Holy Heartache: God's Lament for His People
Introduction
We took pictures in the fall. Anyone else here have a wife or mom who likes to take pictures at the beginning of the holiday season? We're all dressed up nice, smiling faces, obviously the perfect family. What no one sees is that moments before the picture is snapped, it was chaos. Morgan and Mati were terrorizing their brother, Ceresa and I were yelling at all of them. The chaos stopped just long enough to snap the photo you see today.
Like my family trying to present a perfect image, the people of Judah and Jerusalem were maintaining an appearance of righteousness while chaos and unfaithfulness reigned in their hearts and society. Isaiah's vision exposes the reality behind the facade.
Another story to help illustrate the point. When I was in high school I was always messing around with my truck. I changed my brakes once and didn't have a clue what I was doing. Another time I had a fuse that was blown and would immediately blow any fuse I tried to put into the fuse box. I asked a friend and they suggested I just put a bigger fuse. I did that and after a few moments the smell of burning plastic began to fill the air.
This is like the people of Judah during Isaiah's time. Everything may have looked right on the outside, but internally things were burning up.
Isaiah 1:1-9
1 The vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem that Isaiah son of Amoz saw during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.
2 Hear me, you heavens! Listen, earth! For the Lord has spoken: “I reared children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against me.
3 The ox knows its master, the donkey its owner’s manger, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.”
4 Woe to the sinful nation, a people whose guilt is great, a brood of evildoers, children given to corruption! They have forsaken the Lord; they have spurned the Holy One of Israel and turned their backs on him.
5 Why should you be beaten anymore? Why do you persist in rebellion? Your whole head is injured, your whole heart afflicted.
6 From the sole of your foot to the top of your head there is no soundness—only wounds and welts and open sores, not cleansed or bandaged or soothed with olive oil.
7 Your country is desolate, your cities burned with fire; your fields are being stripped by foreigners right before you, laid waste as when overthrown by strangers.
8 Daughter Zion is left like a shelter in a vineyard, like a hut in a cucumber field, like a city under siege.
9 Unless the Lord Almighty had left us some survivors, we would have become like Sodom, we would have been like Gomorrah.
I. Some Background on Isaiah
Political and Social Setting in Isaiah's Time
A. International Tensions and Threats:
During this era, the Assyrian Empire was expanding and becoming a dominant force in the region. This posed a significant threat to the smaller kingdoms, including Judah.
There were also tensions with the Northern Kingdom of Israel and other neighboring nations like Egypt and Babylon.
B. Internal Political Instability:
The succession of kings during Isaiah's time saw varying degrees of faithfulness to the covenant with God. Each king's reign brought different policies and religious practices.
King Ahaz, for instance, is noted for his idolatrous practices, which included making alliances with Assyria and incorporating pagan worship elements into the temple service.
C. Social Injustice and Economic Disparity:
The society was marked by a growing divide between the wealthy and the poor. Economic exploitation and social injustice were rampant.
The wealthy elite often accumulated land and wealth at the expense of the poorer classes, contrary to the laws and principles outlined in the Torah, such as the year of Jubilee and provisions for the poor and widows.
D. Religious Apostasy and Idolatry:
There was a significant departure from the worship of Yahweh as prescribed in the Mosaic Law. Idol worship, including the worship of Baal and Asherah, was prevalent.
Religious practices had become formalistic and ritualistic, lacking genuine devotion and obedience to God. The prophets, including Isaiah, condemned these practices as empty and offensive to God.
E. Moral Decay and Corruption:
The leaders and people were criticized for their dishonesty, corruption, and lack of moral integrity.
Bribery, perversion of justice, and neglect of the needy and vulnerable were common, indicating a society that had strayed far from the ethical standards of the Torah.
F. William Henry Green, a biblical scholar at Princeton in the 19th century, said:
"Who can tell us, whether this awful and mysterious silence, in which the infinite one has wrapped himself, portends, mercy, or wrath? Who can say to the troubled conscience, whether he, whose laws in nature are inflexible and remorseless, will pardon sin? Who can answer the anxious inquiry, whether the dying live on, or whether they cease to be? Is there a future state? And if so, what is the nature of that untried condition of being? If there be immortal happiness, how can I obtain it? If there be an everlasting woe, how can it be escaped? Let the reader close his Bible and ask himself seriously what he knows upon these momentous questions, apart from its teachings. What solid foundation has he to rest upon, in regard to matters, which, so absolutely transcend all earthly experiences, and are so entirely out of the reach of our unassisted faculties? A man of facile faith may perhaps, dilute himself into the belief of what he wishes to believe. He made us take upon trust God's Unlimited mercy, his ready, forgiveness of transgressors, and eternal happiness after death. But this is all a dream. He knows nothing, he can know nothing about it, except by direct revelation from heaven."
The beauty of this is we can know because God has spoken. He has spoken to us from the borders of another world. Our needs go deeper than the remedies we find for sale in today's marketplace of ideas.
The solution for what ails us, the answer to the question of our life in time and space exists outside of time and space. You cannot consult enough experts or do enough research to answer life's unanswerable questions. Those answers exist only in God's speaking to us.
Here's the good news…God has spoken to us!
We are going to dig into God's Word that was spoken to Isaiah.
II. Spiritual Growth
A. Conviction's Role in Spiritual Growth
There is a difference between vague guilt and true conviction.
Someone of watered-down faith can likely convince themselves to believe whatever they wish to believe.
Do we misuse God's unlimited mercy? Are we taking for granted his willingness to forgive us of our sins and hoping for eternal happiness after death?
Like we read earlier, this is all a dream. We can only know what God has told us, right? And what do we know? God has spoken into our troubled lives and our confused world.
Our needs go deeper than the easy remedies the world tries to provide us.
No matter how many experts you line up, and how much research you do, and how widely accepted your ideas may become…the ultimate questions of life remain absolutely and forever unanswerable unless God speaks.
And God has spoken to us in plain language.
B. Conviction of Sin as a Transformative and Healing Force
What is conviction of sin? It's not an oppressive spirit of uncertainty and paralysis and mere guilt feelings.
I read that the "Conviction of sin is the lance of the Divine surgeon piercing the infected soul, releasing the pressure, letting the infection pour out so that healing can begin."
Conviction of sin is a health-giving injury.
Conviction of sin is the Holy Spirit being kind to us. By unkindly confronting us with the light we don't want to see the truth we're afraid to admit and the guilt we try to ignore. Conviction of sin is the severe love of God. overruling our dishonesty, our willful blindness, our convenient excuses can diction of sin is the violent sweetness of God, opposing the sins, lying comfortably undisturbed in our lives. conviction of sin is the merciful judgment of God. declaring war. On the false peace, we settle for conviction of sin is the breakthrough from darkness and delight from attending church into worship, from faking it into really living, conviction of sin, with the forgiveness of Jesus, pouring out over that wound is of the very essence of life.
C. The Portrayal of God's Severe Love in Confronting Our Disobedience
Conviction of sin is the severe love of God overruling our dishonesty, our willful blindness, our convenient excuses.
Conviction of sin is the violent sweetness of God, opposing the sins, lying comfortably undisturbed in our lives.
Conviction of sin is the merciful judgment of God declaring war on the false peace we settle for.
Conviction of sin is the breakthrough from darkness and delight from attending church into worship…from faking it into really living.
The forgiveness of Jesus pours out over the wound which conviction causes and is the very essence of life.
III. God's Broken Heart (vv. 2-3)
A. God's Lament of People's Rebellion
In the 70's when the Shah of Iran was deposed and exiled he made a statement that I think is relevant for this portion of Isaiah. He said, "It would take a power of the stature of Homer to tell the story of how I was betrayed."
I say this because God's betrayal is such that it takes the heavens and the earth, the entire cosmos, to bear witness to the enormity of our offense against God.
B. Are We Significant?
I feel like we underestimate the significance of our lives. We say it does not matter, we are insignificant.
However, God does not trivialize us. God takes us seriously because he can see us.
One of the great tragedies is when God's church rebels against him. And here's what I mean:
a. We know from the New Testament that God through Jesus has adopted us.
b. God has lavished his love on us, and chased us with his grace.
c. Imagine, when someone in our own lives betrays us. That can carry a depth of despair and anguish.
C. How Are We Rebellious?
We should talk some about how we rebel. How many of you imagine it is only the times that you went on a bender? Or maybe just that you simply skipped church? Or perhaps you said something you should not have said?
We think to ourselves, well, I am doing the best I can! This very attitude is a rebellion.
When we make peace with sin, when we settle for a watered-down experience of God, when we only ensure the exterior looks nice, we are defying who God says we can be.
When we think of ourselves as good Christians, because that way feels better, rather than allowing the love of Christ, to set us free from sin, we are defying God.
This opening verse is a cry of pain from heaven. God's heart is broken because his people are rebelling against him.
D. Smarter Than a Donkey
Isaiah is pointing out the fact that we are wounding the very one who blesses us. He says the ox and the donkey know their master. What he's saying is our rebellion makes the animals look smart. Oxen and donkeys are stupid, but they know enough to find the one who provides for them.
What madness is this, that we treat God our Heavenly Father as a problem to work around? While we get on with the business of life? That's stupid. We break the heart of God and injure ourselves.
IV. The Church's Weakness
A. Sinful People
The prophet Isaiah lays out the case for the weakness of God's people. He points to a people who have given themselves to sin.
Would this apply to us today? I read that 1 in 32 Americans are in the justice system in some way, either jail, parole, or probation.
What if 1 in 32 were a Bible teacher, or an evangelist, or leading a revival?
Isaiah says they have children who are also like this…in other words, it's a generational thing.
Woe…not anger:
a. This is a lament, a cry of anguish. Not a prophet who is chewing out a people, but a prophet who is telling of God's broken heart because of a lost people.
b. The call to greatness has become the exact opposite.
B. The Root
They have forsaken the Lord…but how? How does the church forsake the Lord?
By treating Him like the last resort, rather than the source. To despise God by discounting Him while valuing other things.
What is the condition of your heart? If it's far from God, only concerned with the exterior, it deserves death and hell.
Because God's the Holy One of Israel, in His infinite mercy sent His son, so that we can be forgiven of our sin and draw close to Him.
C. The Daily Grind
Our problem is we believe we don't deserve an infinite punishment because we haven't done the unspeakable evil. We haven't sinned that badly.
Truth be known, these sins pale when compared with forsaking and despising God.
We feel we're on the "good" path and just grind it out. We choose a doctrine we're comfortable with and we grind it out.
Eventually, God becomes like a forgotten, dried up fruit stuck in the back of the refrigerator.
The way the scripture describes it is we are like someone who is bruised and beaten with raw wounds. We aren't treating those wounds so they remain open sores. I imagine we look like Rocky in a boxing match.
This happens when we don't repent and forsake our sin. We keep suffering, we don't put on the salve of God's repentance.
How much misery are we going to cause ourselves before we come back to the God of our healing?
V. God's Grace (V. 9)
A. What Should Have Happened?
We should have been like Sodom and Gomorrah.
We should have been destroyed.
But God!
We have the opportunity to respond to God's grace.
God, in His mercy, has offered us an opportunity. He wants to heal our wounds.
Isaiah is setting it up for the time later when he says he was wounded for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities. That by His stripes we are healed.
Conclusion
Perhaps you can understand now why we started out talking about conviction. This is a convicting passage. Remember, this was written to Israel who had wondered off from God. What truth is there for us today? Perhaps we need to allow the healing power of God's grace to be our salvation today?
