In this section of Isaiah that we’ve been reading, we know that the people are of God are in exile. In this season of Christmas, we have also been singing Christmas carols. One that’s often sung is “O come, O come Emmanuel”, yet this, and other carols often address not the church, but Israel. Why does this happen at Christmas? Why are our songs addressing not the church but Israel?
Part of the answer has to do with how the Bible itself speaks of the coming of Jesus. Here at the Fellowship, we’ve been speaking about reading the Bible from left to right, from Genesis to Revelation. Perhaps for many of us, when we became Christians, we’ve been so used to reading it from right to left, from the New Testament first. It is also important for us to understand the Christmas story as the original readers would and perhaps in doing so, we will rediscover the wonder and joy of the Christmas story.
O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here,
Until the Son of God appear.
This hymn is similar to what we read about in Isaiah 51. In their lives, they feel like they are captive in lonely mourning.
Today, if you feel like this world and what you’re feeling is full of loneliness, mourning and captivity, and you feel like this world is spiralling out of control and you’re weary, you are in good company. Isaiah has something to say to us of the story of the Bible, the Saviour of the Bible and the saved of the Bible.
(A) The Story (Isa 51:9-11)
The speaker is calling on God to wake up and put on strength (Isa 51:9-10). In Isaiah 51:10, he references the great Exodus work. Why does the prophet refer to this event? More on this later.
In Isaiah 51:9, he uses a picture of a dragon and Rahab being cut into pieces. This is a more curious and interesting reference because when did God do it? In Isaiah 27:1, we read of God judging and slaying the Leviathan. Isaiah 30:6-7 speaks of God calling Egypt Rahab. Ezekiel 29:3 records for us God address Pharaoh, who has placed his and Egypt’s security over their control of the Nile, which provided for them shipping, a fertile land and access to water sources.
In these verses, the people are asking God to do what He did before. In doing so, they are confessing their own struggle to trust Him. Life in this fallen world is nothing like what He has promised. It can be inconvenient for us to say but that’s what “awake” means. Have you prayed “awake” to God in lament, recognising that this life we are living is nothing like the promises He has made? Have you called on God to save now as He has saved then? This prayer is one that we can learn so much from. It shows us how we can turn to God and acknowledge that our lives are not as they should be, not as God said they should be.
Notice how God’s people depend on prior revelation as they make their prayer, referring to the Exodus. We always go back to the Scriptures. We don’t approach God with our own fresh ideas. They seek to refer back to the Scriptures that they know! How much do you know of God as He has revealed Himself? Who is the God that you are praying to?
In Isaiah 51:11, the speaker speaks of the future of God’s people. He calls the people the “ransomed of the Lord” (Isa 51:11). What does it mean? They were previously not free, but now made free. They do not see themselves now as the free, but as the ransomed! Their present identity is shaped by what God has done. Now, they are to return to Zion with singing, praise and worship.
2 Chronicles 36:17-23 provides a brief summary of Israel’s history. God’s people entered the promised land and though they enjoyed good years under David and Solomon, they also had bad kings and were removed from the land and exiled. They spend seventy years in a foreign land, first under Babylon (modern day Iraq) then under Persia (modern day Iran) and there, God does an amazing work under Cyrus who sends them back. These are all recorded for us in Scripture and confirmed in our secular history.
When God’s people were in exile, these words of Isaiah 51:11 were given to them about a promised future where they will return. God’s promises to His people did come true. Isaiah 51:9-11 shows us what God did (in the Exodus) and is doing (freed from oppression).
What is God doing today? What did God do in Christ? In Christ, He crushed the head of the Serpent, set His people free and brought them to Himself. Now, we are just waiting to arrive. We are the ransomed of the Lord! We were once trapped and bound by sin and used to live lives enslaved by sin, under the prince of the power of the air. God broke our enemy at the cross. He slew the dragon and set us free that we might be the ransomed of the Lord. We are all waiting to return to the land.
Is this how you see yourself? Is this how you see the Christian life? Is this how you see the story of your life? So often, we try to put our story on the Bible. We see ourselves as the main characters in this story, and see God as a means to us achieving our fullest potential and unleashing our “glory”. But then perhaps, we realise that life happens, and we turn to God to ask Him to help us with our plan, when people also seem to be hindering and getting in our way. This is the modern story that tells us that there’s a true us within that’s just waiting to be unleashed. When this true self is revealed, everyone will accept us for who we are. But how has that worked for you?
The Bible tells us that God, in His mercy, has slain dragon and set us free from our own oppression, the oppression of our flesh, sinn and us living for ourselves. God has killed that enemy and now we belong to Him. He gets us for Himself and we are His now. We belong to Him wholly. This is the life we now live. This is the story of the Bible. Do you see yourself in this story? If you do, how does it change the way you pray? How would it change the way you went to church? How would it change the way you think about difficult people in your life?
Christmas is a time for a huge reset. If you long for Jesus Christ and HIs second appearing, you are not longing to get beamed up to heaven to be self-actualised, sit on a cloud, walk on streets of gold. We long to see Jesus though we have not seen Him, because our hearts know that anything less than Jesus, is no Heaven at all. Our hearts cry out at Christmas, “Come quickly, Lord Jesus” sot that we can rejoice in His presence and delight that all promises have come true.
(B) The Saviour (Isa 51:12-16)
There’s a switch in perspective. God replies here, and introduces Himself in Isaiah 51:12-14. He is the “one who comforts you” (Isa 51:12a). In Isaiah 40:1, this section of Isaiah opens with words of comfort that God is telling His people through the prophet. This is why Isaiah 40-55 is referred to as the Book of Comfort, as God speaks of Himself as one who comforts.
Do you know of any other religion where god is presented as one who comforts? This the God who is the maker of Heaven and Earth, who reigns and is enthroned on high. It is this God who is comforts! What does it mean that He comforts? He brings us good news and He doesn’t add more guilt, sense of failure and shame but a sense of freedom.
This is how God comforts.
Look also at how He comforts. In Isaiah 51:12, God tells s that our eyes are directed too much to the earth. Our sense of the horizontal is too great that it overwhelms our sense of the vertical. This is how the fear of man works. We think more about what others think of just that it displaces and overwhelms what God thinks of us. This is the great comfort of the Christian! We have a God that thinks of us, has done something for us and is telling us about us. Yet, we would rather hear what others think of us. These words of gentle rebuke are actually comfort, because God says that the person we are afraid of — the king of Babylon — is nothing in His eyes. He can easily snuff him out. God can bring His great dynasty to nothing.
What are you afraid of? What’s the worst thing that could happen in your life right now? What’s the best thing? These are questions that the Christians should be able to answer, not in light of our immediate circumstances, but about what God has said about Himself and about us.
Do you dare to believe that the God of heaven, when He thinks about you by name, views you not as a failure, but as the one He cherishes and seeks to comfort? In Isaiah 51:13, we can hear God point them to look at the ones that they were so afraid of previously. All their oppressors have been dealt with by God.
God goes on to describe His power to His people (Isa 51:15-16). God has power over all the earth, even over what is traditionally difficult to control, like the seas (Isa 51:15). The sea represents chaos in Scriptures. Israel, being a landlocked country also typically uses the sea imagery in association with pagan nations at the coastlands who also relied on the sea to provide wealth and therefore security. In Isaiah 51:16, we also see other images of God’s power.
God has also given His words to His people (“put my words in your mouth”, Isa 51:16a). He did not force feed them, but He has revealed it to them in His kindness! This is an important idea for us too! The people of God must be people of the word too. God’s people must go again and again to His word, not to the latest song or vision by a charismatic speaker. We are the people of God who know and come back to His word. This is why He has put His words in our mouths — not for us to say fresh things. We should love things that are here in the pages of Scripture. At the heart of the Bible, in Psalm 119, is the longest chapter of all Scripture. This is a psalm that is all about loving God’s word in many, many ways.
This is also who we are, and we are this way because He has made us His own through His power.
These verses show us a God who is both a great Comforter, and also a great and powerful God. Can you find a God like this, who is both strong and tender, sovereign and great and yet also comforting to His children? You will not find anyone else like this God.
Some of us may hold these two ideas of God and pit them against one another. We may like a God who is great and mighty. Others may like a God who is comforting and doesn’t threaten us. But Isaiah shows us that God is both. They are not diametrically opposed. Christmas is one of the best times to see this great paradox in the Saviour. The angels sing of glory to God in the highest — “Gloria in excess Deo!”. And yet, the shepherds go to pay their respects to this God in a quiet, obscure manger. He doesn’t appear in glory and power, but in a manger, as a baby.
This is the God who is both Comforter and King. He is glorious and on high, and yet born a baby.
If you are one who cherishes the comfort and tenderness of the Saviour, also magnify and glorify the great God of Heaven. If you relish and delight in the authority of the King, remember to be gentle as your Saviour is lowly. He comes to be a baby.
This the wonderful God that we have, our Saviour.
Scripture continues to give us these paradoxical pictures of God unfold. He presents Himself as transcendent and imminent. On high, yet also Emmanuel, God with us. There is none like Him.
(C) The Saved (Isa 51:17-23)
God calls His people to wake themselves up (Isa 51:17). We see that they are under His wrath and Isaiah 51:17 gives us this theological view. What has happened to them? In Isaiah 51:19, we read of two things that have happened to them. At first glance, “devastation and destruction, famine and sword” seems to refer to four things. But these can be grouped as invasion and famine and He says it four ways here.
It is important that we not separate the events from the theological interpretation of these events. They were invaded by Babylon and they were trapped in the city, resulting in the famine. They were defeated and brought to exile. We can look at these events and attribute it to bad leadership, or just view it as part of the usual rise and fall of civilisations etc. We can look at these events and interpret it in a number of ways. But Isaiah also shows us how we are to understand it through the lens of Scripture too. God is showing us how we can also connect the event with its theological interpretation, especially when He has clearly revealed it to be!
As we look at what God is doing in history, we should also ask ourselves what God is doing through these events. We don’t presume on God’s reasons but neither dow we assume that God is dead and leaving us to figure things out on our own! There is a sovereign God who is working out His plan. We may not know everything about His plan, and we may not fully agree with it, but we trust His plan and trust Him as history unfolds.
God’s people struggle and suffer because of their sins. That is why they are under God’s wrath.
Isaiah 51:18 shows us what’s even sadder — there is no one to guide Israel home. Why is this calamitous? What is Isaiah 51:20 about? This describes how there is no king in the line of David who is supposed to know the Law and rule according to God’s word. He is supposed to live out the law and His leadership of God’s people is to embody God’s own revealed will. The sorrowful thing here is that they have no godly leader. Where is the king like David, the man after God’s own heart? Who will lead them home? Can you hear in these verses, the longing of Advent?
Though we live on this side of the cross, we still know something of this sorrow! We know of this sorrow when we think about the waywardness of Christians and the sorrow and sin that also plagues Christians and churches. Do these cause you to grief? Does it cause you to cry out to God to provide godly leaders, for the young women to model godliness to other young women, or the young men who will faithfully teach the Bible? Where are God’s leaders? It should break our hearts when we realise that we too, could be in a similar situation.
Elsewhere in the Bible, in Psalm 75:8 and Revelation 16:19, these verses trace for us the idea that the nations or those who oppose Him will keep drinking of His wrath until they are so drunk.
Yet, Isaiah 51:21-23 also teach us how God’s people think of their afflictions, and what God has done about it. His wrath will not be an eternal wrath. He will have mercy on His people. In Matthew 23:37-39, we read about how Jesus came and had compassion on His people. He did not treat them as their sins deserved. He promises comfort and will act to bring them in and keep them safe like a mother hen, if only they would stay with Him!
Zechariah sang these words in Luke 1:68-79 about this Saviour too! This is what the Lord Jesus was born for. He would come into a world full of darkness and under the power of sin and death. He came to kill the dragon and set us free. He did not free us and left us to ourselves to figure out on our own. Rather, He desires that we are His, His cherished, possession. He comes like the sunrise after a long night (c.f. Lk 1:79).
What is the story of the Bible? What did Jesus come to do? Kill the dragon, get the girl. We are His cherished and precious Bride. At the end of the story, when the ancient beast is finally slain and locked away, He gets His perfect Bride, the church. Are you a part of this church? Do you live in the light that has shone upon us? This is what we celebrate at Christmas, that all of His promises have come true at Christmas.