STUDY THEME: INVITATION TO MAXIMUM LIVING: ISAIAH SPEAKS TODAY.
LIVE IN RELATIONSHIP; NOT REBELLION. ISAIAH 1: 1-31.
ISAIAH 1: 1, 2-4, 10-15, 16-20.
PLEASE OPEN YOUR BIBLE TO ISAIAH 1.
Everyone wants to get the most out of life. And there are plenty of pill peddlers, self-help gurus, TV personalities, and book writers who tell people they can help them find what they are seeking.
So many solutions, so little time! This Study theme, “INVITATION TO MAXIMUM LIVING” is designed to help us find the answer. It directs us to the One who created life. If anyone knows how we can live life to the max, it’s God.
The STUDY THEME, focuses on selected passages from the Book of Isaiah. The first lesson, based on Isaiah 1: 2-4, 1-20 focuses on right relationships with the Lord. Isaiah Ch. 1 is a summary of the entire 66 chapters of the book. The Book of Isaiah is the third longest book in the Bible after Psalms and Jeremiah.
This study theme declares that an eighth century B.C. prophet named Isaiah knew where to find directions for living life to the maximum His answer was in the Answer----in the One who created life and knows how to lead people to live it to the fullest: God!
The passages to be studied under this theme are about God’s charge that His people had abandoned Him, the One who gives light for living abundantly through His Word and ultimately through Jesus Christ.
He warned them of the nature and consequences of idolatry and of turning to idols for help. God offered them and all people new life if they would turn to Him. Through Isaiah, God speaks today of how to enjoy maximum living.
This study theme is designed to help us experience fully the life and relationship God offers by describing what living in right relationship with God means and then helping us repent of rebellious actions and attitudes that hurt our relationship with God.
Since we will be spending the month of November in the Book of Isaiah, let’s get better acquainted with the author. Isaiah was born about 765 B.C. in Jerusalem of Judah and given the name that means “salvation of the Lord,” or “Yahweh is salvation.”
He was the greatest of the writing prophets. He prophesied in the reigns of King Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. These kings reigned from 740 to 680 B.C.
Isaiah was one of four 8th century prophets. Amos and Hosea preached in the northern kingdom of Israel shortly before its fall to Assyria in 722 B.C. Isaiah and Micah preached in Judah during the same general time.
According to tradition Isaiah was martyred in the reign of King Manasseh for his opposition to the king’s idolatry. The reference in Heb. 11:37 to some who were placed in a log and sawn asunder may have referred to Isaiah since “Fox’s Book of Martyrs” says that Isaiah was placed in a log and sawn asunder.
Isaiah was about 20 years of age when he was called to preach. He apparently lived to be 70 or 80. He was already married by about 734 B.C., and had two sons whose names had prophetic significance. Isaiah’s wife was a “prophetess.” So far as we know Isaiah spent his life in and around Jerusalem.
His father Amoz, may have been a person of prominence, since the prophet is called 13 times the “son of Amoz,” but nothing further is known about him.
Isaiah was not only an author of ability, a historian of note, and a statesman of competence; he was also a poet of rare gift. But most of all, Isaiah was God’s servant.
When Isaiah began his public work Judah had attained a degree of wealth, power and civilization which must have placed it, along with Israel, in the front rank of the petty principalities that now separated Egypt from Assyria. The great fact of the time was the westward extension of the Assyrian Empire. This commenced in earnest, after a pause of 40 years, with the accession of Tiglath-pileser III, who ruled Assyria and was seeking world conquest.
These years 740 to 790 B.C. were turbulent times for Judah and Israel. They were head on a collision course with Assyria. When Isaiah received God’s call, the Northern Kingdom of Israel would exist for about 20 more years before falling to Assyrian military might, which happened in 722 B.C.
Twenty one years later (701 B.C.) the Assyrians under Sennacherib were at the gates of Jerusalem threatening to destroy the city, but in Isaiah 37:36-38 God sent an angel to destroy the Assyrian army. They rebuilt and reached their goal in the conquest of Egypt in 672 B.C.
It must have been evident to thoughtful observers, even before Isaiah’s entrance on public life, that the independent existence of all the smaller nations was endangered by the steady advance of this new and formidable power.
We owe it in part to the influence Isaiah was able to exert in the long period of his prophetic career, that the Southern Kingdom of Judah was not overwhelmed, as the northern kingdom of Israel was, by the Assyrians. The Israelites, who were carried away into Assyrian captivity in B.C. 722 were untraceably lost. They were absorbed by their conquerors.
As we turn to the writing of Isaiah we find the book has two important themes. The first 39 chapters deal generally with judgment on sin and chapters 40-66 emphasize comfort and restoration.
During the ministry of Isaiah, Judah faced enemies not only from without, but also from within. Spiritual decay and moral corruption had deep roots in the people’s lives. Isaiah confronted this sinful state and called the people to faith, mercy, and justice. He warned that if they did not repent, the nation’s sin would bring captivity at the hands of Babylon. The people remained defiant until at last in 586 B.C. Jerusalem fell.
This first sermon of Isaiah is about rebellion confronted with judgment and grace.
PLESE READ ISAIAH 1: 2-4.
After the brief introduction in vs. 1, Isaiah moved right into a message. His dramatic call comes in Isaiah 6. In some of the prophets (such as Jeremiah), the book begins with the prophet’s call. Several explanations have been made to explain whey Isaiah wrote five chapters before telling of his call. One view is that the call in Isaiah 6 was not the prophet’s initial call.
Another view is that Isaiah’s call did not come at the beginning of his prophetic mission. More likely, the prophet began with chapters 1-5 in order to show the plight of the people to who Isaiah was called.
Isaiah 1: 2 pictures what amounts to a court room scene. God called the people and leaders of Judah to face his charges of rebellion and other sins. He called the heavens and the earth to hear or listen, or to give ear or pay attention, to what God had to say. Since God’s children will not hear, Isaiah called on the heavens to listen.
The basic accusation in Isaiah 1: 2 is rebellion against God. And this rebellion was against a loving Father, who said, “I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me.” God is not an unfeeling tyrant but a loving heavenly Father. Thus rebellion against Him is the ultimate sin against love. He is referring to the national sin of idolatry.
Vs. 3 uses another comparison to show the folly of Judah’s sins. “The ox knoweth his owner, and the donkey his master’s crib or feeding trough, but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider or understand.”
God had brought them up to the high position they occupied during the reign of David and Solomon. Israel was a leading nation at that time. God had blessed them mightily in His part of His covenant with them.
Now he says that so-called dumb animals show more understanding than human beings. Oxen and donkeys know and obey their owners, but people are ignorant of their Master.
The greedy Balaam did not see the angel of the Lord blocking the road, but his donkey did. The animal stopped and Balaam tried to get it to move on, but it refused and Balaam beat it. In Numbers 22: 21-35 the Lord enabled the animal to talk and opened t he eyes of Balaam. The donkey had more spiritual insight than Balaam. The animals in Isaiah 1:3 had more sense than the people. This shows that sin causes ignorance of God, which leads to irrational actions.
Vs. 4 gives a number of ways to describe the sinful people and their sins. They were a sinful nation, a people weighed down with iniquity. They were like a runner with a knapsack filled with lead. They were a brood of evildoers. Children that are corrupters means “children given to corruption: hence they were “depraved children.”
These are descriptions of the sinners. The rest of the verse describes the things they had done. They defiled everything they touched. How did Judah sink to such a low state? They had abandoned or forsaken the Lord and provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger.
Forsaking the Lord is the basic human sin. It was the sin of Adam and Eve, and it is the sin of their descendants. Later in the Book of Isaiah, Isaiah wrote in Isa. 53: 6, “All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every one to his own way.”
Sin separates from God because sinners have turned their backs on God. It also separates from God because “it provokes the Holy One of Israel unto anger.” Further, “they had turned their backs on Him.” By their own choice, they had refused a right relationship with God. Each description of their sins in vs. 2-4 makes this clear.
Judah had sunk spiritually and morally to the level of the pagan nations around them. A Holy God expected His people to live holy lives.
The Holy one of Israel was a favorite title of Isaiah for God. It may have grown out of his call experience. In Isaiah 6, Isaiah saw a vision of the Lord, with the seraphim singing of His holiness. Isaiah confessed his sin, was cleansed, and responded to the call of God.
The word holy has a twofold meaning. For one thing, it means “set apart as different.” God is holy first of all because He is God, not man.
A derived meaning is that He is good, pure, and righteous. Isaiah experienced both these revelations of the holy God. He was overwhelmed by awe as he saw God. He was made aware of his uncleanness as he saw the purity of God.
The bridge to vs. 10-20, the rest of the lesson, is vs. 5-9. These verses deal with the consequences of the sins of vs. 2-4. Isaiah asked the people why they continued in sins that were destroying them. He said that the whole heart of the nation was sick from head to foot. Every part of their nation was diseased. The land was devastated. Because they had turned from God, they were abandoned. When they abandoned God, they lost their understanding of God, their purity, their innocence, and a right relation with Him.
Only God’s forbearance had left a few survivors. If the Lord had not done that, they would have been like Sodom and Gomorrah, completely destroyed.
PLEASE READ ISAIAH 1: 10-15.
The reason for mentioning Sodom and Gomorrah in vs. 9 is brought out in vs. 10. Isaiah called the leaders and the people of Judah to hear and to give ear. These are the same words in vs. 2, when God was calling the heavens and the earth to be witnesses at a trial.
In vs. 10 the Lord called the rulers or leaders and the people to hear the word of the Lord. The seriousness of their sins led Him to refer to them as being from Sodom and Gomorrah, whose sins and doom are recorded in Genesis 19. The people and leaders of those evil cities were unspeakably wicked and perverted. God considered the wickedness of Judah and Jerusalem to be as equally offensive to Him as the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah.
The people and rulers of Judah must have resented being compared to such evil people. They probably thought that Isaiah was crazy to accuse them of being like Sodom and Gomorrah. They might have said, “We are God’s chosen people. We go to the holy temple and offer sacrifices pleasing to God. We are religious people.”
We are not told their initial response, but God’s words in vs. 11-15 answer such excuses. God did not deny that some of them offered many sacrifices in the temple. He did not deny that they offered the sacrifices prescribed by the Law. There were offerings for confession, atonement, thanksgiving, praise, and commitment. They made the right sacrifices. Yet God had some harsh words about their worship.
Vs. 11 makes three assertions: for all their plentitude, these sacrifices mean nothing to the Lord (what are they to Me?), I have more than enough, and I have no pleasure in the blood. Blood was the core effectiveness of the sacrificial system but here it failed to touch the heart of God. The Lord asked, “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me?” In other words, God indicated that the kind of sacrifices they offered meant nothing to Him.
In vs. 12 God wanted to know who told the people of Judah to come to the temple and offer up this kind of worship that they were offering. Since they believed God dwelt in the holy of holies in the temple, coming to the temple meant coming to appear before God. God saw that their soulless worship was a mere formality, offered without any sense of repentance. Their worship activities were probably efforts to bribe God to spare them their deserved punishment, believing that mere outward acts of worship were acceptable to God
They were substituting religious words and works to God instead of living before Him in a right relationship. Instead of worshiping, God said all they were doing was trampling the courts of His temple. Trampling suggests God’s people were like foreign invaders of marauding enemy soldiers plundering through God’s house. God’s question implied that they were to stop doing it. “Trample my courts no more.”
In vs. 13 the Lord revealed clearly what He though of their worship. His command was clear—no more useless offerings were to be brought. Their offerings were not expressing any repentance or reverence or thanksgiving from their hearts. God condemned their worship by saying I despise your incense; that is, the incense they put on the sacrifices that was supposed to gladden God’s heart filled Him with disgust.
Concerning their New Moons, Sabbaths, and solemn assemblies (special days for fasting),” the Lord declared He could not stand the iniquity that was in the worshipers as they observed their festival celebrations.
God was charging them with actually sinning as they performed their religious acts and observed their religious festivals. Isaiah’s message could have been entitled “When Worship is Sinful.”
John Oswalt reminded us, “There is no question that we today are as guilty of trying to use religious behavior to manipulate God as any Israelite was. How easy it is to think that when we go to church regularly, read the Bible, pray, tithe, and don’t engage in substance abuse, God somehow owes us something.
Moreover, how easy it is to think that when we have done all these things, God could hardly expect more from us…in fact, it is easy for these behaviors to become substitutes for real biblical faith.”
The Lord’s condemnations continued in vs. 14, expressed in three declarations related to their prescribed festivals. God’s feelings were strong as He watched His people observe festivals that were meant to be holy occasions observed from hearts of devotion and celebration. He had only hate for the way they wee observing them. The festivals had become meaningless to them and a burden for the Lord. He had been patient with his people, but now He was tired of putting up with them and their hypocritical worship.
In vs. 15 God revealed His response to their prayers. They continued the motions of lifting up their open hands in prayers, but they had turned their backs away from God. Therefore God said He would refuse to look at them. A king would refuse to look at a supplicant if the king refused the supplicant’s request.
God could not and would not answer their self-centered prayers. Evidently they were offering countless prayers because of the military and economic problems they were experiencing. However, God refused to come to their aid, for their problems were designed to get their attention and turn them back to Him. The hands they were lifting up to God were covered with blood. This expression was probably true literally in many instances and figuratively true in many more cases. The people were a sinful people in many ways.
Right worship is deeply pleasing to God. Wrong worship is deeply displeasing to Him. The key? Worshiping out of a right relationship in the heart to God and a right relationship in the life with others.
God does not accept as a substitute religious words and actions for a right relationship with Him.
God accepts worship that is an extension of a daily life lived faithfully before Him.
Legitimate worship rituals or traditions are not evil in themselves. However, rituals have no real value to God or to the worshiper unless the rituals are expressions of a life-transforming relationship with God. God looks at the heart of the worshiper. Therefore, we must not try to manipulate God or hid our sins. Our worship must involve honesty, confession, and sincere conversation with God.
PLEASE READ ISAIAH 1: 16-20.
Though God was displeased and He rejected the way His people in Jerusalem and Judah were living, He offered them another chance before final judgment came upon them as a nation. He did not want them to be destroyed as Sodom and Gomorrah were or exiled as the Northern Kingdom of Israel had been. He called Jerusalem to turn to Him and He would purify them from their sins and renew their relationship with Him.
Before God could purify them, they had to take the first step by responding to His call. They had a responsibility to seek the Lord. Vs. 16 contains four negative commands they needed to obey concerning their past and present condition.
These actions would not produce cleansing but would indicate sincerity of heart in turning from sin to God and wanting to be cleansed. They were tangible ways to express turning from rebellion and a life of sin and turning to God and a life of surrender and obedience to Him.
Because their hands were full of blood, the people and leaders needed to wash in order to be clean. Wash and cleanse are imperatives placed in Hebrew parallel statements, which is a characteristic of the Hebrew poetry of these verses.
The washing was designed to remove their filthy and disgusting evil deeds from God’s sight, not just from man’s sight. Therefore, their repentance must come from their hearts and be directed personally to God. To no longer be evildoers, they needed to stop doing evil.
In his call vision, Isaiah became convicted that he had unclean lips. One of the seraphim touched his lips with a glowing coal from the altar. He told Isaiah that his iniquity was taken away and his sin purged.
In David’s prayer for forgiveness in Ps. 52: 2, he prayed: “Wash away my guilt, and cleanse me from my sin.” The first and foremost need in every life is this cleansing from sin. What a wonderful feeling to be clean! Many people at sometime in their lives are in situations where they cannot wash and be clean. When they are able to wash and be clean, the experience is refreshing and exhilarating.
Repentance is not only turning from practicing a disobedient lifestyle, it is turning to God with a commitment to living a godly life. God gave five imperatives in vs. 17 to which He instructed them to commit themselves. Instead of doing evil, they were to learn to do what is good. Turning to God and His Word would be how they would learn what is good.
Other positive actions that God expected to come from them included seeking justice---concerning both legal matters and in their dealing with other individuals. An injustice of the day was the practice of an oppressor taking advantage of those weaker then himself. God said to correct those who oppress or “relieve the oppressed.”
God wants us to represent Him by standing against those who oppress others as well as standing by those being oppressed. Two vulnerable areas people often were oppressed involved the rights of the fatherless and the widow’s cause. Doing good would include defending the fatherless and pleading the cause of the widow. Living like that would please God.
Vs. 18 is the John 3: 16 of the Old Testament. Things were not right between God and His people. God was very displeased and the people were suffering various kinds of problems. Also, God knew that His people could not wash away their own sin or live an obedient life without His ministry in their lives. Efforts to save themselves would prove futile. They needed to look to God for His cleansing and His power to do good. Therefore, He invited His people to come to Him and discuss their situation and what He could do for them. In His grace God calls His people to come to Him. As the Lord of the covenant with Israel, He already had planned what to do when situations like this arose between Him and His people.
God pulled no punches about the enormity and seriousness of Judah’s sins. The colors scarlet and red as crimson were steadfast colors in dyed garments that would be difficult if not impossible to remove. In the Hebrew language scarlet means, “double dyed.” Sin was so deep and permanent in their hearts that only God would be able to remove it.
As Isaiah would later declare, God would send a Savior who would take the world’s sin upon Himself and die for mankind, thus making forgiveness of sin possible. He would provide the way so they could be made white as snow and like wool in the whiteness of its original, undyed, natural state.
This is only one of the Old Testament pictures of God’s forgiveness of our sins. Psalm 103: 12 says, “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.” Micah7: 19 says, “it as though God buries our sins in the depths of the sea.”
In vs. 19-20 to those who would respond positively to His call, God made a tremendous promise. The promise was conditional. Those who made a positive response would be those who were willing and obedient---willing to turn away from their sinful, rebellious lives and surrender to be obedient to the kinds of actions spelled out in vs. 16-17. God promised them that they would eat the good things of the land. No more would their land be desolate with foreigners devouring their fields.
But there is a different word to those who responded negatively to God’s call---to those who would refuse and rebel against His call to come to Him, God promised them greater punishment than they were already experiencing. Instead of eating the good things of the land blessed by God, they would be devoured by the enemy’s sword.
Sadly, only a small number responded positively to God’s call. The majority rejected His call and suffered defeat and exile. Since the message from Isaiah came from the mouth of the Lord, it came to pass just as God promised. So we see that having a right relationship with God means desiring to live a pure life and ridding oneself of evil through confession and repentance of sins.
So we see that “Being right with God is like a coin with two sides: One side represents being forgiven and having one’s guilt washed away: the other side represents learning and doing good things that exhibit God’s character.” Living in right relationship with God brings forgiveness, purity, and blessing. Living in wrong relationship through rebellion and sinfulness ends in bitter defeat.
NEXT WEEK FROM ISAIAH 7: 1 TO 9: 7 WE LEARN THAT GOD GIVES LIGHT FOR LIVING THROUGH HIS WORD AND ULTIMATELY THROUGH HIS SON.
A.V. DAUGHERTY altav@swbell.net