Beautiful Nothing
Isaiah 52:1-15
Cascades Fellowship CRC, JX MI
April 18, 2010
Series: Through the Bible in a Year
Occasionally, you come across a bit of Scripture that just captures the imagination and you aren’t quite sure why. There are a number of reasons the text might appeal to us – the image used by the writer, or maybe the words themselves. It may be something we heard about the text a long time ago that endears it to us. Our Scripture text this morning is one of those texts for me. I have always liked Isaiah 52 and for a long time I wasn’t sure why – but I think I understand now.
The truth of the matter is I was first captivated by this passage before I even knew it was part of Scripture, much less Isaiah 52. It began with the song “Our God Reigns”.
How lovely on the mountains are the feet of him
Who brings good news, good news!
Announcing peace, proclaiming news of happiness,
Our God reigns, our God reigns!
I first heard this while still quite young in my faith – what we would call a baby Christian and I was fascinated by the message. It is not your typical gospel proclamation. Think about it moment, when we start sharing the gospel, where do we usually begin?
Sin. We begin with the problem that needs to be solved and then move to the solution God has provided in Jesus Christ. We begin with what’s wrong and move toward what’s right. But the song takes a different tack – it doesn’t begin with the problem or the solution, really. At least not explicitly. It begins with a worldview, with a picture of reality. Do you see what the song says is the good news? Our God reigns! Isn’t that something? The good news is just a bold admission of the true nature of existence; the feet that are being called beautiful are those of the messenger who brings this news from afar – our God reigns.
This is an incredible statement, especially when you consider what was happening at the time of this prophecy. As a prophet, Isaiah ministered for about sixty years during a time of great tumult for God’s people in Judah. They were being pressed from the north by the brutal empire of the Assyrians. Egypt’s attempts to halt the spread of the Assyrian Empire also caused trouble from the south for God’s people. They were a tiny nation caught in the conflict between a superpower and former-superpower. The future did not look very good – in fact, it looked like as a nation, God’s people were doomed to be annihilated.
The social conditions in Judah were not much better – idolatry, injustice, corruption. Occasionally, a king came along who tried to follow God and clean things up, but typically the reforms only lasted so long as the king was alive and his heirs would undo all the strides that had been made. If you read the prophets from this era – Amos, Hosea, and Micah – you will find that the activity of these conquering nations was God’s judgment against his rebellious people. The Assyrians were the lash of God’s discipline and if the people failed to repent, they would become the means for driving God’s people from the Promised Land, just as Israel had once driven out the Canaanites.
Isaiah also came preaching judgment against the many indiscretions of God’s people – of particular interest was the idolatry; the worshipping of the pagan gods of the Canaanite people. But the judgment Isaiah prophesied wasn’t to come through the Assyrians or the Egyptians – it was to come through another people, a superpower yet to be; this would turn out to be Babylonians. Isaiah spoke of the exile of God’s people from the land and the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, a thought unfathomable to the Hebrew people. They could not conceive a reality where God allowed the place of his dwelling to be captured, much less destroyed. Yet this was the future Isaiah laid out for God’s people – a future that would come true in 585 B.C., some 100 after Isaiah’s death.
But Isaiah also spoke of deliverance. Although he prophesied the captivity of his people – what we know today as the Babylonian captivity – he also spoke of a day when God’s people would be delivered from their captivity. Isaiah spoke of a day when a servant of God would come who would secure the people’s release. In our text for this morning, Isaiah has begun turning his attention toward the time of deliverance for God’s people.
Prior to our text this morning, in Isaiah 51:9, Isaiah envisions a future day when the captivity of God’s people will begin to weigh so heavily on them that they will turn back toward the God they had forsaken in their idolatry and cry out for him to deliver them as he did for their fore bearers. “Awake, awake! Clothe yourself with strength, O arm of the LORD; awake, as in days gone by, as in generations of old.” It is to this cry of God’s people that v.1 in our text is in answer to. God calls his people to awake, shake off the chains of her captivity and prepare to be restored to the Promised Land.
Now that we have the back story to this text I want us to pay attention to a few things; things that show how great a redemption God reveals through Isaiah. The first is found in vv.3-5
For this is what the LORD says: “You were sold for nothing, and without money you will be redeemed.”
For this is what the Sovereign LORD says: “At first my people went down to Egypt to live; lately, Assyria has oppressed them.
“And now what do I have here?” declares the LORD.
“For my people have been taken away for nothing, and those who rule them mock,” declares the LORD.
My mom always had a saying – one she picked up from her mom and her mom picked it from her mom and so on. In other words, I don’t know the origin of this saying – I just know what it means. Whenever we would make a bad decision – one we were trying desperately to escape the consequences of by seeking the intervention of our parents – my mom would look at us and say, “You’ve burnt your blister, now sit on it.” I can only guess it is a reference to sitting on a hot stove or something.
At any rate, the point of the saying was “This mess is of your own making, you have to live with the consequences.” God through the prophet Isaiah is saying something similar to the captives in Babylon when he says “You were sold for nothing.”
I have to admit, when I first read this the thought occurred to me that this was a value statement – that God became so disgusted with his people that he simply gave them away. But this isn’t a comment about the worth of the people, it is reflection on how they ended up in captivity – how their own actions brought their doom down upon their own heads. It is a statement about them sitting on the stove and then having to sit on the blister.
You see, what God is telling them is that they gave themselves up to their own lusts, their own perversions, their own idolatries and the natural consequences – the ones God spelled out in Deuteronomy and restated again and again through the prophets – was the destruction of their society and removal from the land.
So literally, the people went willingly into captivity – they could have avoided oppression and subjection by the Babylonians by remaining faithful to the covenant God had established, but they chose to live in disobedience and unfaithfulness. The result of that choice was judgment of God in the form of Babylon’s foot-soldiers tearing the Temple down stone by stone and hauling a significant portion of the population into exile.
So it wasn’t because of a debt owed to the Babylonians that they were sold into servitude – that’s the image the prophet is drawing on here. No money was needed to redeem the people. In fact, money had nothing to do with it; no amount of money could redeem them. This is an important picture for us to grasp because it points out something about their captivity – they are incapable of bringing it to an end; “…and without money you will be redeemed.” Their disobedience has led them to the point of no return, unless God intervenes.
And intervene he does, this is the second thing we need to take note of. We’re not told how just yet, but we know it happens because this is the next picture in the vision of Isaiah.
How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, “Your God reigns!”
Listen! Your watchmen lift up their voices; together they shout for joy.
When the LORD returns to Zion, they will see it with their own eyes.
Burst into songs of joy together, you ruins of Jerusalem, for the LORD has comforted his people, he has redeemed Jerusalem.
The LORD will lay bare his holy arm in the sight of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God.
The picture here is of the remnant that remained in Jerusalem after the exile, watching the hills surrounding the city. Long they have lived without hope – the ache of their loss remains. Once their city was the crown of the nations, the place where the glory of God was manifested physically. Once they were set apart as the apple of the Almighty’s eye, now they were haunt of jackals – an object of ridicule. “Where is their God now?” the nations gleefully asked.
As if in answer to that question, the first of the exiles from Babylon come into view. Across the Judean Mountains, up from the rift valley of the Jordan they come, singing the songs of Zion. They come proclaiming the release of the captives and deliverance. They come proclaiming the day of the Lord’s favor. God has judged Babylon and all the nations have witnessed her fall. Jerusalem is to be rebuilt and the Temple restored. In the mouths of God’s people the cry is heard, “Our God reigns!” There can be no doubt because they have seen his salvation – they have been delivered from the hand of the oppressor.
How has this happened? It has happened through the servant of the Lord, one God has raised up from among men to deliver his people. For the captives in Babylon this person was Cyrus, King of Persia who overthrew Babylon and issued the decree for the return of the captives to Jerusalem; a man whose life and place in history was prophesied by Isaiah in Isaiah 44 and 45 – again well over a hundred years before his birth.
The final thing we need to take note of is found in the last three verses of our text this morning.
See, my servant will act wisely; he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted.
Just as there were many who were appalled at him— his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any man and his form marred beyond human likeness— so will he sprinkle many nations, and kings will shut their mouths because of him.
For what they were not told, they will see, and what they have not heard, they will understand.
We see here described the Servant of the Lord, but it doesn’t match what we know of Cyrus – the servant foretold in Isaiah 44 and 45. This one speaks of a man disfigured and marred whose appearance is startling; whose presence is disturbing and leads to silence. They will see a new thing in this Servant, they will understand in a new way through him. Who could this possibly be?
We know, don’t we? In fact, the next part of Isaiah’s vision – Isaiah 53 – is often a text that we use around Good Friday and Easter because it gives us pictures of this Servant of the Lord became so disfigured, so marred. We despised him, the prophet says and made him familiar with suffering. We considered him stricken by God and afflicted. The punishment for our sin came to rest on him – he was pierced for transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities. By his stripes – his wounds – we are healed. It was God’s will to crush him – to cause him to suffer as a sin offering for us.
You see, the picture of the exiles returning to Jerusalem – of the beautiful feet skipping across the mountains bringing the good news that our God reigns is meant for more than just the remnant living in Jerusalem in reign of Cyrus. This picture is but a shadow – a signpost, if you will, to point us toward a greater deliverance; a greater redemption.
For all of us – like the people of Judah – entered into the bondage of our own making. We have all burnt our blisters – all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. I don’t know what your idolatry is – I don’t know the chains you have forged for yourself. What I do know is that all of us have been taken captive by sin and death, all of us wrestle against the bondage we have chosen for ourselves. We were not sold into slavery, nor were we taken – with every rebellious thought, every careless word, every depraved action we walked eyes open and smiling into captivity. We surrendered ourselves to the chains of our bondage, we sailed beyond the point of no return and unless God intervenes we will never be free.
And indeed, he does intervene. He sent Jesus Christ to be pierced for our transgressions, to be crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that bought us peace was upon him and we were healed by his wounds. When we were held captive by the enemy – when we were in Satan’s thrall – Jesus came and delivered the blow that shattered the power of the enemy over us and set us free to live the lives we were ended for; to glorify God and enjoy him forever. He has shown the nations that he is the Lord of all.
Our God reigns – like the captives in Babylon, we are to depart from the place of our oppression and march out into the world declaring this good news. Our God reigns – not just in theory, but in reality. We have seen his deliverance and we know that ultimately, every power, every event, every person serves him and his good and eternal purposes. This is the good news – our God reigns. No purpose of his can be thwarted, no treasure of his can be lost, no enemy can stand against or undo what he has decreed.
How lovely are our feet on the streets, in the workplaces and homes of Jackson when we bring this good news – our God reigns.
