Ray Ortlund, pastor of Immanuel Church in Nashville, is simply one of my favorite people. And the story he tells about the day his dad went to be with the Lord is one of my favorite stories. As Ortlund tells it, on July 22, 2007, his dad woke up in the hospital that day fully aware that this would be the day he would die, so he had the nurse call his family in. His family gathered around him, read Scripture, and sang hymns. Finally, he spoke a word of blessing and admonition to each of his children. While this was going on, though, Ray and his wife were in Northern Ireland, ministering there. So, Ray missed out on being with the family on that day his dad went to be with the Lord. What he didn’t miss, however, were his dad’s final words. His dad had made sure to have a word delivered to Ray as well. It was, “Tell Bud, ministry isn’t everything. Jesus is.”1
With his final words, he gave his son a basic reminder. No doubt, this wasn’t something that Ray was unaware of. He surely knew that Jesus is more important than ministry. But I doubt these words were something that Ray will ever forget. Nor should he (or any of us). After all, there is a great temptation to begin to prize and value our work (even our work in ministry) even more than we do Jesus. We can have ministry dreams that we begin to long for more than we long to know and love Christ. And that’s nothing more than idolatry. Final words, a basic reminder, and something that shouldn’t be forgotten.
I think that’s a pretty decent summary of what happens in Isaiah 56-66. These are obviously the prophet’s last words. Now, to be fair, what I’m calling his last words are ten chapters’ worth of words. That might be like someone answering the question, “What were the dying man’s last words?” by recounting everything he said in the last week of his life. But these are indeed Isaiah’s last words in his lengthy prophetic book, and they’re his last words after a lengthy prophetic ministry.
As we said when we started this series, Isaiah prophesied through the ministries of four different kings of Judah. His ministry as a prophet probably spanned from 740 BC into the 600s BC. He spoke to a people (the people of Judah) who had rebelled against the Lord, would one day go into captivity in Babylon, and then would one day be delivered from that captivity. His overall message was to trust in the Lord, not in idols, not in alliances with others, and not in their own schemes. And to trust meant, of course, to obey the Lord. After dealing with present realities in chapters 1-39, Isaiah shifted in chapters 40-48 to speaking about that Babylonian captivity to come and their release under Cyrus, both events which would happen over 100 years after Isaiah prophesied these things. In chapters 49-55, Isaiah had focused on the means by which the Lord would bring his people not only redemption from physical captivity but redemption from sin and divine wrath. He spoke of the Servant, Jesus Christ, who would live, die, and be raised so that all who believe in him might be forgiven of their sins and have eternal life. Now, in chapters 56-66, Isaiah seems to have circled back around to messages that we have seen earlier in the book.
Thus, much like Ray Ortland’s dad, Isaiah’s final message is nothing new. It is a reminder of what we no doubt already know to be true and have even heard earlier in this book of Isaiah itself. But there does seem to be one difference. Isaiah repeats these basic earlier messages in this section using vivid imagery with how he describes these basic truths. I hope to show that to you this morning so that not only will this final message of Isaiah be a good reminder for us but also, especially in light of this vivid imagery, something that we will hold to and quickly and easily be able to bring to our minds again and again.
Now, before diving in to this final message of Isaiah, I also hope to give you a picture of the structure of each of these eleven chapters. So, in a quick summary form, I think that we can fairly outline this final section of Isaiah as follows:
56:1-8 – A declaration of world-wide restoration (invitation to outsiders)
56:9-57:21 – God rejects evils leaders (but will revive the humble)
58-59 – A call to true righteousness that honors the Lord
60-62 – There is coming a glorious future hope
63:1-6 – The Lord will come to judge the wicked
63:7-64:12 – Confessing sin and seeking mercy
65-66 – Promise of future restoration (salvation and judgment)
So, with that structure in mind, what is the first of these basic reminders that Isaiah declares in these chapters?
When we read sections of the Old Testament, like Isaiah, where the Lord speaks so lovingly and compassionately to Israel, you might be tempted to think that perhaps there are a certain group of people, who because of their genetic ties and DNA makeup, are somehow precious and cherished before the Lord in a way that you are not. However, Isaiah has already made clear earlier in the book that the Lord is intent on saving people from every nation. He even declares in Isaiah 19:23-25, “In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and Assyria will come into Egypt, and Egypt into Assyria, and the Egyptians will worship with the Assyrians. In that day Israel will be the third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, whom the LORD of hosts has blessed, saying, “Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my inheritance.”
But if there is any doubt, Isaiah repeats this message in 56:3-8 in vivid terms. He writes, “Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the LORD say, ‘The LORD will surely separate me from his people’; and let not the eunuch say, ‘Behold I am a dry tree.’ For thus says the LORD: ‘To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. And foreigners who join themselves to the LORD, to minister to him, to love the name of the LORD, and to be his servants, everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it, and holds fast my covenant—these I will bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.’ The Lord GOD, who gathers the outcasts of Israel declares, ‘I will gather yet others to him besides those already gathered.’”
The Lord knows that a foreigner might say, “Even if I join myself to the Lord’s people, I’ll be separated.” He knows the eunuch, that is, one who had been castrated might say, “I am worthless; I can’t be among the Lord’s people.” But in both cases the Lord powerfully declares otherwise. Not only can they be his people but he says he’ll give them “a name better than sons and daughters” and “make them joyful in [his] house of prayer.” Do you see the glorious message here? This is a message of hope that we must sound to the ends of the earth.
What the Lord is declaring here, 700 years before God the Son took on flesh, lived a perfect life, died for our sins, and was raised on the third day is that anyone who comes to the Lord is faith to devote themselves to him can be his child. It doesn’t matter if you have genetic ties to godly parents, were abused by your parents, or have no idea who your parents are. It doesn’t matter if you’re not as smart as others, not as physically able as others, or not as wealthy as others. Do you see what this proclamation means? It means that the invitation declared in Isaiah 55 where the Lord says, “Come” is an invitation we can make to all people. Anyone who will repent of their sin and come to the Lord in faith can come to him and will be received, given a name better than sons and daughters. To the prostitute, the adulterer, the sexually promiscuous, the thief, the practicing homosexual, the one who’s had an abortion or performed the abortion, the drunkards, the greedy, the idolaters, to all of these, he says, “Come.” Simply come to him and repentance and faith, and the Lord will take you as his own and never consider you a second-class citizen because of what you have done or who you’ve been apart from him. That is good news, and we must go to the ends of the earth with this good news.
But it wouldn’t be a fair representation of Isaiah’s final words to stop there. We must also acknowledge that:
The glorious news is that God accepts sinners, and then he commands them to run from sin. The people of God must be marked by a radical commitment to holiness and obedience to our God. Chapter 56 begins by the Lord declaring that final salvation is coming, but in the meantime, as they wait, he demands that his people obey him. Isaiah writes, “Thus says the LORD: ‘Keep justice, and do righteousness, for soon my salvation will come, and my righteousness be revealed. Blessed is the man who does this, and the son of man who holds it fast, who keeps the Sabbath, not profaning it, and keeps his hand from doing evil’” (56:1-2).
By noting that the Lord wants a people who keep the Sabbath, he is using language that summarized obedience under the Old Covenant. That is, as the Lord made a covenant with his people through Moses at Mount Sinai, he gave them all kinds of prescriptions of law they were to obey. And Isaiah is probably summing up obedience to all of that under the heading of “keeping the Sabbath.” So, don’t read this too narrowly as if the Lord is saying, “I want to make sure you rest on Saturday but don’t really care if you disobey in other areas.” Rather, he’s demanding absolute obedience.
And formal ritual is not enough. I mean, those in Judah were fasting. They were practicing the rituals, but they were combining it with disobedience in other areas of their lives. So, we see, for example, in chapter 58. The chapter begins, “Cry aloud; do not hold back; lift up your voice like a trumpet; declare to my people their transgression, to the house of Jacob their sins. Yet they seek me daily and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that did righteousness and did not forsake the judgment of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments; they delight to draw near to God”(58:1-2).
You can see the picture. Israel is a people who seek the Lord, come to the temple, cry out for justice, and enjoy worship. This might be like a people who love to come and sing songs of worship, read their Bibles, attend small group meetings, and cry out for abortion to end. However, the Lord says, he is not pleased with their rituals of worship, and they’re confused by it. They ask in 58:3a, “Why have we fasted, and you see it not? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?” So, the Lord answers, “Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure, and oppress all your workers. Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to hit with a wicked fist. Fasting like yours this day will not make your voice to be heard on high” (58:3b-4).
They may be fasting, but they were fasting as they pursued sin left and right. It’s like a friend of mine in college who confessed to me that in a prior relationship he had, he and his girlfriend would start their date by praying together and end it in sexual immorality (which they planned on doing even before they started the date with prayer).
The Lord demands obedience from his people. He accepts the repentant woman who comes to him out of prostitution, but then he commands her to practice sexual immorality no more. He accepts the thief who comes to him in repentance and faith, but then he tells him to stop stealing.
And so to you and me, it is one of my favorite moments as a church when we sing, “Sinners Jesus will receive, sound this word of grace to all,” as we did last week, but that is not our call for us to continue to walk in sin. Christianity is not pictured in our lives when we sing the hymns on Sunday and pursue immorality on Monday. So, don’t grow comfortable with sin. It should be like a cancer to us if we belong to Christ. God demands obedience of those who are his.
But what do we do if we’re hearing this proclamation and are thinking, “That’s me”? I mean, what does the woman do who walked out of prostitution to come to Christ, and yet has slipped back into it? Is she now hopeless? No. This is another message of this last section as well. We see it especially in 63:7-64:12, namely,
This side of eternity, we as believers will still battle sin. This side of eternity, we’ll continue to find our hearts pulled toward things we should hate. We are not ignorant of this, and neither is the Scripture. John writes in his epistle, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8).
As Christians, we will not be marked by perfection. But we will be marked by two things. First, we’ll be marked by a heart that genuinely desires obedience. And we must be marked by confession and repentance unto the Lord when we do sin. Hopefully our hearts kept tender enough before the Lord that we find ourselves convicted of sin continually and quickly confess our sin to the Lord and repent. But there is a risk as we walk in sin that we can become hardened by the deceitfulness of sin and begin to fail to see sin clearly. And in those moments, if we are Christ’s the Lord typically sends one to us (perhaps one-on-one or as a voice from the pulpit) that calls us to repent. And it’s in those moments that our hearts that we will be marked by confession and repentance.
But what does it look like to confess? Isaiah gives us a good picture in 63:7-64:12. This section begins as the people of God consider the Lord’s mercy in the past as he redeemed his people from Egypt, they rebelled, and he met them with mercy again and again. Then, starting in 63:15 to 64:12, we have a prayer from the people themselves for mercy. They look at their lives and recognize their sin. They don’t try to hide it, but confess and repent. Let’s pick up in 64:5 and read through 64:9: “You meet him who joyfully works righteousness, those who remember you in your ways. Behold, you were angry, and we sinned; in our sins we have been a long time, and shall we be saved? We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. There is no one who calls upon your name, who rouses himself to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have made us melt in the hand of our iniquities. But now, O LORD, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. Be not so terribly angry, O LORD, and remember not iniquity forever. Behold, please look, we are all your people.”
This is a picture of confession. When the Scripture says in 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness,” this is a picture of such confession. We don’t come with excuses. We don’t come by pointing fingers. We come before the Lord with genuine confession, acknowledging that we have sinned, and we ask for forgiveness. And we plead the work of Christ as our only hope.
Now, if God is holy, then why would we come with open confession before him? This is like telling someone to go confess his crime to a judge, right? Well, the reason we can rush to him in repentance and confession of sin is because he is merciful and we have an advocate before the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous one (1 John 2:1).
The Lord is gracious and merciful. Earlier, in 57:18, the Lord says of his disobedient people, “I have seen his ways, but I will heal him.” And he has accomplished our salvation. In 59:15-17 we see a picture of God’s redeeming work toward his people. He notes first the sin of his people: “Truth is lacking, and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey [that is, sin is so rampant, that to be innocent of sin makes one a vulnerable target to sinners around you]. The LORD saw it, and it displeased him that there was no justice. He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no one to intercede.” So, how then could the Lord save if there was none deserving of salvation, none even turning to him for mercy? He answers, “Then his own arm brought him salvation, and his righteousness upheld him. He put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on his head; he put on garments of vengeance for clothing, and wrapped himself in zeal as a cloak.”
The Lord has come and accomplished salvation for us. This is what Isaiah is foretelling. The punishment that should have been ours because of our sin God the Son came and bore for us. This is why we can confess our sins in hope, dare to bring our sins before the Lord and anticipate grace. It’s because we confess and plead Christ’s life, death, and resurrection as our only hope. We come to our God and plead his work for us as our Redeemer. When we foolishly dive into sin, the only appropriate response is repentance, confession, and trusting in our merciful God who sent his Son to die for us. And if we trust in him, we’ll never be disappointed.
But Isaiah doesn’t stop there. For those of us who battle against sin and rightly say, “I’ll keep fighting,” there is a promised salvation to come. And for those who say, “I do not want to turn from my sin and throw myself upon the grace of Christ, there is ferocious judgment that awaits. This is the final part of Isaiah’s message that I want to note:
In this book where Isaiah calls us all to walk in faithful trust before the Lord, he ends with a powerful motivation of warning and promise. There is a warning, lest we want to continue in sin, and there is a promise, so that we can find strength when we’re tempted to give up the fight of faith. This warning and this promise comes in a picture of coming judgment and salvation.
Now, we hold these two realities – judgment and salvation – as quite distant from one another. And in one sense, they are quite distant. To be judged by the Lord and to be saved by the Lord could not be utterly different. However, where these two are alike is in their timing. That is to say, when the Lord returns, he is coming to save his people and judge those who do not trust in him.
When Christ first came, it wasn’t that way. Look at Isaiah 61. Interestingly, Luke tells us that early in Jesus’ ministry, he came to the synagogue, took the scroll of Isaiah, and began reading here. He read: “The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (61:1-2a). Then he stopped reading. Why? I think it’s because the very next line in Isaiah 61 is “and the day of vengeance of our God.” And this wasn’t the Lord’s purpose in his first coming. He didn’t come to bring vengeance but to save. But when he returns, he’ll come to bring vengeance as well. In fact, Isaiah portrays this coming judgment in the most vivid of images. He pictures the Son coming and stomping on his enemies like someone treads out grapes in the winepress.
So, we read in 63:1-6, “Who is this who comes from Edom, in crimsoned garments from Bozrah, he who is splendid in his apparel, marching in the greatness of his strength? ‘It is I, speaking in righteousness, mighty to save.’ Why is your apparel red, and your garments like his who treads in the winepress? ‘I have trodden the winepress alone, and from the peoples no one was with me; I trod them in my anger and trampled them in my wrath; their lifeblood spattered on my garments and stained my apparel. For the day of vengeance was in my heart, and my year of redemption had come. I looked, but there was no one to help; I was appalled, but there was no one to uphold; so my own arm brought me salvation, and my wrath upheld me. I trampled down the peoples in my anger; I made them drunk in my wrath, and I poured out their lifeblood on the earth’” (63:1-6).
You see, the reason that the Lord can speak of bringing salvation and redemption and describe it in terms of judgment is because when he comes again to bring final salvation to his people, it will involve the judgment of his enemies. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t also speak of the glories of the salvation he is bringing to his people. He does that in vivid terms as well. Starting in 65:17, he speaks of the fact that he’ll create a new heavens and new earth where there will be peace, comfort, and rejoicing. Sin and death will no longer have their way.
So, why does Isaiah end his final message with this vision of coming judgment and salvation together? Why are these vivid images the last of his last words? I think it’s because he holds it out as warning and promise. The book of Isaiah is a call to trust and obey. He holds out judgment so that we might understand that the call to trust in the Lord isn’t a gracious request from God to us. It is a command. Trust or perish. And the promise of salvation is a promise so that we might endure in trusting and obeying. When we think, “I don’t think I can keep fighting. I don’t think I can keep fending off the temptation to lust, or to be bitter at my brother, or gossip about my sister,” we lift our eyes to a coming new creation and thank the Lord for a reminder of what awaits us as we walk in faith. That’s one thing we will now do as we come to the table, remembering what Christ has done and what he holds out for us in eternity. Let us then come to the table now. Amen.