Isaiah 3
So Isaiah chapters one through
five are going to tell us about the condition and the, I guess
the judgment on, on Judah and Jerusalem. And then we get to
chapter six and there will be a description of Isaiah’s call
to ministry kind of well-known to many of us, very familiar
to many of us. And so as we’ve zipped our way through chapters
one through five or will, uh, over the next few weeks, the
past couple of weeks, uh, you’re, you’re hearing cycles or, or
list of things that are taking place. And so in a sense, chapter
three is a continuation of chapter two, things are not good in Judah. And so there’s tonight going
to be a discussion of oppression. And then there’s going to be
a little interlude where God says, court is now in session. And here’s what I hold against
you. He’s judge and jury and executioner, I suppose. And then
he’s going to say something specific to the women of the land that
reveals not only their hearts and their behavior, but shows
what is taking place in the life of Judah. So hear God’s word. Isaiah chapter two, I’m gonna
read verse 22, then all of chapter three and then four verse one. So we ended last week in chapter
two with these words, stop regarding man in whose nostrils is breath
for of what account is he? And then chapter three, for behold,
the Lord God of hosts is taking away from Jerusalem and from
Judah support and supply, all support of bread and all support
of water, the mighty man and the soldier, the judge and the
prophet, the diviner and the elder, the captain of 50, the
man of rank, the counselor and the skilled magician and the
expert in charms. And I will make boys their princes
and infants shall rule over them. And the people will oppress one
another, everyone his fellow. and everyone his neighbor, the
youth will be insolent to the elder and the despised to the
honorable. For a man will take hold of his
brother in the house of his father saying, you have a cloak, you
shall be our leader. And this heap of ruins shall
be under your rule. And that day he will speak out
saying, I will not be a healer. In my house, there is neither
bread nor cloak. You shall not make me leader
of the people. For Jerusalem has stumbled and Judah has fallen
because their speech and their deeds are against the Lord, defying
his glorious presence. For the look on their faces bears
witness against them. They proclaim their sin like
Sodom. They do not hide it, woe to them,
for they have brought evil on themselves. Tell the righteous
that it shall be well with them, for they shall eat the fruit
of their deeds. Woe to the wicked, it shall be
ill with them, for what his hands have dealt out shall be done
to him. My people, infants, are their oppressors, and women rule
over them. Oh, my people, your guides mislead
you, and they have swallowed up the course of your paths.
The Lord has taken his place to contend. He stands to judge
the peoples. The Lord will enter into judgment
with the elders and the princes of his people. It is you who
have devoured the vineyard. The spoil of the poor is in your
houses. What do you mean by crushing
my people? By the grinding of the face of the poor, declares
the Lord God of hosts. The Lord said, because the daughters
of Zion are haughty and walk with outstretched necks, glancing
wantonly with their eyes, mincing along as they go, tinkling with
their feet. Therefore, the Lord will strike
with a scab the heads of the daughters of Zion and the Lord
will lay bare their secret parts. In that day, the Lord will take
away the finery of the anklets, the headbands and the crescents,
the pendants, The bracelets and the scarves, the headdresses,
the armlets, the sashes, the perfume boxes, and the amulets,
the signet rings and the nose rings, the festal robes, the
mantles, the cloaks, and the handbags, and the mirrors and
the linen garments, the turbans and the veils. Instead of perfume,
there will be rottenness. Instead of a belt, a rope. Instead
of well-set hair, baldness. And instead of a rich robe, a
skirt of sackcloth. And branding instead of beauty.
Your men shall fall by the sword and your mighty men in battle.
And her gates shall lament and mourn empty. She shall sit on
the ground. And seven women shall take hold
of one man in that day saying, we will eat our own bread and
wear our own clothes. Only let us be called by your
name. Take away. our reproach. Amen. The word of the living God for
us, his children. Chapter 22 ended very strongly
and it leads us into our thoughts for chapter three and it ended
this way. Stop regarding man in whose nostrils
is breath. What account is he? For behold, the Lord God of host
is taking away support and supply. It’s very interesting to read
the ending of chapter two and then to look at the first dozen
or so verses of chapter three, God is going to take away all
support and all supply. You know, we have these television
commercials today that tell us we need to buy gold coins. Right? We need to invest in silver.
We need to buy the MREs, the meals ready to eat, because the
day is coming when all hell is going to break loose and we need
to have something worth something. That’s the silver and the gold.
And we need to be able to go into our little bunkers and need
to be able to eat these MREs because the day is coming. And
perhaps that may be true. for America, you know, we’re
probably closer to a collapse and a fall than we think. If
you look at history, it’s probably very true. But here God has spoken
and we can understand and foresee with a surety that what God has
spoken will come to pass. He is going to take away support
and supply. And if these people are even
somewhat spiritually awake, which they’re not, they would begin
to look around them and say, you know, it is this bad. It
is going to get worse. And God is right. And so we ought
to repent that that’s not going to be the case. They will not
think about this. They will not come to their senses
yet. God will have spoken. He will have warned them and
pronounce the coming judgment. And I don’t know if you noticed
verse 10, it was sort of hidden in there. Tell the righteous,
Tell the ones not doing any of this mess, tell them it shall
be well with them and they shall eat the fruit of their deeds. That’s a little bit of encouragement,
isn’t it? Sometimes the church takes the doomsday message, I
think because it sells books. It goes really well with dispensationalism,
doesn’t it? And so sometimes the people of
God get in on the goods, right? So you buy Christian meals ready
to eat, right? Those are better than the pagan
ones, And they really ought to be peddling verse 10. It’s going
to be okay. Yes. All hell may break loose
around you. Chaos may break around you. But
verse 10 is a wonderful assurance that in hard times, God will
be with us. I think of Israel in the land
of Goshen. We’ve been thinking about this
on Wednesday nights. in our Exodus study, whatever went on in Egypt,
whatever happened to the firstborn of Egypt, man and beast both,
didn’t cross over the border into Goshen. God has a way of
marking his people off. and protecting them in very difficult,
dark and dangerous and even deadly times. But the picture that is
being painted for us here in Isaiah chapter three is the disintegration
of society. And I hate to be the bearer of
bad news. I think you already know this,
but we’re living this today. And if you don’t think we are,
um, Maybe you need some smelling salts. Maybe you need something
to sort of wake you up. We are living in a very rapid
disintegration of American culture, American society. Judeo-Christian
values gone. It’s now a post-Christian country
that we live in. And God as a chastisement to his people,
as a chastisement to the wicked. It’s not the ultimate one, it’s
not the eternal one, but it’s a temporal one that may last
a generation or two or three or some stretch of time. God
removes his hand, his hand of safety and security. He leaves
us in our sin. He leaves us in the choices that
we have made. And here is a picture of instability. Here is a picture of both the
church, the people of God and the culture, the society falling
apart. You can’t trust either one. You
can’t trust the spiritual leaders and you can’t trust the governing
leaders and you can’t trust your fellow neighbor. And so the disintegration
of society, the collapse of a society is a very sad and dangerous thing. And so God’s providing hand is
removed from a society in this picture, but also his restraining
hand is removed. He’s not holding back all the
evil. I don’t know if you’ve thought
about this, but we read the headlines, we read the news and we hear
about this storm. And we read about this tragedy
and we read about this calamity and this collapse and this and
that and the other, and we say, oh, woe is me, woe is me. But
do we ever think about how much God has held back from us? How much worse it could be were
it not for his restraining hand and his grace of providence in
our lives. And this is a picture here in
Isaiah 3, and I think it ought to be ringing true to us with
our current cultural rot that is all around us. God’s providing
hand seems to be pulled back. His restraining hand seems to
be removed. And the message to Christians
is We’re in for it. Now, thanks be to God for verse
10, the righteous. It shall be well with them. They
shall eat of the fruit of their deeds. But when there’s chaos
around us and darkness around us, when this crooked and depraved
generation, this wicked generation does what it does and does what
it does very well, the inevitable ends do come. And so for Israel,
There was the wrath of God. There was the decline of their
great nation. There were temporal judgments,
judgments now, judgments in this life. And ultimately, their great
judgment was for Babylon to come in. And Babylon destroyed, it
killed, it burned, it devoured, and it hauled off a people. It
hauled off their their pieces of temple ritual and worship,
and it carried them off to Babylon. They were no longer a unique
nation, but a captive nation. And I don’t know if you caught
the little list, the catalog here in the first part of chapter
three, but God took away everything. He took away, as he says in verse
one, support and supply. They were trusting in man and
whose nostrils is breath. And so God took away their bread.
He took away their water. He took away their mighty men.
He took away their soldiers. He took away their judges. He
took away their prophets. And those are the things that
God promised in his covenant to give them. But notice he also
took away their false provisions. They had been trusting in the
gods of the nations that surrounded them. And so it says, I took
away your diviner. I took away your magicians and
your experts in the charms. He’s also taken away the prophet.
He’s taken away the elder. He’s taken away the captain of
50, the men of rank, and the counselors. Their society, both
Christian and pagan, has collapsed. It’s fallen around them. And
then it gets worse. boys become kings, young men
become princes, babes are the rulers, and oppression is all
around, and the young despise the old, and the despised dishonor
the elderly. And you don’t wanna take this
and say, well, okay, you can look at American society and
see this, and American society and see that, and all the rest.
I think you can do that quite well. But it’s interesting if
you’ve watched maybe American politics the last 15, 20 years,
we are being ruled by babes, aren’t we? I think of maybe the
first Obama administration, and I was struck
and amazed that people younger than I were running our country.
And I just, I’m not saying anything yay or nay about who was in office
and what, but it just struck me that as you watch the news,
the people running our country’s names were Josh and Caitlin.
Those were names younger than me, my generation, and it just
struck me, how could, what did they know? Because I grew up
under the era where it was the old gray-headed men that ran
the nation, and they did pretty good at it. And so there’s something
here about all that that we have experienced over the last 20
to 25 years. Our culture is coming unglued. Our society is one of anarchy
and next one up rules. You got a
cloak? Okay, you’re it. And we’ve seen
that both in the nation and in the church. I think one of the
big failures of the church is not to raise generational leaders. And so, you know, because we
have to have 12 leaders in the church for the 12 tribes of Israel
or something like that, we just say, okay, next man up, next
person up, you’re it. And the church has bankrupted
itself as has culture and society. But one of the great awful things
that has come is what you find in verse nine. The look on their
faces bears witness against them. They proclaim their sin like
Sodom and they do not. hide it. You think about the
flags people wave. You think about the backgrounds
on their Zoom meeting thing. You think about what people put
on their bumper stickers. You think about what people emphasize
on their social media. We no longer emphasize where
we went to school and what kind of degree we have, what kind
of job we have, and maybe what sports we lettered in. We emphasize
what we do in the privacy of our bedroom as the chief identifying
mark of who we are. And that’s, I think, exactly
what verse nine is telling us. The look on their faces bears
witness. They proclaim their sin like Sodom and they do not
hide it. And it can be other areas and
categories of sin, but this is what happens when a society comes
unglued, when God pulls back his restraining hand. There is
no blushing. There is no shame. I sat through some hours of politics
this week, watching it on TV, and I don’t mean to be political,
but I’m, I think, aware of reality, and it’s pretty hard to deny
it, but you say something that’s a complete lie, and then you
blame it on someone else. And then you say, and I’ve got
the solution. And the masses follow that and say, oh, how
true. And we’re so glad that you’re here. I’ve never seen
anything like that, but that is not just scary politically. It’s scary morally. It’s scary
in a, in a character and a culture in a society way. Well, Last man standing can be king
of the heap in the situation that Judah has gotten herself
in as they go closer and closer to their fall with Babylon. The place is falling apart and
everything is a last ditch effort. Everything is is falling apart, and some are
just sticking their fingers in the dike to hope that the flood
does not come. Well, there’s more, more witness,
more, how do you say, strong words against God’s people. They
pop up in verse 11 and following. Woe to the wicked, it shall be
ill with them. That’s after he says, I’ll protect
the righteous. For what his hands have dealt
out should be done to him. Infants are their oppressors.
Women rule over them. My people, your guides mislead
you and they have swallowed you up in the course of the past. If you were to catalog the things
we trust in today, the things that have breath in their nostrils,
and you look sadly at the church, yes, You look at the morality
of the culture, you look at the government, you look at the education
system, you look at the entertainment, the sports, you look at the clothing,
and you think of what wisdom Solomon spoke when he said, righteousness
exalts a nation, but sin disgraces. And that’s right where Israel
is, and that’s right where we are. But I want you to remember
verse 10 again, and tell the righteous that shall be well
with them, for they shall eat the fruit of their deeds. We
need to remember that to be found hidden in Christ, to be found
hidden in the Messiah, to be found hidden in the one Isaiah
will speak of as the prince of peace and the everlasting father
and the mighty God, the suffering servant. Things will go well
with us. Well, there’s a little bitty
interlude of a couple of verses in 13, 14, and 15, where the
people of God are taken into God’s courtroom. And in 13, 14,
and 15, can’t you picture in your head afternoon court TV?
You know, I remember back in the days when you go get your
oil changed and you’d sit in the waiting room in one of those
dirty chairs with three year old magazines and a black and
white TV and judge Judy or somebody would be on and it would, it
would be didn’t, didn’t, didn’t, you know, court is now in session,
judge, whatever presiding, let’s hear the first case. Well, here
they’re in covenant court and it’s not a TV judge. It’s Yahweh. It’s the Lord God, the king of
the universe, the maker of heaven and earth, the one who made covenant.
and threatened covenant curses and also promised covenant blessings.
And he’s here now to say you broke the law. He’s here to say
you’ve broken covenant. Court is now in session and Yahweh
is presiding. You have stolen from the poor,
he says. You’ve stolen from the poor to
enrich yourselves. This stretches all the way back
to chapter one. He’s just formalizing it now. He could have said you’ve
forgotten me. He could have said, you’re not
worshiping me. He could have said commandments one through
four, you’re broken. You’re not keeping the Sabbath.
You’re taking my name in vain. You’re having other gods and
you’re fashioning idols. But what does he really go after?
He goes after not his glory, but the needs of the poor. And
he says, you’ve been unjust. You’ve not properly reflected
my goodness and my glory in my nation to your fellow man. And so you’ve stolen from the
poor to enrich yourselves. It’s a crime against humanity.
It’s a crime against his vineyard, your fellow saints, your fellow
Christians, your fellow believers. And the way he speaks of their
oppression is they’ve taken from others by force. It says in verse 13, the Lord
has taken his place to contend. He stands to judge the peoples.
The Lord will enter judgment with the elders and the princes
of his people. It is you who have devoured the
vineyard. You have devoured the spoil of
the vineyard. The spoil of the poor is in your
houses. What do you mean by crushing
my people? By grinding the face of the poor,
declares the Lord. I can’t help but think of Robin
Hood. How many times my kids watch
the old cartoon of Robin Hood and Robin Hood and Little John
going through the Forrest robbing the rich to ease the strains
of the poor and how awful times got under wicked Prince John. While King Richard was away in
his holy wars or his crusades or whatever it was as the story
goes, Prince John had taken over and he raised taxes, which brought
more opulence to his palace living. And so Robin Hood and his merry
band of thieves, as it were, would rob the rich to help the
poor. And the oppression, you know,
in that story of Robin Hood and Wicked Prince John, the oppression
was great. Many people were going to debtors
prison for no reason at all. They were hardworking. They were
providing for their families, but they couldn’t pay their taxes. And so they lost land and they
lost livelihood. There was oppression and there
was darkness. And we all love a good redemptive story. And
even though Robin Hood robs the rich to help the poor, we think
Robin Hood, a great hero. But the picture you get in these
verses from God and the court is you have squeezed the people
dry. You’ve taken every bit of what
they have and come in your house and there it is. Their gold and
their silver and their finery is in your house. And so there’s
this picture of the decline of society. There’s this glimpse
of the courtroom of God. The final thing that he speaks
of here is the condition of the women, the condition of the women
of the land. And from 3.16, chapter three,
verse 16, all the way to four, verse one, you see what God thinks
of their public display of wealth. You see what God thinks of their
outer adornment. but their lack of what Peter
speaks of as inner beauty. And so their public display of
wealth here is what God goes after. And we want God here to
be an equal opportunity judge. Don’t just judge the men. Don’t
just judge the elders and the leaders and the princes. He’s
gonna be pretty rough here with the spiritual condition of the
women of the land. You’re living in luxury, he says. You’re living lives of ambition. You are showing that there is
no inner beauty in your heart, and it’s noticeable. As you read
the description of the way these women are dressed, there’s the
sights and the sounds and the smells. There’s the sights of
all their finery. There’s the sounds of their bangles
and their jewelry and their anklets and their amulets making, it
says, tinkling noises. And I’m sure you can smell their
perfume before they even turn the corner. It’s materialism. It’s outer adornments. It’s showiness. And you can see mixed in with
their ambition, mixed in with their wealth, mixed in with their
dress, there’s false religion. There are charms and amulets
and other things that show their superstitions and perhaps they
believe a little of this and a little of that about Yahweh,
but they believe also a little of this and a little of that
from the surrounding nations. And God promises, judgment is
to come, God promises. Just as in verses one through
12, he’ll take away your physical well-being, he’s also gonna take
away your outward adornments. And he’s gonna replace with rottenness. He’s gonna replace with rope.
He’s gonna replace with baldness, with sackcloth, and even with
branding. And so they’re gonna go from
high and exalted dress and living to that of mourning and sackcloth
and even exile, rottenness and rope and baldness, sackcloth
and branding. And all this is pointing to marching
towards Judah and Jerusalem’s exile and their shame. and the invasion of Babylon. And it finally speaks of the
condition of these women, but, but really the condition of the
men of the land in chapter four, verse one, seven women shall
take hold of one man in that day saying, we will eat our own
bread. We will wear our own clothes. Only let us be called by your
name. Take away your reproach. All the men are going to be killed.
And they don’t have the social security system. They don’t have
IRAs and 401Ks. And so to be married, remember
the story of Ruth and Boaz? To be married is to have stability
and income and a place to live and food to eat. And there’s
gonna be one man for about every seven women. And they’re gonna
beg that their reproach be taken away. They’re husbandless and
they are childless. All that they trusted in is gone. And you, you, you know, we don’t
want to be doomsday sort of folks. We also don’t want to forget
God will take care of us. But that warning in chapter two
22 stop regarding the man and whose nostrils as breath for
what account is he, by the time you get to the end of chapter
three, the beginning of four verse one, you begin to realize
he is of no account. And there is only one who is
mighty to save. There is only one husband who
is the one we ought to put our faith, our hope and our trust
in. And he’s our kinsman redeemer that comes from the line of Ruth
and Boaz and David and even Christ. And that’s where our trust ought
to be. You can trust God no matter what is flying by your head or
what is taking place in the darkness of the day and the wars of the
night and the sickness and the pestilence. And so don’t put
your trust in man in whose nostrils is breath, but put your trust
and your hope in the Lord our God through his son, the Lord
Jesus. Let’s go to him now in prayer. Father, we thank you
for the warning that several thousand years ago was crystal
clear to these people, whether they heard it or not, we doubt
it. But Lord, we wanna hear it tonight. This world we live in is passing,
is fading. And if we put our trust in man
and in riches and in outward beauty, rebuke us tonight that
we might put our faith, our hope, our trust only in Christ. Your
breath never goes away. You are eternal. You always have
been, you always will be. And so we put our faith, our
hope, our trust in you this night. We ask for the grace to live
out of this strength. We pray in Jesus’ mighty name,
amen.