Isaiah

In the Old Testament, the prophet Isaiah saw a vision of God seated on his throne. In this experience, Isaiah not only discovered who God is, but he also discovered who Isaiah was.

And so he is crushed by the contrast between his impurity, his corruption, and the perfection of the God that he is seeing in this vision. That moment when Isaiah realizes his sinfulness is a powerful example of repentance. In light of God's holiness, Isaiah saw himself for who he really was.

Today on Renewing Your Mind, R.C. Sproul explains why this prophetic Old Testament passage means so much to New Testament Christians. This morning we're going to look briefly at a major prophet of the Old Testament, in fact a prophet that many believe is the most important prophet of the Old Testament. And I'm thinking of course of the prophet Isaiah, whose name is a compound of the Hebrew words that mean the Lord is my salvation. And of all of the prophets of the Old Testament who for the most part were called from obscurity and out of the wilderness and were given the Word of God to announce to the people, Isaiah is quite different from them as he comes from the aristocracy. He was obviously a highly educated person and fit into the upper strata of the economic and social climate of the nation.

As it were, he hobnobbed with the kings of the day and was seen as an ambassador to the royal court, although after a while some of the tone of his messages to the kings took away some of his acclaim. In fact, though he prophesied chiefly in the eighth century B.C., he lived into the early years of the seventh century B.C. and according to tradition he was martyred under the King Manassas of that period. Now, Isaiah's book is so important because it is so heavily messianic in its prophetic orientation. That is, the prophet Isaiah had much to say about the character, the person, and the work of the Messiah who was to come. And even though we turn to the book of Isaiah for this future prediction and foretelling of the glorious manifestation of God to the people of Israel, in the main, his prophecy in the Old Testament is a prophecy of judgment against Judea, against Jerusalem, and against an unrepentant populace.

But yet he tempered his prophecies of judgment with the promise of God's future restoration of a remnant, a small portion of the people who would be redeemed. And again, his book is so important to us because of the content that is cited in the New Testament as being fulfilled in the person of Christ. Now, as you know, at least those of you who are members of St. Andrews or have been regular for some time in visiting us, you know that the call of Isaiah is memorialized in our sanctuary with our stained glass window because the stained glass window represents the experience that Isaiah had when he had the vision of the Lord high and lifted up in the heavenly temple. I've preached on Isaiah 6 so many times, but there is a dimension to this text that I would like to spend a couple of moments looking at with you this morning, and that is after we have this description of the majestic vision that Isaiah has, which absolutely devastates him. He goes through a crisis of personal disintegration where he declares that he is undone or he is ruined after he gazes at the unveiled glory of the holiness of God, as I've said many times.

In this experience, Isaiah not only discovered who God is, but he also discovered who Isaiah was. And so he is crushed by the contrast between his impurity, his corruption, and the perfection of the God that he is seeing in this vision. And the portion of the text I want us to see is after God stoops to heal him, we read, "'One of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth with it, and he said, Behold, this has touched your lips, your iniquity is taken away, and your sin is purged.'" So that God condescends to heal this broken man whom he is going to call to be his spokesman to the nation, this man who speaks of having a dirty mouth. The seraph goes to the altar, takes the red hot coal, brings it over, and as it were purges his lips. The purpose is not to punish him or destroy him, but to cleanse him from the infection that is so central to his life. And so then God says, Behold, this has touched your lips, your iniquity is taken away, your sin is purged. Now here's the part. "'And also I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send?

And who will go for us?' Then Isaiah said, I said, Here am I." Now I think it's significant that he didn't say, Here I am, because his response is not to indicate his location. God knew where he was. He was on the floor before him. But God is saying, Whom shall I send? Who will go for us? And Isaiah, who's just been completely ruined and devastated but forgiven, said, Here I am.

Send me." Now if that doesn't reflect not only the common course of a prophet's call, it also reflects what I would think would be the normative experience of every Christian. And I have to say to you that one of the things that bothers me, as I think back to the Old Testament and the role of the priest and how often the priesthood became corrupt and the community was infected by false prophets, and we read the injunction in the Old Testament, let the minister weep between the porch and the altar. If we were to transfer that to New Testament times and apply it to the current situation, it would go something like this, let the minister weep between the study and the pulpit. The only possible validation for anyone to presume to speak the Word of God is that our lips have been purged by the coal and the fire of God, and He has removed our iniquities from us. And so the license for preaching is not our righteousness. It's our forgiveness.

It's our experience of the grace of God. And that I'm sure Isaiah understands here because he's just complained of his personal total devastation. And if ever a man knew he was not worthy to go in the name of the Lord, the moment he experiences the forgiveness of God and God says, whom shall I send and who will go for us, Isaiah raises his hand. Here am I, such as I am, such as I am, blisters on my lips, send me. And so listen to what God says.

Here's His commission. God said, Go and tell this people, keep on hearing, but do not understand. Keep on seeing, but do not perceive. Make the heart of this people dull and their ears heavy, and shut their eyes, lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and return and be healed. This is one of the most neglected motifs in all of sacred Scripture in our day. And it's not found simply in an obscure announcement to the prophet Isaiah in the Old Testament, but our Lord Himself in the New Testament, when the Bible explains why He speaks in parables, what is the answer? He speaks in parables to reveal the truth to some and to conceal it from others.

But the parables are illustrative and illuminating only to those who have ears to hear and eyes to see. Because the Word of God is a two-edged sword. No one remains the same after hearing the Word of God. I know that the foolish way that God has chosen to save the world is through the foolishness of preaching, and I know that God associates His power with the proclamation of the Word, and I know that He has guaranteed that His Word will never return to Him void.

So it is not an exercise in futility to proclaim that Word. But not only that, I know that every sermon I give changes you. It either nurtures you, and the degree of that nurture may be infinitesimal, so small that you can't possibly detect it, but a Christian cannot be unchanged by hearing the Word of God. And a non-believer cannot be unchanged from hearing the Word of God either, because when that Word goes forth, you either grow imperceptibly or imperceptibly your heart is hardened. But there is no neutrality to the hearing of the Word of God. And now when Isaiah gets his marching orders, he says, I want you to go, and I want you to go to these people, and I want you to shut their eyes, harden their heart, close their ears, lest they see or hear and repent. In other words, God says to Isaiah, I'm going to use you to proclaim My Word to harden the hearts of this nation, and that is an act of judgment.

You say, well, how can that be fair? Well, here's what it is. What God is saying is if you people don't want to hear My Word, fine. I'll take away your capacity for hearing it. You don't want to see? I'll make you spiritually blind. You don't want to hear? I will cover your ears. That's how God does to stiff-necked people.

Stiff-necked people. And that's what He gives as the commission to Isaiah. Isaiah hears that, and he says, wait a minute, maybe I spoke too fast when I said, here am I, send me.

I didn't know that I was volunteering for that kind of a mission. So now what's he saying? Then I said, Lord, how long?

How long do I have to do that? And here's the answer. God said, until the cities are laid waste and without inhabitant, until the houses are without a man, and until the land is utterly desolate, for the Lord has removed men far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land. Now here's the gospel, but yet a tenth will be in it and will be returned and be for consuming as a terebinth tree or as an oak, whose stump remains when it is cut down.

So the holy seed shall see its stump. I have redeemed an entire nation. I've called them to be my people and that I would be their God, but they have rejected me, and so I am going to cast them away. They are worthy of being cut down and thrown into the fire, but when a tree is felled, a stump remains, so I have kept for myself ten percent out of this nation a remnant that I will redeem. Now that theme of a remnant that is saved by God is central not only to Isaiah's prophecy but to the entire prophecy of the Old Testament. And if it is that you are a Christian today, then you are part of that holy seed.

You're part of that redemptive tithe that God has spared, and we ought never to forget that. Well, let's look at some of the other things that Isaiah does in his mission, which throughout this second portion of the book Isaiah prophesies as one who will come as Messiah who will bear the sins of his people. You remember the Ethiopian eunuch whom Philip encounters in the book of Acts, and he's reading from the text of Isaiah. And Philip says, do you understand what you're hearing here?

The guy has no idea. And he was reading from the text of Isaiah 53. Philip explains it to him. One of the most important Old Testament passages with respect to the passion of Christ.

Let's look at it again. You hear this often. To be honest with you, this is my favorite Scripture to read during the celebration of Holy Communion.

And again, parenthetically, there's a method in our madness. There's a reason why we read the Scripture during the distribution of the elements, because as Reformed people we are totally committed to the idea that word and sacrament belong together. When the sacrament has been divorced from the Word in church history, it has become disastrous. And when the Word has been isolated from the sacrament, it has been severely weakened. Christ has given both the Word and the sacraments to His people, and they belong together. That's why we have a sermon on the same day that we celebrate the Lord's Supper. And when we celebrate the Lord's Supper, it is attended by the Word.

In the earliest days of the liturgies of the Reformation, that custom was established of reading Scripture during the celebration of the sacrament, and that's why I do it. Now, my favorite text, of course, is Isaiah 53. Let me just remind you of it.

Who has believed our report? To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? If you go back earlier to the earlier prophecies I read about that tender shoot from the stem of Jesse that would rise up, here it is again. For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, as a root out of dry ground. Some of you have been in parched areas of the country, or in other nations, where in the plains, for example, when there's a drought, it's not sand as the basis for the ground, but it turns to clay, and that hard clay as it is baked by the sun relentlessly without any moisture coming through rain. What happens to that land?

It cracks. And have you ever been in one of those places where you see a parched land where nothing is growing, and then you look over and you'll see one little shoot of a weed or of the beginning of a tree bursting out of that crevice in that baked land, and it looks like it has no chance of survival as it's going to be destroyed by the sun. It will wither and die. And that's how the prophecy predicts the coming of the Messiah. He'll grow up as a root out of dry ground.

The dry ground is Israel, the barren land. He has no form or comeliness that when we see Him, there's no beauty that we should desire Him. But He's despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him.

He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. When you come into the presence of people that you admire and esteem, you stare at them. You gaze at them. You hope against hope that you'll capture their return glance, that they would look at you. But if you see somebody that's horribly disfigured, unspeakably ugly, the natural human response to that is to turn away your head. Or if you see them. Or if you have contempt for somebody and think that they're beneath your dignity, you avert your gaze when you pass them on the street. As one laborer in a steel foundry said to me on one occasion, management comes onto the foundry floor, and when he sees me, drops his head.

He looks away. And that person felt stripped of his dignity because people avoided looking at him. But surely He has borne our griefs, carried our sorrows, and yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. And here's the vicarious ministry of the Messiah that's so important. But He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. For all we like sheep have gone astray.

And we've turned everyone to His own way. And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth. He was led as a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth. And He was taken from prison and from judgment.

And who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living. And for the transgressions of My people He was stricken.

And here's where the transition comes from humiliation to exaltation. But they made His grave with the wicked, but with the rich at His death, because He had done no violence and because there was no deceit in His mouth. You see that subtle change from humiliation that when Christ is crucified, instead of His body being thrown in the garbage heap called Gehenna that never stopped burning outside the city limits of Jerusalem, instead His friends and followers intercede with Pilate, and they give Him the body so it can be properly anointed, and He is buried in a wealthy man's tomb, anointed with the finest spices. Just as the text says, He made His grave with the rich in His death. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him.

Notice that His bruises come not from Pilate or Caiaphas or from the mob, but from the Father. He has put Him to grief. When you make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed. He shall prolong His days. The pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand. And here's probably my favorite portion of this chapter, and He shall see the labor of His soul, or the other older text, He shall see the travail of His soul and be satisfied. When our Lord looks at you, if you are His, you are the fruit of the birth pangs.

The birth pangs. He looks at you, and He sees the fruit of His labor, the result of the travail of His soul, and He's satisfied. By His knowledge, My righteous servant shall justify many, for he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul unto death, and he was numbered with the transgressors, and bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. That, I think, is just one of the most incredible passages in all of the sacred Scripture.

It's no wonder that the early church seized upon Isaiah 53 to clarify for them the crisis that they went through when their leader was taken from them and crucified. We're glad you've joined us on this Thursday for Renewing Your Mind. I'm Lee Webb. You've heard me say before that I was a Ligonier student long before I had the privilege of coming to serve here at Ligonier Ministries.

R.C. 's clear teaching was life-changing for me, and I know many of you and listeners like Brian feel the same way. He was talking about what no one else was daring to talk about with predestination or election. It was incredible, and it sparked an interest in me. I started reading Romans, particularly Romans 9 and Ephesians 1, and I started reading things like A.W. Pink and all these other formed theologians, and he ignited a passion in me, and he helped me understand the historical context of why Protestants separated from Catholicism, and I became really passionate. Everyone else teaches the Bible and goes through the Bible and so on, but no one was teaching systematic theology.

No one was telling you what to believe and why and apologetics. The Bible college and seminary came through the airwaves and reached me, even though I never went. I've been eating his material up ever since, and I still tune in. I still purchase material, and it really keeps me rooted and grounded and passionate in my faith, keeping me growing so that then I can disciple those around me. We're grateful for Brian, and his story is possible because of the consistent financial giving of our ministry partners. The messages we're hearing this week are part of a large library of exclusive messages reserved for our ministry partners, and it's a good example of the extra discipleship resources that are made available to those who commit to supporting Ligonier's gospel outreach on a monthly basis. Their steady, dependable giving means that this teaching continues to expand and reach more people year after year. And as a way of saying thank you, we provide extra resources to our ministry partners each month, including the messages you're hearing this week. Would you consider committing to a monthly gift of $25 or more? When you do, these messages will be available in your learning library online, along with the entire ministry partner library. You'll also receive Table Talk magazine each month, discounts to attend Ligonier conferences and events, exclusive resource offers, and a copy of the Reformation Study Bible. So let me encourage you to sign up and become one of our ministry partners. You can do that when you go to renewingyourmind.org slash partner, or you can call us here at Ligonier. Our number is 800-435-4343. Well, tomorrow we'll bring you another message from our archives, this time on the problem of evil.

If God is loving and good and powerful, why then is there evil in the world? R.C. will address that question tomorrow here on Renewing Your Mind. Thank you.