s a casual, “Because I tell you the truth, you will not believe.” So what do you do, tell untruths? What are your alternatives? And if there are no alternatives for faithful preachers, then you remain a minority, a hated and despised minority, and you preach on and your only hope is that God saves some and maybe in His mercy, He’ll bring in another round of conviction of sin. So we cannot bring in revival ourselves. Isaiah is already making that clear.

Second, but we can set our faces to seek the Lord, to repent, to ask for His grace, whether soon or in the future. “Build up, build up, prepare the road, remove the obstacles outta the way of my people for this is what the high and exalted one says, He who lives forever whose name is holy. I live in a high and holy place, but also with the one who is contrary and lowly in spirit.” Our job in a desiccated time of rebellion where right is called wrong and good is pronounced as evil, our job is not to quit preaching the gospel, and preaching the character of God, and preaching the truth, our God is to do it with absolute contrition, with smashed brokenness, to identify with a sin of our own age.

Never despise the day of small things. The only hope in Isaiah 6 is in the last couple of lines. “For though the tree is cut down,” he says, “a branch will shoot up out of the broken down stalk. And then Isaiah and the structure of the book takes up that theme precisely in Isaiah 11, “A branch shoots forth from the stem of Jesse,” and that happens 700 years later. How would you like to have that at ordination council? Preach on my dear, Bob, because 700 years from now there’s gonna be revival. That’s what Isaiah is told. And we cannot control those things. What we can do, what we must do, what we are called to do is approach God with contrition and brokenness and ask for mercy. In other words, in the final place, as God is our judge, so also is He our only hope.

Let us pray. Merciful Father, as we begin to draw together the strands and themes of this wonderful prophecy, enable us to see more clearly your holiness, to be drawn to your light, and to be terrified of it. And as we discharge the ministries to which you call us Lord God, we beg of you to make us faithful and contrite, broken in spirit and, as we shall see in this book, nevertheless full of the joy of the Lord so that never do we approach the people to whom we minister with arrogance or condescension, or bitter anger, or any sense of superiority. But saying with a prophet, I’m a man of unclean lips and I dwell amongst the people of unclean lips and my eyes have seen the Lord. Will you not have mercy on us and enable us in these two or three days aside to see the Lord? For Jesus’ sake, amen.