08/15/2020 – Day 083 – Isaiah 62 – 66 – 1 of 2 – An Intro to the Book of Isaiah. Say what?
An Intro at the end of our Isaiah study? Yes indeed, J. Alec Motyer’s book “Isaiah” – isbn # 978-0-87784-244-6 – is just too rich to pass up. I have a beloved old friend that said my posts are “derivative”. (definition-“copy cat” more or less… ) My reply – Absolutely! In limited space, how much “Jimmy winsome originality” do I use? That would be the limit approaching zero when we have authors that have devoted their life to the study of God’s word. When we have a dozen or more guys actively posting, I will change that up with maybe an occassional personal testimony or an ocassional very focused expository in-depth research. Please excuse me if I get off course ocassionally. And I might add, I think my post this morning takes in an additional category that cries for Christian brother community fellowship, recognizing God’s word is the connecting link to all of life.
Ok, so let’s begin. If I interject, I will try to put my comments in parenthesis.
“(a) History and faith (pg 18 of the book)
Isaiah is the Paul of the Old Testament in his teaching that faith in God’s promises is the single most important reality for the Lord’s people; this is the heart of chapters 1 -37. He is the ‘Hebrews’ of the Old Testament in his proposal of faith as the sustaining strength of the Lord’s people in life’s dark days; this is the heart of chapters 38-55. He is also the James of the Old Testament in his insistence that ‘faith works”, proving itself in obediance: thus chapter 56 – 66. Behind all this lies the history through which he lived and future events as he envisaged them.
i. God and history
In 10:5-15 Isaiah teaches how history ‘works” He sees two fundamental principles. The first is that the course of history is in the hand of God in the most direct, managerial sense. The Lord is neither like a boy launching his model yacht on one side of the pond, confident that the wind will bring it safely to the other side but undertain what will happen in between, nor is he like a chess master patiently allowing the other player to make moves and then countering his opponent’s intentions to secure his own victory. For Isaiah, even the super-powers of earth are but rods, axes and saws in the hands of a single divine Agent (10:5,15). Secondly, within the divine programme, history is the outworking of moral purposes, the arena of choice and moral responsibility. Thus the Assyrian is held within the Lord’s purpose to bring due punishment to Jerusalem (6, 12a): this is the moral government of the world which underlies the ‘inanimate’ models of rod, axe and saw. Yet the Assyrian is moved not by obedience to the perceived will of God but by the arrogance of his own imperialism (7-11, 13-14): He is out for self-advantage and the fulfilment of proud ambition, no matter at what expense to others. This make him culpable before history’s Ruler and he will be punished (12b). In this way Isaiah’s view of history is consonant with the Bible’s (especially the Old Testament’s ) fixed gaze beyond second causes to the First Cause, for preoccupation with second causes leads to living by our wits, working the system and making the right move, whereas concentration on the First Cause issues in a life of faith, trusting, ‘cleaving to the Lord’ (see Acts 11:23, AV), and living for His pleasure.
The nearest Isaiah comes to offering an illustration of this understanding of history is in his hint of the horse and the rider (37:29). All the violent strength lies in the horse; all the sovereign direction is the rider’s. So it is in the show-jumping arena where the commentators move easily between congratulating the horse or the rider for a clear round – for there are two separate even though interlocking ‘forces’ at work. So it is in the history. This is the ‘theology of history’ which made Isaiah the prophet of faith.
ii. The three crises.
Crisis one: The unbelieving King. (to many examples but I will include one sad example with a funny memorable phrase )
…. Isaiah 7: 1-17 reviews the crises, focusing on Isaiah’s call to faith and Ahaz’ refusal of that call. Faith meant taking no action in relation to the northern threat (7:4), simply resting on the word of divine promise (7:7), but the alternative to faith was made clar (7:9): there is no other way of security or of continuance. Ahab, however, refused the way of faith (7: 10-17), choosing rather to buy Assyrian’ protection (2 Kings 16: 5-9) and thereby, in J. N. Oswalt’s memorable phrase, ‘acting like a mouse asking a cat to help it against another cat!’ (… Bad choice, noting that remaining kings only reigned as puppets by courtesy of either Assyria or Babylon, and with the exile (586 b.c.)
Crisis two: The faithful Lord.
… Sennacherib acceded in 705 B.C. and by 701 B.C. he had all Palestine at his mercy and Hezekiah belatedly conscious of his folly (37: 1-3). Hezekiah, however, discovered; the truth that ‘if we are faithless’, he will remain faithful’ (2 Tim. 2:13)……
Crisis three: The decisiveness of unbelief.
There is no need to find anything difficult or strange in Isaiah’s prediction of Babylonian captivity. Babylon was clearly a world power;…. But of course, Isaiah could not leave it at that. In fact, he must either tear up all his earlier prophecies of the glories of the coming king (9:1-7; 11: 1-16; 32:1 ff; 33:17) or else he must seek light from the Lord on how, they would yet be fulfilled…. When the dark day comes, then, for those with believing minds, there is a bright light beyond the darkness, a faith to sustain them in the grim realities of life. ( and as noted, alongside the king’s great sin in abandoning faith, his forecast that sin would be exactly and abundantly dealt with (40:2b)..)
The Messiah (page 24)
The three sections of the Isaianic literature are each dominated by a messianic figure
(NOTE: 1. Perfect King (chs 1 – 37) //2. Servant of the Lord (chs. 38 -55) // 3. Perfect Conqueror – exacting vengeance, bringing salvation (chs 56 – 66)
Isaiah 6:3: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; The whole earth is full of His glory!” (Note : Revelation 4:8: John’s vision of heaven: “The four living creatures each having six wings, were full of eyes within. And they do not rest day or night, saying: ‘Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, Who was and is and is to come!’ “
“… distinctive of the Lord was his ethical, moral character; to this he gave definitive statement in the ‘thrice holy’ of 6:3 (above), a super-superlative, all-embracing holiness that made the Lord the uttermost threat to all sinfulness. Indeed, Isaiah is the pre-eminent prophet of divine holiness. He uses, for example, the ‘adjective’ ‘holy’ (qados) of the Lord more often that all the rest of the Old Testament taken together, and focuses it in a title which he could well have coined, characteristic of the Isaianic literature: The Holy One of Israel.
TEXT
…. The Dead Sea Scrolls have yielded Isaiah material with the manuscript Q being our oldest witness to Isaiah. It is at least a thousand years older than the Ben Asher text (MT) of AD 1009. The overwhelming identity between these two (notwithstanding the time gap) is an astonishing tribute to careful copying…..
ISAIAH AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
The New Testament quotes Isaiah more than all the other prophets together, and does so in such a way as to leave no room for doubt that the New Testament writers, and the Lord Jesus, took Isaiah to be the author of the whole book that bears his name. It is true that in some references ‘Isaiah’ need mean no more than the book where the quotation is found. Mark 1:2, for example, seems to us ‘Isaiah’ (as Lk 24:44 uses ‘the psalms’) to name that section of the Old Testament Canon of which, respectively, they are the first books. But when John 12:41 notes ‘Isaiah’ as the one who ‘saw Jesus’ glory and spoke about him’, referring to 6:1 – 10, or when Luke 3:4 quotes from ‘the book of the words of Isaiah’, there can be no doubt that the individual prophet is intended, and this is, of course, the natural and logical interpretation of the main bulk of the quotations. The New Testament quotations cover all sections of the Isaianic literature, ascribing all alike to the same prophet. The authority of the New Testament, with, at its centre, the authority of Jesus, is decisive.