Isaiah 1:21-31
Isaiah chapter 1, 21 to 31 is
a, I think a continuation of what we looked at last week in
chapter 1, 1 through 20. It’s, it’s God. as the judge saying to his people,
you’ve not been faithful. There is a change, I believe,
when you get to verses 21 to 31, he speaks of Israel or Jerusalem
or Zion, his holy city, and he speaks directly to that city. And so I thought we’d look at
it as a separate unit. And as we read chapter one, 21
to 31, I want you to notice how as you read Verse 21, read verse
22, read verse 23, and verse 24, you get a progression. You’re
bad, you’re rotten, you’re wicked, but I’m gonna fix this. And then
it goes backwards. When you get to the latter verses
in our section, it says you’re wicked. I know, or I’m sorry.
It says I’m going to fix you. And then it says you’re wicked,
rotten and doomed to judgment. So it’s almost like the passage
goes from doom to restoration. And then it goes from restoration
to doom and gloom. And a lot of times Old Testament
poetry is like that. And so, uh, you’ll, you’ll kind
of hear a cadence and, and you’ll see a little bit of, uh, literary,
uh, function in the passage that helps us, uh, see what God is
up to. So let’s hear now God’s word.
about his people. Isaiah 1, beginning at 21, it
says, how the faithful city has become a whore. She who was full
of justice. Righteousness lodged in her,
but now murderers. Your silver has become dross.
Your best wine mixed with water. Your princes are rebels and companions
of thieves. Everyone loves a bribe and runs
after gifts. They do not bring justice to
the fatherless, and the widow’s cause does not come to them.
Therefore, the Lord declares, the Lord of hosts, the mighty
one of Israel, ah, I will get relief from my enemies and avenge
myself on my foes. I will turn my hand against you.
I will smelt away your dross as with lye and remove all your
alloy. and I will restore your judges
at the first and your counselors as at the beginning. Afterward,
you shall be called the city of righteousness, the faithful
city. Zion shall be redeemed by justice
and those in her who repent by righteousness. But rebels and
sinners shall be broken together. And those who forsake the Lord
shall be consumed. For they shall be ashamed of
the oaks that you desired and you shall blush for the gardens
that you have chosen. For you shall be like an oak
whose leaf withers and like a garden without water. And the strong
shall become tender. and his work a spark, and both
of them shall burn together with none to quench them.” Amen, the
word of the living God. We think a lot about Jerusalem.
And I don’t mean we think about it a lot all the time when we’re
sleeping and in the afternoons and when there’s nothing else
on our minds. I mean, we think a lot. We think much of Jerusalem.
Jerusalem is the holy city. Jerusalem is Zion. Jerusalem
is God’s city. And you remember in the history
of Israel, when God brought Israel out of Egypt and he chastened
the first generation in the wilderness, the second generation through
the leadership of Joshua entered the promised land, they removed
the enemies because their judgment was due. And they took possession
of the land. They took their inheritance tribe
by tribe and clan by clan. And eventually, as the people
of God moved in and took the promised land, they received
God’s great promise blessing of rest, and their borders stretched
and lengthened, and they began to live for Almighty God. Now, when Israel entered the
promised land under Joshua, there was a stretch under the various
judges, and then the people did that awful thing. They demanded
a king. Though God was their king, they
went to Samuel and said, we want a king just like the rest of
the nations. And remember God had warned them,
if you get a king, he’s going to tax you. If you get a king,
he’s gonna conscript your boys for the army. If you get a king,
you’re gonna serve him. And if you get a king, he’ll
be a wicked king, and you’ll no longer have this righteous
king, but you’ll have a man who will fail you. And Saul was case
in point, wasn’t he? Saul was a wicked man, and God
removed him and found the littlest, ruddiest boy of the sons of Jesse,
and he was anointed as king, was a man after God’s own heart.
And David captured the city of Jebus, the city of the Jebusites. And he made it Zion. He made
it Jerusalem. He made it the city of David.
And under David’s kingship, Jerusalem was built up. It was the mountain
of the Lord where God was worshiped. It was the beautiful city. We
have many songs and songs about Jerusalem and the wonders of
Jerusalem, not just its beauty, but its purpose. It’s the place
where God dwells. It’s the place where God is worshiped.
And it’s the place where the people of the promised land could
come and their king would protect them and judge them and counsel
them. And then later when David’s own son, Solomon sat on the throne. He was able to build the grand
and beautiful and wonderful temple, Solomon’s temple. But over time,
after David and Solomon, there slowly became a collapse in Israel
and in Judah. The people no longer worshiped
God. They no longer refrained from
idols. They no longer kept themselves
from the, the gods of the nations. And they were ensnared by foreign
women whom they married. And so the, the pure and holy
nation became an impure and an unholy nation. And that’s the
ministry of many of the prophets. They came to Israel, they came
to God’s people. They came to the Kings and said,
what you’re doing is wrong. and in God’s covenant that he
made with you. He promised blessing if you obey and he promised curse
if you disobey. And so Jerusalem, the wonderful
city, in the time of the King Uzziah, in the time of Isaiah,
was beginning to see a big collapse. It was beginning to see a big
decline. We hear of it today, don’t we?
Do you want to go to New York? You’ll probably get mugged. Do
you want to go to New York? Well, you might get robbed on
the street or shot on the street. Do you want to go to New York?
Well, they’re soft on crime. And just a handful of years ago,
New York was one of the safest places on earth. It was well
run and well managed and well policed. And if you did a crime,
you did the time. But now that’s not so. We have
many other beautiful and wonderful cities, not only in our nation,
but around the world. But you don’t want to go there.
They’ve become corrupt. They’ve become places. where moral and ethical collapse
has taken place. And it doesn’t matter how big
a city is, how grand a city is. It doesn’t matter how much marble
there is or how big are the columns or how much history is there.
If it is missing righteousness, if it is devoid of justice, if
its leaders and its judges are corrupt, God will come and judge
it. The society itself will collapse. If you read anything about the
history of the rise and the fall of Rome, if you know a little
of your history, Rome was rising about now during Isaiah’s ministry. And it would follow a couple
hundred years after the life and ministry and death of Jesus.
But what brought the collapse of Rome? Same things that collapsed
Israel. There was a lack of righteousness,
a lack of justice, a lack of mercy and kindness. Its leaders
were corrupt, and people took bribes and took gifts. And it,
in a sense, is a warning to America, isn’t it? We’re near the brink
of collapse and ruin. Our debt is so high, we’re addicted
to all manner of filth and rancor and all those sorts of things.
Well, we think tonight about the holy city of Jerusalem, And
I think when we think about Jerusalem, we need to think about God’s
people, the place where God dwells. And we ought to think in light
of the new Testament, as we live under the ministry of Christ
and the fuller revelation, we ought to think in terms of some
of these things, yes, about past day Jerusalem and what took place
there. But we ought to think about present
day church. That’s why we read. Jesus words to the seventh church
in Revelation to the church at Laodicea. I know your works. I know that you’re not hot or
cold. I know that you’re pitiable and pitiful and you’re in really
bad shape and you need to repent and recover and listen to my
voice and change while there’s a chance. Well, as you walk through
this passage of scripture, I think you can walk through it. Like
I mentioned, as we read it, you can see the rise of wickedness
and then the grace of God and Jesus to heal and wash the people. And then on the backside of the
passage, you can see that it gets more and more evil again,
and God threatens judgment. But I think there’s another way
that might be helpful for us to look at it. And it’s to pick
apart the sections where God is speaking to the people. He’s
speaking to the church today and he’s speaking and giving
them a choice to do the right thing, which is repent. or to
do the wrong thing, which is to continue to live in rebellion.
And I’m going to give away the secret of the passage before
we pick our way through it, because I think it will excite you and
encourage you. In our passage, it tells us that
Jerusalem’s silver had become dross. If you were to go to the
local jewelry store, say go to that fancy one in downtown Gibsonville,
or ride to one of the bigger cities nearby, and you said,
I want a piece of silver, would you want half silver, half dross? Would you want mostly dross and
just a little silver to veneer? No, you’d want the pure thing.
And that’s what God wants of his people. But he says, you’ve
become dross. And usually when we think of
the refiner’s fire, that fire melts away the dross. Well, in
this passage, there’s a poetic way of God saying, I can take
your dross and I can turn it into silver. And doesn’t that
exactly show us what God has done for us in Jesus? He’s taken
our unrighteousness. and he’s given us the righteousness
of Jesus Christ. God can take what is dirty and
rotten and low down and no good. And because of the person and
the work of Jesus Christ, he can take our disobedience and
exchange it for obedience. He can take our unrighteousness
and exchange it for righteousness. He can take our filthy rags and
give us his son’s righteous robes. And that’s the hope in a passage
like this where God is speaking rather Hard words. Well, verses 21 to 23 are a lament. Notice how it begins. How the
faithful city has become a whore. She who was full of justice,
righteousness lodged in her, but now murderers. Your silver
has become dross. Your best wine is mixed with
water. Your princes are rebels and companions of thieves. Everyone
loves a bribe and runs after gifts. They do not bring justice
to the fatherless and the widow’s cause does not. come to them. If you were to make a movie or
a soundtrack to these verses, there were, there would be cello
music, wouldn’t there? Just the foreboding bass sound of, of,
of low notes, you know, almost like jaws or something like that.
But you would, you would feel that things are not good. In fact, if God is writing a
lament, how the faithful city has become unfaithful. Isn’t
it interesting how strong, the languages God uses. He often
speaks of Israel as his bride. She’s an unfaithful bride. She
goes after other men, but he says, return to me and I’ll be
faithful to you. That’s the picture of Hosea and
Gomer, but that’s also the picture of Jesus and his church. And
he is working on his church by his word and spirit to present
us at the last day without spot and without wrinkle and without
blemish. But there’s been so much moral
corruption in the church, so much moral corruption in Jerusalem
that he laments. His church is not a bright spot.
in the dark world. Remember that God took Israel
from foreign nations. He took Abram out of Ur of the
Chaldeans. He took an idol worshiper and
said, come to the promised land and worship Yahweh. And then
as Abraham and Isaac and Jacob grew, and Jacob grew in Egypt
during the famine, and they grew so much so that when the Pharaoh
who did not know Joseph, and his stewardship during the famine,
the people continued to grew. He said, you need to kill all
the boys, lest these people become an army and overthrow us. But
God, through the wise and cunning midwives protected the people. And in fact, it was the other
way round during the Passover. The firstborn sons of Egypt were
the ones who died. God protected and preserved Jacob
and Egypt. He brought them through the wilderness
and he brought them into the promise land. And their job in
the promised land was to be a bright spot. It was to be a holy nation
and holy borders with a holy people who worship the holy God.
And you see in the scripture, don’t you, during the high point
of Solomon, the queen of Sheba shows up. Solomon, I hear you’re
wise, give me some advice. This temple is supposedly the
grandest building on the face of the earth, and people come
from north and south and east and west to see this wonder of
wonders, the city of God, the temple of God, and the people
of God. But now they’re nothing to look
at. Now this place has fallen apart. There’s a collapse of
society, and it is not a witness of the goodness of God, something
we ought to remember. The church is the outpost of
heaven. When people come to the church of Jesus Christ, just
as they would go to Jerusalem and Israel, it ought to be a
small outpost of heavenly realities. Of course, heaven is grand, heaven
is perfect, heaven is beautiful, and it’s unstained by sin. And the presence of God and the
worship of God is not marked by sin and laziness and indifference
and all the things that we bring on earth. But just as Jerusalem
was to be a bright spot, the church ought to be an outpost
of heaven. And may it not be that God writes
a lament about the church in America or even our church, but
it is a bright spot, an outpost of heaven. He speaks of the fall
of Jerusalem. in great and dangerous terms. He speaks of their leaders. He
speaks of the good things have become bad things. Your wine
is diluted with water. Your silver has become dross. Your princes are rebels. They
don’t even take up the cause. of the poor, the widow’s cause
or the fatherless. And so that’s the lament we find
in the passage. But notice the next thing, it
gets a little brighter, a little bit of hope. In verses 24 to
26, God makes a declaration. And if you’re following how God
has spoken of their leaders, your princes are rebels or your
rulers are rebels is a good poetic way to put it. Your people are
not just, your people are not righteous. But notice how it
speaks of God in his declaration in 24 to 26. It says, therefore,
the Lord, that’s a term for master and judge, The Lord declares,
the Lord of host. He’s the one with supreme power
and supreme goodness. The mighty one of Israel. He’s
the strong one. He says, ah, I will get relief
from my enemies and I will avenge myself on my foes. How does God normally speak of
his people? He speaks of them as beloved.
He speaks of them as the apple of his eye. He speaks of them
as his bride. He speaks of them as his redeemed
ones and in all kinds of great ways. But here he speaks of Israel. He speaks of the church. He speaks
of Jerusalem. I will get relief from my enemies. I’ll get, I’ll avenge myself
on my foes. It’s gotten pretty bad, hasn’t
it? If God is speaking of his beloved people as my enemies
and my foes. And he says, I’ll turn my hand
against you. You know, the, probably the worst
insult that you can give to a person is to backhand them either physically
or you give a backhanded word against them. And notice how
God uses that, um, little phrase in verse 25, I will turn my hand
against you. And just as you’re bracing yourself
for judgment, just as you’re bracing yourself for the pain
of judgment, he says, I’ll turn my hand against you and I’ll
smelt away your dross as with lye, with soap, and I’ll remove
all your alloy. I’ll inflict sanctifying pain
on you. I’ll inflict a hardship on you
and I’ll wash you clean. I’ll melt away your dross and
I’ll remove all your alloy.” This is his hand that had saved
them before by killing Pharaoh and his army. This is his same
hand, his right hand and his outstretched arm that had taken
care of business with Og, the king of Bashan and Sihon, the
king of the Amorites. This is the God that whooped
the Assyrians. And this is the God whose right
hand and strong arm have done mighty things, whereas people
now, his hand is against them, but it’s a restoring hand. Any of you parents know, sometimes
you have to do hard things with your children and it’s painful. but it works out good things. And so we have God here. He’s
the faithful judge. He’s the faithful master. He’s
the faithful King. He’s not corrupt like the human
ones. And he’s strong and he’s mighty and his hand will inflict
pain, but it will bring great goodness to his people. So in
this declaration, in this declaration, he promises them, yes, hardship,
We think of Hebrews chapter seven, I believe it is. God disciplines
us as sons. And we’ve got to cheerfully endure
hardship as he chastens us, as he takes us through hard things
in order that we might look more like Christ. We might come to
a place of humility. We might come to a place of deeper
love and watchfulness and affection and prayer and devotion to almighty
God. And he says in verse 26, I’ll
restore your judges as at the first, I’ll restore your counselors
as at the beginning. And you can see in your mind,
can’t you, the picture of David’s city back in his day. And David’s
city with Solomon’s temple. And during that stretch of a
hundred or so years before the kingdom split and before things
went awry in the land of God’s people, he gives a picture here. You shall be called a city of
righteousness. You shall be called the faithful city. I get every
Saturday a little email from Outreach North America. That’s
our denominations church planting and our continent, our missions
agency, if you will, to America. And they’ll send an email that
says, you know, pray for this church today. And every once
in a while through the cycle, there’s a church in our denomination
called Faithful City Church. I always thought that’s an interesting
name. I hadn’t really thought of it in light of the book of
Isaiah, but now that I’ve studied this a little more and I recollect
that email with their name in it, I think I know exactly what
they mean. They want to be a faithful church.
They want to be a faithful group of people in the midst of a crooked
and depraved generation. They want to be a bright spot,
a bright light. in the precincts of their congregation. They want
to be faithful and just and righteousness, help the fatherless, care for
the widows and serve those who are in need. And God gives that
promise here afterward. After I do my work, after I scrub
you with lye, after I remove your dross and remove your alloy,
you’ll be a faithful city again. Only God can do that work. I
told you at the beginning, I was gonna give away the secret of
the passage and it was that God could take your dross and he
can make silver with it. He can take your unrighteousness
and produce righteousness in you by his son’s righteousness
and by the work of the spirit. And so he promises the city of
righteousness, the faithful city. Well, he gives the folks a choice.
That’s what we want to see in verses 27 and 28. And this I
mentioned is kind of the hinge of the passage. It’s gonna go
downhill until we get to verse 31. And he says, yeah, I’m gonna
judge you. It’s gonna be bad. But this is a choice that he
presents. Zion shall be redeemed by justice. And those in her who repent by
righteousness. But rebels and sinners shall
be broken together. And those who forsake the Lord
shall be consumed. We think of Isaiah’s great passage
of scripture. Seek the Lord while he may be
found. Call on him while he is near. Think of Noah’s day when
Noah was hammering and nailing and sawing and building for a
hundred years while a whole generation ate, drank and was merry. and
knew nothing of the judgment of God because they did not believe
Noah’s preaching of righteousness. I’m sure he said till he was
blue in the face, God is coming. He’s going to send a flood and
it’s going to be a mighty flood. And yes, this looks like a desert,
but he can do it. And he will, the water will come
from the ground and from the skies, and it will rise up above
the tallest mountains on the face of the earth. And this great
deluge will kill you unless you enter this ark with my family.
You know, today they would do a little expose on Noah, wouldn’t
they? They would probably put him in
the category of Jim Jones and some of these other weirdos.
The FBI would raid him and all those sorts of things. But Noah
was simply preaching Jesus. Be found in the ark of safety.
Be found in the one who can save you from God’s wrath and judgment. And that’s the choice that God
puts before his people. You can be redeemed by justice
and you can repent by righteousness. You can be a penitent person
who lives humbly before the face of God, seeking his grace and
mercy, or you can continue to be a rebel. You can continue
in your sin and you’ll be broken together with all who forsake
the Lord and he will consume them. He will judge them. and it will not end well. Well,
then as the passage ramps back up into wickedness, we saw in
the first section of the passage that Israel was, well, they were
unjust. They were unrighteous. Their
society was collapsing. And, and that’s a really rotten
way to see a culture fall apart. We don’t take care of people.
We let homelessness get up. We let our schools fail. We let rampant inflation run. We lend money out for exorbitant
fees. And on and on it goes until decent
people can’t live a decent life. And then you throw that into
the religious sphere, where the church is corrupt. The gospel
has been perverted. And he speaks now of just that,
of idolatry. And it’s interesting, I think
we read the first commandment. We don’t worship God except in
the way he prescribes in the scriptures. But it says in verse
29, they followed after the other gods. They followed after the
idols of the surrounding nations. The fertility cults would worship
trees and would worship in gardens. And it says, they shall be ashamed
of the oaks. that you desired. You shall blush
for the gardens you have chosen. This is speaking of that foreign
fertility worship. If the garden grew, it was the
gods. If the tree grew big, it was
the gods. They made these things fertile.
And we see the outward blessing of the gods. And he says, no,
no, no. You’ll be like an oak whose leaf
withers. You’ll be like the garden that
has no water, and you can’t help, I think, but run in your mind
and heart to Psalm 1, blessed is the man who does not sit,
walk, or stand with wicked people, but he delights in the law of
the Lord, meditates on it day and night. He’s like a tree planted
by streams of living water. All that he does prospers, but
with the wicked it’s not so. They’re like the chaff which
the wind blows away. The Lord knows the way of the
righteous. The Lord knows the way of the wicked. The wicked,
if they follow after other gods, there’ll be the garden with no
water, there’ll be the mighty oak with withering leaves. And so there’s a wrong way to
live the religious life, and it’s to follow other gods. But
there’s a right way, there’s a prosperous way, and that’s
to follow the living and true God. Well, he ends the passage
with a strong word of judgment. The strong shall become tender. You’ll be kindling. You’ll be
the sticks gathered to get the fire started. It’ll be dry and
crisp and just a little spark, just a little knocking of the
rocks, a little knocking of the iron, and there will be a spark
and both of them shall burn together. That’s the end of unrepentant
Judah. That’s the end of any unrepentant person. You remember
the rich man and Lazarus, the rich man ate. great meals. The rich man lived in luxury
and just outside his door was Lazarus. And this rich man had
turned his heart against Lazarus, would not even give him a scrap
from his table. And then when both of them went
away, they both passed away. The rich man into Hades and Lazarus
into Abraham’s bosom. And the story goes that Lazarus
was enjoying what he never got on earth, the riches of heaven
and the glory of being a child of God. But the rich man was
now in hell. And he looked up and he said
to Lazarus, and he said to the others, go and tell my brothers
before it’s too late. And that’s the picture we get
here. You can exploit people on earth. You can have everything there
is to have in this life and you can get it any way you want to,
but it will not pay in the life to come. Judgment will come.
Well, we think of God’s hand of judgment, but also in this
passage, God’s hand of mercy. It may be painful. and difficult
to live for God. But he promises that we’ll be
trees of righteousness. We’ll be gardens of righteousness.
We’ll give off a fragrance as we bear the fruit of the spirit.
And it’s all through Jesus. And it’s all through the power
of the spirit and by his word. And may it be so in each of our
lives. Let’s do pray to God. Lord, help
us as we think on the stark darkness of a city
that was once faithful, a church that was once serving you, that
now fell apart because of wicked deeds and desires. We pray that
we’d remain faithful and that we’d remain a bright spot in
this world so that you’re glorified and so that your people are set
apart and sanctified. We ask all this in Christ’s holy
name. Amen.