Isaiah When Everyone Else is Done
Continuing our trend of telling you what to think after you’ve already formed your own opinion.
- Truth is fallen in the streets, pick it up. Isaiah 59 14
- Isaiah’s consistent message is that we are oppressed and need to be liberated. Do you feel oppressed? Do you feel the need for liberation? We are so oppressed that we have internalized our oppression. The first liberation we need is to liberate our conception of what it means to be free.
- The last few chapters Isaiah there are some startling differences in the reference to gardens and gardening across multiple chapters. The garden is used as a symbol of God’s care for His people, as a symbol of the natural upwelling of goodness and righteousness when order and peace are restored, as a symbol of prosperity and abundance, and also associated with idolaters and people who are blatantly breaking the covenant. I feel like this isn’t just a coincidence. I’m like, there is some meaning that ties together into a whole.
- The need for righteous judgment is acute, the soul calls out for judgment, not just to liberate us from the evildoer, what a garden this place could be if the minority of tear downers for themselves turned down, but because we need to know how we fall shorts that we can receive a blessings.
- The blessings in Isaiah 58 for keeping the fast and keeping the Sabbath are astounding. Does anyone take them seriously? Can anyone take them seriously? They are, in effect, promises of healing, of radiance, of light, of power, of dominion. If I have received those blessings, it is only in a small part. The challenge here is that, in this chapter, God does not call us to live the Sabbath more rigorously or to fast more rigorously (although most of us would be part of it), but to live the Sabbath better and to fast better. Those are different things.
- Put in one hand the paradise dreams of the world, and then in another the paradise dreams of the saints. They are very different. Look at Isaiah 65.. This is no lotus-eating paradise. It is a place to labor, but unlike in our world, “you shall not labor in vain.”
- I would like some time to compare the last verses of different books of Scripture. Probably the Great Commission in Matthew would take the prize, but the ending of the book of Isaiah would be a strong contender, especially if you have just read the hair-raising description of the Lord as a man of vengeance a couple of chapters prior.
For he put on righteousness as a breastplate, and an helmet of salvation upon his head; and he put on the garments of vengeance for clothing, and was clad with zeal as a cloak.
18 According to their deeds, accordingly he will repay, fury to his adversaries, recompence to his enemies; to the islands he will repay recompence.
19 So shall they fear the name of the Lord from the west, and his glory from the rising of the sun. When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him.
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I will choose their delusions and will bring their fears upon them.***
And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the Lord.
And they shall go forth, and look upon the carcases of the men that have transgressed against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh.
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