We’ve spent the past 17 weeks reading and studying through Isaiah 1-9. The first 5 chapters set the context of Isaiah’s day — terrible spiritual disaster had led to national calamity and social chaos. Where is God’s grace in all of this?
Isaiah 6 then shows us that God’s grace breaks through, first for Isaiah the prophet. It continues on in Isaiah 7-9 for Judah, the southern kingdom. If you’re unfamiliar with the context, Israel the northern kingdom, had split with Judah, the southern kingdom, after a civil war. Judah was relatively small, and Israel was relatively big. Judah was in a political crisis where Israel and Syria posed an existential threat to the nation. However, this was also a crisis of faith, because God’s word had promised deliverance from their political threat, but Judah had chosen to reject God’s word. So God promised that His judgment would flood Judah. But as the floodwaters of His wrath receded, His grace would prove to redeem them for His good purposes. That was last week’s text: after the gloom of thick darkness, light would come in the person of a glorious redeemer.
This week, Isaiah turns his attention to the northern kingdom, Israel. God’s prophets had also been sending word to Israel, and today’s text will clearly flesh out the consequences of Israel’s response. As we read about terrible proclamations of judgment, here’s the clincher: God’s grace is not absent amidst wrathful judgment. Grace and judgment are not opposite ends of a seesaw. They can coexist. In fact, as a Bible teacher says it, God’s wrath will take us further into his grace than we ourselves would ever go.
(A) Wickedness professed: God cuts down prideful hearts (Isa 9:8-17)
In Isa 9:8-9, Isaiah mentions Jacob, Israel, Ephraim and Samaria. Isaiah is turning his attention to the northern kingdom and the Lord is sending a word against them. In Isa 9:9-17, we read about Israel’s actions and God’s response. From here, we can see the underlying attitude that warrants God’s wrath.
The people are proud and arrogant and they seem to be bragging and confident that they can build something better that what has been destroyed (Isa 9:9b-10). They were asserting their self-sufficiency. It does not matter that the bricks have fallen. In fact they take it as a challenge and say that they can build something better. Israel had entered a partnership with Syria, thinking it would make them strong against the Assyrians. They assumed that their partnership secured peace but God will raise more adversaries to come against them (Isa 9:11-12). Sometime God uses the things that we placed our faith in to wreck us.
Next, we see how they were persistently unrepentant (Isa 9:13). God struck them and they know because God has been sending them word. Yet, they did not turn back to God nor did they inquire of His ways. God completely cuts down their leaders, the securities and the things they trusted in (Isa 9:14-15a). These leaders have been abusing their authority and have been plying the people with lies. And the people have lapped up all the lies.
This makes us think about how we respond to crises. In Lk 13:1-5, Jesus spoke of the falling of the Tower of Siloam and used it to point people to repentance. Crises are opportunities for us to turn and repent.
The people also misrepresented God’s authority and perverted God’s word (Isa 9:15-16). As a result, God says that He will remove His joy and favour from their midst (Isa 9:17a). What a terrible news this is, for God is usually compassionate and kind. He hasn’t changed, but He is also giving them what they were looking for.
What is the underlying attitude of the people? From Isa 9:9b and Isa 9:17b, we see that they had a godless, evildoing, self-sufficient heart that speaks prideful folly.
This is, in some sense, a very modern text! We can easily with the depiction here of self-sufficient people who try to handle crises on their own and they also follow the ways of their leaders. Yet God looks at it and says that they are godless. This text calls us to see that the lives that we live, if we do not have God at the centre, is a godless one. What is at the centre of your life?
This text also shows us that what we say matters! Jesus also reminds us that what we speak comes from our heart (Matt 15:19), and that reveals whether we are functionally evil, godless evildoers. What does your speech reveal? Go to someone you know and ask them what your pattern of speech reveals. Are you standing in pride and arrogance of heart before God?
There is a tragic irony here regarding Ephraim’s lineage. To understand this, we need to remember Ephraim’s history. In Gen 48:5, Israel’s grandsons Ephraim and Manasseh received by grace what Joseph his son was to receive. Joseph brought his sons to his father Israel, and tried to get Jacob to put his right hand on the firstborn, Manasseh. Joseph spoke to his father about it (Gen 48:18), but Jacob refused and replied, “I know, my son, I know. He also shall become a people, and he also shall be great. Nevertheless, his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his offspring shall become a multitude of nations. (Gen 48:19).”
Thus we see that Ephraim’s story is one of grace. He did not deserve anything and he received something outside of his birthright. He had grown because he had been blessed by grace. But look at Isa 9:9. He has departed so far from grace. He displays arrogance and pride.
These verses should give us reason to pause and reflect on our own lives. How are we living? Are we repentant and not running to different things to distract us? Beware the pattern of life that makes us functional atheists — professing that we follow God but not living in a way that reflects that we know Him!
This text is so relevant for our times. COVID has unearthed cracks and flaws in our churches. How are we responding? When we witness these struggles and sin do we turn to God in prayer and intercede and ask Him to wash us and make us holy?
(B) Wickedness unrestrained: God wrath scorches the land, revealing His holiness (Isa 9:17-10:4)
In Isa 9:18, wickedness seems to burn like a fire. It consumes briers and thorns, kindles the thickets of the forest and produces noxious fumes. The life of godlessness is now depicted as a raging fire.
We may not want to read about wrath instinctively. But there is a reason why scripture gives us such vivid imagery. Scripture is also showing us practical ungodliness and practical wrath. It shows us how even the brier and thick thickets of the forest is also burnt up. It is a wickedness that consumes itself. It is a people that live on their own terms and own rules and their ungodliness is not neutral. What is shown here is that by turning away from God, they are eating themselves alive and they have no one to blame but themselves. And when we see that sin is like this, it changes the way we understand our world.
How is it spurred on? It is fuelled by human lives (Isa 9:19) and is fuelled by a cruel self-preserving spirit (Ia 9:19b-20a). It is insatiable (Isa 9:20b) and cannibalistic (isa 9:20c). This is also the result of God’s scorching judgment (Isa 9:21).
These are heavy words. Some of us may also ask if God’s judgment is active or is it just the natural consequences of our sinful actions? It is both. God’s personal and completely righteous anger, in judgment, gives us over to our depravity (c.f. Rom 1:18-32). God will not allows His name to be associated with an evil, unrepentant people.
This sort of rampant, self-centred mindset isn’t a new thing. It is not imported from the West. It is certainly not just a problem with institutions and authority. This text shows us that it has been a perennial problem that originated in our hearts.
And who is worse for it? Who does such wickedness affect the most? The marginalised, disenfranchised, downtrodden, and powerless (Isa 10:1-2). God’s law made provisions for a community of care. But when we pride our works over His grace and persist in unrepentance and profess foolish haughtiness, we pursue self-seeking wickedness, and finally end up perpetuating deep injustice. Self-enrichment is not neutral and comes at the expense of human life.
God promises that justice will be served (Isa 10:4). We see this through the rhetorical questions of Isa 10:3, and the damning answer: nothing remains but to crouch among the prisoners or fall among the slain.
Isa 10:4b seems to imply a persistent judgment — “For all this his anger has not turned away, and his hand is stretched out still.” Why is God still doing these things? Isn’t it enough? We really don’t understand the depths of God’s holiness, until we see His wrath. He is acting this way not out of capriciousness, but because He is a God whose eyes are too pure to look upon evil and countenance wrongdoing. But we don’t think about his wrath in this way because (1) we don’t think that our sin is that serious, and (2) we don’t think that God is that holy.
It is therefore a grace to us that God reminds us again and again that He is holy even if He has to remind us through judgment. God is a holy God and there is still more wrath.
In Isa 8:5-8, we saw how the flood of His judgment will come. Here, we see how God will scorch the land to bring about judgment. We need a God of justice, a God of righteous anger. We need a God who is holy.
It is a grace for us to know that there is nothing more relevant for us than to take God at His word and to reverence Him as holy.
(C) Wrath averted: God’s grace comes through judgment (Isa 10:4)
Is there hope for God’s people? There is a picture of national reconciliation in Isa 11:11-13. And in Isa 12:1, they can say that God was angry but His anger turned away! We read of both vertical and horizontal restoration. God provides comfort and salvation for His people. Our sins are great but His mercy is more!
Isa 12:1 is true only because someone took the full weight of God’s holy wrath. Isa 53:4-6 tells us of the one who took our sins and by His wounds, we are healed. This could be a familiar passage but again, pause and consider the depths of His wrath. Only then, can we be thankful for His immeasurable and boundless grace. We won’t understand what grace means and what grace cost until we understand the severity of sin and the depths of His judgment. God’s wrath takes us further into his grace than we ourselves will ever go.
The two aspects of God’s grace through judgment are held together. We need the cleansing heat of His resolute anger to scorch our sin; how else will we be made whole again? But we also need the surprising mercy of His costly grace that hides us in Jesus Christ, that we might be preserved through judgment.
Bible teacher Ray Ortlund in his commentary on Isaiah writes, “The magnitude of the gospel prompts us to invent a word like “lovingangerkindness,” to come to grips with who God is. In his lovingangerkindness, God destroyed the guilt of sinners at the cross of Jesus. He will destroy all remaining sin in the hearts of those who take refuge in Jesus. He will destroy all injustice and suffering here in this world when the kingdom of Jesus creates a world better than our sentimentality could imagine.”
What a glorious truth! God’s holiness is good news for those who are in Christ. His judgment reveals the true nature of thing, and shows us what life without God’s goodness and provision is like. Don’t believe the lie that our depravity triumphs over God’s grace. As we read these verses, see the reality of judgment in these verses, but also see the gracious provision that God has for us. Our sins they are many but His mercy is more!