Several months ago as we began to identify the Old Testament passages related to the “Day of the Lord”, I realized that we certainly wouldn’t have time to examine all of those passages in any kind of detail, at least not if we ever wanted to actually get to the Book of Revelation. And I know what some of you are probably thinking this morning – are we ever going to get there? Let me assure you that Lord willing, we will.
But I don’t think that I really understood just how cursory our review of these Old Testament passages is until we got to the Book of Isaiah. So much of that book deals with the “Day of the Lord” and all I’m really doing is giving you a small taste of the rich spiritual food that is contained there. In a sense, the first 27 chapters of Isaiah all relate to the “Day of the Lord” and up to this point, all we’ve been able to do is to look at some key passages that are kind of like a small sample that merely give us an idea of the flavor of the overall themes in each section of Isaiah.
Isaiah’s prophecy begins in the first 12 chapters with a series of judgments against Judah and Israel that had both current and future relevance to Isaiah’s audience in the southern kingdom of Judah. We looked at chapter 2 as well as a couple of passages in chapters 10 and 11 in that section. Those passages gave us a glimpse of the millennial reign of Jesus and allowed us to more fully develop the idea of the remnant.
The second section of Isaiah – chapters 13 through 23 – contain a series of oracles against the surrounding nations. Last week we examined the first of those oracles – the oracle against Babylon. There we discovered that God, in His sovereignty will use whoever He wishes as His “consecrated ones” in order to carry out his plans.
The third section of Isaiah – chapters 24-27 – is often referred to as the “Isaianic Apocalypse”, or Isaiah’s “Little Apocalypse”. The word “apocalypse” is a Greek word that means “unveiling” and is the same word that is the title of the Book of Revelation in Greek. And in these chapters, that is exactly what Isaiah does – he “unveils” God’s plan for the end times.
If you read through the book of Isaiah, you will note a stark contrast between the first 23 chapters and the material that begins in chapter 24. The first thing we note is that there is a move from addressing individual nations to a more global view. In the first 23 chapters, God addresses Israel and Judah and then the surrounding nations, one at a time. But in chapters 24-27, individual nations are rarely mentioned and the focus is more universal.
The second thing we note is that the focus in chapters 24-27 is strictly on the end times. In the earlier section, as we have pointed out, many of the prophecies had both a near-term and far-term fulfillment in mind.
Isaiah’s Apocalypse begins in chapter 24 with a description of how catastrophic events will plunge the entire earth into chaos. Then in chapter 25, there is a description of a great feast and the final culmination of God’s salvation for His people. Then in chapter 26, we find a song that celebrates salvation which comes from the hand of God. That leads us into chapter 27, which will be our text for this morning. Although this passage isn’t all that long, we’ll read it section by section as we examine each part of the passage.
Before we begin our examination of this passage, let me make one observation that will be really important in helping us to understand this passage as well as the Book of Revelation when we get there. This Book of Isaiah, this section in chapters 24-27, as well as chapter 27 itself, do not describe these events in chronological order. The structure here reminds me of one of my all-time favorite movies, Vantage Point. The movie begins with what is an apparent assassination of the President of the United States in Spain. But after we see that opening scene we are taken back again and again to the events surrounding that scene from the perspective of each of the different characters who play a part in that event. And it is not until we piece together all those different perspectives that we can fully understand exactly what has transpired.
In a sense, that is what we are doing by piecing together the various perspectives of all the Old Testament prophets, each of whom has a different view of the same events. And our goal is that by putting together all these various perspectives, we can get a more accurate understanding of these events that are part of the “Day of the Lord”.
So with that in mind, let’s see what we can learn from this chapter:
AN END TO CHAOS (v. 1)
1 In that day the Lord with his hard and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will slay the dragon that is in the sea.
We find other references to Leviathan in both Job and in the Psalms. From those passages and from what we can learn from this verse, there are several things that we can learn about this creature. He is identified here as a serpent, which immediately connects him with Satan, who appeared to Adam and Eve in the Garden as a serpent. And from the description here, he is obviously resisting God – he is fleeing and twisting.
He is also identified as coming out of the sea, which would be consistent with the descriptions we find in Job and the Psalms that describe Leviathan as some kind of sea monster. In the Bible, and particularly in apocalyptic literature, the sea is often a picture of the world.
In addition, there is almost certainly some connection here to a multi-headed creature from Canaanite mythology named Lotan, who was known as the “chaos monster.” Although they certainly didn’t believe in the myth itself, Isaiah’s audience would have been familiar with the myth and the idea of Leviathan being a picture of chaos. That would also be consistent with chapter 24 of Isaiah that opened this section with a description of the chaos that would result in the world as a result of the catastrophes that would occur during the “Day of the Lord.”
So there seems to be little doubt that Leviathan here is a description of the chaos of the world system, something that we can observe even now in the world around us and which will become even more severe as the return of Jesus approaches.
That is also pictured quite vividly for us in Revelation chapter 12, where Satan is described as the dragon who is thrown down to earth to make war against the followers of Jesus. The Greek word for dragon in that chapter is the same word that is used to describe Leviathan in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament. And then in Revelation 20, we find John’s description of the very same event pictured by Isaiah here in chapter 27:
Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and threw him into the pit, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he might not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were ended.
Revelation 20:1-3 (ESV)
The return of Jesus to this earth will result in this chaotic world system being brought to an end as the author of that confusion, Satan, is bound by an angel of God and rendered impotent.
THE SONG OF THE VINEYARD (vv. 2-6)
2 In that day,
“A pleasant vineyard, sing of it!
3 I, the Lord, am its keeper;
every moment I water it.
Lest anyone punish it,
I keep it night and day;
4 I have no wrath.
Would that I had thorns and briers to battle!
I would march against them,
I would burn them up together.
5 Or let them lay hold of my protection,
let them make peace with me,
let them make peace with me.”
6 In days to come Jacob shall take root,
Israel shall blossom and put forth shoots
and fill the whole world with fruit.
These verses are actually in the form of a song, just as the text indicates. There is little doubt that this song is intended to contrast with an earlier song of the vineyard that is found in Isaiah 5:
Let me sing for my beloved
my love song concerning his vineyard:
My beloved had a vineyard
on a very fertile hill.
He dug it and cleared it of stones,
and planted it with choice vines;
he built a watchtower in the midst of it,
and hewed out a wine vat in it;
and he looked for it to yield grapes,
but it yielded wild grapes.
Isaiah 5:1, 2 (ESV)
In that earlier song, Isaiah had used the vineyard as a picture of how Israel and Judah had been unfaithful to Him. Even though He had planted them and cared for them, they had failed to produce fruit. And god goes on to describe how He is going to punish Israel and Judah for their unfruitfulness.
But there will come a time when Israel and Judah will be restored and there will be a new song to be sung in which they will celebrate such great fruitfulness that the whole word will be filled with fruit.
Let’s look at a couple of significant aspects of this song. First, you’ll notice in verse 5, that the only way that we can make peace with God is to lay hold of His protection. In other words, it is God alone who provides salvation and the only way that we are made right with Him is to take hold of that salvation on His terms. I want to come back to that idea in just a moment in the next section.
But right now I want to focus on the part of this section that provides us with or first application this morning:
• APPLICATION #1 – Our fruitfulness is in direct proportion to the depth of our relationship with God
At the time of Isaiah’s ministry, Israel and Judah still had a relationship with God, but that relationship wasn’t very deep at all. Although they still worshipped God, as we have seen in previous passages they had become proud and arrogant and they had incorporated the worship of the false gods of the surrounding nations into their worship. And as a result, there was no good fruit.
But when Jesus returns, true Israel, those who are God’s children by faith, will have that relationship with God restored. They will sit at the feet of Jesus and be taught directly by Him and will live out what they learn. And as a result there will be such abundant fruit that it will fill the world.
Fortunately for us, we don’t have to wait for Jesus to return to develop our relationship with Him and bear fruit. Listen to the words of Jesus:
I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.
John 15:5 (ESV)
When we abide in Jesus, in other words, when we develop the depth of our relationship with Him, then we will bear fruit. In fact Jesus said that if we do that we will bear much fruit, which will give glory to God and be evidence that we are really His disciples
By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.
John 15:8 (ESV)
But when we get to verse 7 here in Isaiah 27, we move from this beautiful song that describes the abundant fruitfulness of the Millennial kingdom of Jesus to a picture that is much less pleasant. So why the change? This is one of those flashbacks where Isaiah is going to describe for us…
THE PROCESS THAT LEADS TO RECONCILIATION AND RESTORATION (vv. 7-11)
7 Has he struck them as he struck those who struck them?
Or have they been slain as their slayers were slain?
8 Measure by measure, by exile you contended with them;
he removed them with his fierce breath in the day of the east wind.
9 Therefore by this the guilt of Jacob will be atoned for,
and this will be the full fruit of the removal of his sin:
when he makes all the stones of the altars
like chalkstones crushed to pieces,
no Asherim or incense altars will remain standing.
10 For the fortified city is solitary,
a habitation deserted and forsaken, like the wilderness;
there the calf grazes;
there it lies down and strips its branches.
11 When its boughs are dry, they are broken;
women come and make a fire of them.
For this is a people without discernment;
therefore he who made them will not have compassion on them;
he who formed them will show them no favor.
In this section, Isaiah describes the process by which God is going to bring His people from the place where they bore no fruit to the place where they would experience abundant fruitfulness. Once again, even this section does not proceed chronologically, or even in a logical progression, so let’s see if we can’t take this overall section and draw some conclusions about the process:
• God uses discipline to promote discernment
In verse 7, Isaiah uses a couple of rhetorical questions to make it clear that there is a difference in the nature of the punishment that God is going to inflict on those that are not His children and the discipline that He will bring upon His children. The writer of Hebrews quotes from Proverbs 3 in describing the purpose of God’s discipline:
“My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,
nor be weary when reproved by him.
For the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
and chastises every son whom he receives.”
Hebrews 12:5, 6 (ESV)
A few verses later, we find the intended result of that discipline:
For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
Hebrew 12:11 (ESV)
God’s discipline is for the purpose of bringing His children to the place where they can discern the nature of their sin and God’s holiness and recognize that only Jesus can pay the penalty for that sin. That is the only way that we can experience the peaceful fruit of righteousness.
That is in stark contrast to verses 10 and 11 of Isaiah 27 which describe those against who God is going to bring judgment. God is not going to have compassion on them because they lack discernment. They are described as deserted and forsaken, not because God doesn’t love them, but because their hearts have become so hardened that the discipline of the Lord no longer is effective in their lives.
We’ve certainly seen this illustrated in the lives of those around us. We’ve observed some really good parents who have attempted to discipline their children the very best that they know how. But sometimes those children are so rebellious and their hearts become so hardened that no amount of discipline results in discernment. And the end result of that cycle is almost always severe punishment of some kind – isolation, prison, or even death.
But exactly what is it that God wants us to discern through His discipline?
• God’s desire is that discernment will lead to repentance
I really struggled with verse 9 earlier this week. The first part of the verse is pretty clear:
Therefore by this the guilt of Jacob will be atoned for,
and this will be the full fruit of the removal of his sin:
Isaiah is setting the stage for the second part of the verse where he is going to describe for us the means by which the guilt of Jacob is going to be atoned for. But I really struggled to understand the second part of the verse:
when he makes all the stones of the altars
like chalkstones crushed to pieces,
no Asherim or incense altars will remain standing.
Then I finally had one of those “aha” moments. My initial problem is that I misidentified the “he” in that verse. I just assumed that it was referring to God. But as I reread the passage, it became clear that the “he” in this verse is not God, but rather Jacob, who is named at the beginning of the verse. Once I understood that, then the picture became quite clear. Jacob’s sins would be atoned for when Jacob, which is a description of the commonwealth of Israel, recognized the error of worshipping all the false gods and tore down the stone altars and Asherah poles that enabled that false worship.
This is certainly a clear picture of repentance. There will come a time at which Israel, as a result of God’s discipline, will become discerning and recognize their sin. They are then going to repent of that sin by turning away from it and destroying those things which might tempt them to return to that sin.
And as a result of their repentance, we find that…
• Man’s repentance leads to reconciliation
This is the principle that we looked at earlier in verse 5. It is clear in that verse that it is God’s work, in this case, His protection, that enables us to be reconciled and be at peace with God. There is nothing that we can do to earn or merit that reconciliation. But it is also clear throughout the Bible that God has chosen, in His sovereignty, to exhibit His grace in response to man’s repentance as we clearly see in this passage:
Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord
Acts 3:19 (ESV)
As a result of repentance, God’s grace is manifest in our lives and our sins are blotted out and we are reconciled to God and have the ability to enter into the presence of the Lord and receive times of refreshing from Him.
There are two applications that we can glean from this section of our passage:
• APPLICATION #2 – Repentance is a pre-requisite to reconciliation
This application is primarily for any of you here this morning who have never experienced the peace of God that comes from being reconciled with Him. Perhaps you are experiencing some difficulties in your life right now because God is trying to get your attention. He is trying to bring you to the place where you will discern the sin in your life and recognize that you can’t do anything about that sin apart from committing your life to Jesus.
If that’s the case this morning and you sense that is what God is doing in your life, then I beg you this morning not to ignore God. Because if you do that for too long, you risk hardening your heart so much that you will become one of those people that Isaiah described as being without discernment on whom God will have no compassion.
In a few moments, we’ll have a time for you to respond to God and I pray that you will use that time to commit your life to Jesus, trusting in Him alone as the means for your sins to be forgiven so that you can be reconciled with God. And if you’re not sure exactly how to do that, there is a place on the flap of your bulletin where you can check a box that reads “I want to know more about how to begin a personal relationship with Jesus.” Just complete the information there and place it in the offering plate or give it to me or to Pastor Dana after the service.
• APPLICATION #3 – God uses tribulation to prune His children so that they will be more fruitful
This application is for those of you who have already committed your life to Jesus. As we’ve seen in this passage as well as many of the other ones that we’ve looked at, God’s people are not immune to times of tribulation in their lives. In fact, Jesus told His followers that they will face tribulation in this world (John 16:33). But the purpose of that tribulation or that discipline is not to drive us away from God or cause us to doubt Him, but rather for the purpose of helping us to deepen our relationship with Him so that we can produce more fruit in our lives. Let’s return to John 15 one more time:
Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.
John 15:2 (ESV)
I want you to note the second part of that verse. Jesus said that He would prune us so that we could bear more fruit.
Let’s face it, pruning is not comfortable, but it is necessary. I have a few Texas Ranger plants in my front yard that need some pruning right now. And because I have been negligent to do that some of the branches are no longer thick with leaves and blossoms and they are starting to look pretty scrawny and yellow. But this isn’t the first time I have neglected to prune them. And based on past experience, I know that when I get around to pruning them, they will get much thicker and look much better and produce more leaves and blossoms. I guess, in a sense, the pruning is painful to those plants, but it is necessary to their health.
So when the pruning comes, we basically have two options. We can try to avoid it or ignore it, in which case it won’t be profitable in helping us to become more fruitful. Or we can endure it, and try to see how God is using it in our lives to help us produce more fruit for Him.
THE HARVEST (vv. 12, 13)
Isaiah uses the same imagery that we’ve seen elsewhere in the prophets, as well as by Jesus Himself, when he pictures the end times as a harvest:
12 In that day from the river Euphrates to the Brook of Egypt the Lord will thresh out the grain, and you will be gleaned one by one, O people of Israel. 13 And in that day a great trumpet will be blown, and those who were lost in the land of Assyria and those who were driven out to the land of Egypt will come and worship the Lord on the holy mountain at Jerusalem.
There is some good news and some “not so good news” for the people of Israel in these verses.
The “not so good news” is that they are going to go through a threshing process. That was a process used to separate the grain from the chaff. Once the grain was harvested, it was taken to a threshing floor, which was often a flat rock, usually located on top of a hill. The grain was placed on the threshing floor where it would either be walked on by the farmer’s animals or where a threshing sledge would be dragged over the grain to separate the grain from the chaff. The material was then thrown into the air with a winnowing fork and the lighter chaff would blow away and the heavier grain would fall to the ground.
God was reminding Israel that they were going to go through a time of tribulation for the purpose of separating those who were truly God’s children from those who weren’t. This is quite similar to the process of separating the wheat and the tares that Jesus described in a parable that we looked at a week ago on Thursday night.
But the good news was that for those who prove to be the grain, those who are truly God’s children, He will glean them one by one and bring them from wherever they might be back into the land that God had promised to Israel. This picture leads us to one last application this morning:
• APPLICATION #4 – We can remain faithful to God in times of tribulation because He remains faithful to us.
That was the message that God wanted His people to hear through the prophet Isaiah. Even though they were going to experience times of tribulation and discipline, God promised that He would be faithful to each and every one of them that truly belonged to Him. It was God’s faithfulness to them that was to be their motivation to be faithful to Him in difficult times. And they could believe God’s promise to them because all throughout their history God had been faithful to keep every one of His promises to them.
In addition to these words of Isaiah, we also have the words of Jesus:
I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”
John 16:33 (ESV)
No matter what you might be going through in your life right now – a health issue, problems in a relationship, financial difficulties, or anything else – God knows you’re going through that. In fact, He may even be causing or allowing that in your life for the purpose of developing your relationship with Him.
But if have made Jesus your Lord and Savior, then you can have peace and you can persevere through that period of tribulation, knowing Jesus has already overcome the chaotic world system in which that tribulation occurs. And one day, that tribulation will end and God will glean you and gather you into His presence, where you will spend eternity face to face with Him.
