The Gospel According To Isaiah:
Ancient Wisdom for the Modern World, Part 1:
The Gospel in an Unsettled World
Isaiah 1:1
February 26, 2012
Rev Stephen Aram
It was about the year 1980. Kathy and I lived in Holland, on staff in a discipleship school run by the same mission that we had worked with in Asia. We lived in a little 2-bedroom cottage in the woods on the edge of a very large nature preserve. We had three kids then, all young, and in a dinky cottage it was hard to pray at home, so I would often take my Bible and head into the woods to pray. I often do my best praying while walking. It was a beautiful woods. Holland is on the North Sea and gets a lot of rain so everything was very green. This nature preserve was known for having many different kinds of mushrooms. It was a beautiful place to walk.
I remember one day sitting on a bench beside a little creek and I opened my Bible to the first chapter of Isaiah. And there are many amazing passages in the Bible, but on that day, I was just deeply moved by Isaiah. It struck me that the prophets give us a chance to see the world through God’s eyes. You can read in the newspapers or online all sorts of different opinions on most any topic, from the most serious to the most trivial. But where do we get to actually hear from God, the word of the Lord? Last week for Ash Wednesday we looked at part of that chapter, where Isaiah tells us that God was deeply displeased by some of the actions of his people. And as I read Isaiah years ago I just felt deeply God’s indignation, God’s anger with so much that goes on in our world, too. And I read wonderful words of hope as well. God is here to make this world right. He has spoken it out to us. Will we listen? Will we follow?
This morning I want to give you a bit of an introduction to the prophet, Isaiah, an amazing man, and to the times in which he lived. When you read the New Testament you might notice that again and again the New Testament points to the Old Testament, showing how the New Testament teachings and events were fulfillments of the Old Testament. And to which part of the Old Testament did they point the most? Isaiah. He was amazing in the way that he foreshadowed the life and ministry of Jesus. He was amazing in his understanding of the issues we humans face in all times. He is amazing in the way he speaks to me today.
To get us started we are going to read just one verse, the opening verse of Isaiah, and let me try to introduce you to this amazing man. So here is our one verse, Isaiah 1:1.
The vision of Isaiah son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.
So what does that tell us about Isaiah? It tells his father’s name was Amoz. And do you know what the Bible tells us about Amoz? He was the father of Isaiah. That’s it. So it doesn’t help very much. But as you read through Isaiah it looks like Amoz may have been from the royal family because Isaiah seemed to have a lot of freedom to just walk into the king’s palace and talk with the kings. He seemed very knowledgeable about world events. And CNN wasn’t available on cable in Jerusalem in his time, so the place you would hear what was happening was in the king’s palace.
When you read through the Book of Isaiah, you also find mention of his wife and kids. We don’t know the name of his wife, but she is mentioned as a “prophetess.” (8:3) In ancient times women were often held down, but Isaiah’s wife was a prophetess. People recognized that God spoke through her. And Isaiah respected her for it. I like that.
They had two sons, Shear-jashub and Maher-shalal-hash-baz. If anyone is having a baby in your family you might want to consider using one of those names.
Our text tells us that Isaiah’s prophetic ministry lasted a very long time, through the reigns of 4 of the kings of Judah. Isaiah spoke for God for at least 50 years. And if you think we live in perilous times, listen to what Isaiah saw.
He was probably born during the reign of King Uzziah. Those were mostly good times, the best times Israel had had for quite a while. Long before Isaiah had been born the nation of Israel, which had been so blessed by God started falling away. And God had told them how to live: be honest, work together, love one another, stick with me and I’ll take care of you. And when they chose to stop doing that disaster struck. There was a civil war and Israel was divided. The northern two thirds was still called Israel and they turned to other gods right away. Jerusalem was left in the southern kingdom, now called Judah, and they stayed loyal to God longer, but they had their ups and downs. Isaiah lived in Jerusalem, in what was then called Judah.
You can read about all the kings of Israel and Judah in the Old Testament because the books of Kings and Chronicles give a summary of what they did. When Uzziah became king there was great hope. His father, King Amaziah, had been a terrible king. He saw that one of the neighbor countries had really impressive idols as their god, and Israel always had this problem that the God of Israel didn’t allow anyone to make images of him. He would not be contained in any image. He would not be limited by any image. He was a spiritual God. And some people liked to have a god they could see, they could control, they could limit. And so King Amaziah had an idol of another god placed right in God’s temple. And when he turned his heart away from the living God he became a terrible king. The people revolted. They killed him. And they put his son, Uzziah on the throne.
Uzziah was 16 years old when he became king. And he learned his lesson. He cleaned the idols out of the temple. He was faithful to God. He ruled well. He loved farming and improved the agricultural base of the country. He improved their national defense by fortifying some of the key border places. He strongly supported the worship of the true God of Israel. And God blessed Israel. It became strong. It became prosperous. It grew as he won back some cities that had been captured by their neighbors.
Only Uzziah made a big mistake. He did everything so well that he became proud. It all went to his head. And he decided that he was going into the temple and offer one of the sacrifices to God that only the priests were allowed to do. When he arrived, 80 priests stood in his way and begged him not to do it. You don’t mess with the Holy God of Israel. But in his pride, Uzziah went ahead. And God struck him with leprosy. God wasn’t going to allow his temple to be mistreated in such a public way. If Uzziah had started to reign as king with such a swelled head, it would have been disaster. God gave him the grace to humble him.
How many times have you heard of famous people who started out so well, but their fame and their power went to their heads, and they made terrible mistakes. I think of Whitney Houston, John Edwards, and Bill Clinton. We need to pray for our leaders to remain humble before God.
Uzziah died in about the year 640 B.C. That was really scary for Israel. What kind of a king would his son be? His son was only 16 years old. Judah was a small country in a really dangerous part of the world. There were still a lot of people who really like the false gods that Amaziah had brought in. What was going to happen with a 16 year old as their king?
It was in the year that King Uzziah died that God called Isaiah to be his spokesman, his prophet. Isaiah tells us how that happened and we’ll look at it next week.
You can see in our verse the name of Uzziah’s son. What was it? Jotham. And what kind of king was Jotham? You can read his story in Kings and Chronicles. He was a good king. He stayed faithful to God. And the 16 years he reigned were good years. And I suspect that Isaiah’s guidance was a big part of that.
Who was next? Ahaz. He became king when he was 20 years old. He ruled for 16 years. And he was a terrible king. He went up to visit the king of Damascus and saw a really cool altar to the gods of Damascus there. And when he came back to Israel he had a copy made. He moved some of the main furnishings for worshipping the God of Israel off to side rooms and put his altar to the god of Damascus in the most prominent place. He had images of the god Baal made. Baal was a fertility god. Worship of Baal often included sexual orgies. He encouraged Baal worship on every hilltop throughout his kingdom.
And how did that work out? Baal was a horrible god. To appease him, Ahaz had some of his sons burned to death as sacrifices to Baal. The people forgot all about caring for the weak and vulnerable among them. The God of Israel was not going to bless behavior like that, so he withheld his protection and it wasn’t long before they were invaded and humiliated. Isaiah went and confronted Ahaz and promised him grace, that if he would return to God, God would help them again. But instead he went and made an alliance with the Assyrians, submitting Judah as a vassal state to the superpower of the day. And the day came when they really regretted that.
Jotham was a great king. But somehow he dropped the ball in raising his son, Ahaz to follow the living God. It is so important that we give our children solid spiritual foundations. This could be the story of the history of America. We have been blessed with wonderful spiritual foundations. They have been an incredible blessing for us as a nation. And it really scares me that so many parents just don’t bother to give their children any spiritual nurture. How many times have you heard that lame excuse, “I don’t want to raise them in any one religion. I want them to choose for themselves when they grow up”? That’s like saying you are not going to encourage your daughter with her math homework so she can decide for herself whether she wants to know math when she’s an adult. Or it’s like saying you aren’t going to help you son practice his spelling words because you don’t want to influence him in the decision of whether to be a good speller or not.
The Bible tells us that there is something deeply wrong in the human heart, a powerful tendency towards selfishness, towards pride, towards spiritual indifference, towards rebellion against God. And our kids need a lot of instruction and a lot of spiritual support to grow up faithful to God. Christians aren’t built by neglect.
Parents, your kids need to be in Sunday School. And you need to set an example for them by attending an adult class yourself. You need to be talking with them about what a relationship with the living God means. You need to be setting an example of putting God first in your life. And if you don’t you are guilty of spiritual child neglect and you are sending your children into the world ill-prepared for the temptations they will face. And that is a huge issue for our entire nation right now. Can we learn from Jotham? He was a godly man. But he really failed in giving his son a spiritual foundation.
But even in the darkest hours God doesn’t give up. Ahaz reigned for 16 years and they were terrible years. Who was next? Hezekiah. And I don’t know how it happened, but Hezekiah saw how foolish his father had been. We do have recorded several conversations he had with Isaiah, asking what God wanted him to do. And there were probably many more. Hezekiah cleaned all the pagan idols out of the temple. He called the priests and the Levites back to run it properly. He called for the first national Passover feast they had had in a long time and the people poured into Jerusalem to worship the God of Israel properly. Hezekiah was a great king and God blessed Israel under his reign.
Do you ever wonder if America has gone too far down on the moral skids, if we are beyond hope? Our worst days are nowhere near as dark as the 16 years under Ahaz. And God brought renewal even then. And God has renewed his church again and again over the centuries. And he can do it again. There is always hope with God. Isaiah didn’t give up and neither should we.
And I have to say one thing about Isaiah that comes out again and again as you read his book. Isaiah really cared. He kept informed about his world. He was deeply committed to praying for his country, and as he prayed God opened his heart so that Isaiah could see Judah as God saw it, with an excruciating combination of love and sadness. As he prayed about the evil things that the countries around him were doing, God spoke to him the consequences they would face for what they have done. Bashar Assad is doing terrible things to his people in Syria. God doesn’t intervene to stop all such atrocities, but know that Bashar Assad will be held accountable by the living God.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some of you were to open up to Isaiah this week and try reading him for yourself. Let me warn you what you will find. A lot of Isaiah, chapters 13-35 is largely a collection of his writings about how God saw the nations around him. It is filled with names you’ve never heard of before and indictments of some pretty nasty things. That is the kind of place where it’s really handy to have a study Bible with notes that will give you some background. I really like the Life Application Study Bible for that.
You’ll find that Isaiah seems to jump around a lot. What we have is an anthology of over 50 years of messages that Isaiah brought to his people. Sometimes the background isn’t clear to us today. Sometimes it’s hard for us to tell where one message finishes and the next one starts.
But Isaiah is worth the effort. He was a wonderful poet. His words don’t rhyme in English and they didn’t rhyme in Hebrew either, but he uses powerful, beautiful images.
On Ash Wednesday we spent some time chewing on his image that “though your sins are like scarlet, you shall be whiter than snow.” Isn’t that a beautiful image of hope?
And as Isaiah dedicated himself to listening to the heart of God, he saw that even the nation of Judah was headed for disaster. Even the reforms of the good kings couldn’t undo the damage brought in by the apostates.
He saw far into the future, when Judah would be conquered, the people carried away into exile. He saw that God would still not give them up. As they were humbled in exile some of them returned to God. He saw that God would bring them back. He saw that some day God would send a suffering servant who would die for their sins. He saw a remnant of God’s people who didn’t just worship God outwardly, but deeply in their hearts, a purified remnant. He saw a day when God’s name really would be glorified on earth. And I look forward to sharing it all with you. AMEN
