08/15/2020 – Day 083 – Isaiah 62 – 66 / Part 2 of 2 posted on 08/21
Before we look at chapters 62 through 66, I would like to list of Isaiahs propechies about the Messiah from my Halley’s Bible Handbook on pg 305 – 306:
His Advent (40: 3-5) / His Virgin Birth (7:14) / Galilee to be the scene of his ministry (9: 1-2)/ His Deity and Eternity of his throne (9: 6-7) / His sufferings (53) / To die with the wicked (53:9) / To be buried with the rich (53:9) / Might and gentleness of his reign (40: 10-11) / Righteousness and beneficence of his reign (32: 1-8; 61: 1-3)/ His justice and kindness (42: 3-4, 7) / His rule over Gentiles (2:2-3; 42:1, 6; 49:6; 55:-4-5; 56:6; 60: 3-5) / His vast influence (49: 7,23) / Idols to disappear (2: 18) / A warless world to be brought into being (2:4; 65:15)/ A New Heaven and New Earth to be created (65:17; 66:22) / Righteous and wicked to be eternally separated (66:15, 22-24).
Chapter 62:1: “For Zion’s sake, I will not hold My peace, And for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, Until her righteousness goes forth as brightness, And her salvation as a lamp that burns.”
Commentary here and going forward from my book “Isaiah” by J. Alec Motyer: Verses 6 &7: “The fulfillment of the Lord’s purposes for Zion comes through the prayers of Zion’s people. Our prayers, as we both live in Zion (Hebrews 12:22 – Jimmy’s note – Wow, read on to chapter 13!) and wait for Zion (Revelation 21:10) are our part in the guardian care of our city (watchmen)…..
(pg 385) – XII. The New Heaven and New Earth: Prayers and Promises (63:7 – 66:24)
The theme of these chapters is the praying people (63:7 – 64:12) and the promising God (65:1 – 66:24. The sombre passage 63:1-6 described the requital of every foe and the redemption of all the saved. What can possibly remain? Only prayer for its fulfilment, resting on the sure promises of God.
Verse: 63:10 – “But they rebelled and grieved His Holy Spirit; So He turned Himself against them as an enemy, And he fought against them.”
Back to commentary: ” His Holy Spirit: ‘the Spirit of his holiness, possessing, matching, and expessing his Holy nature (30:1; 31:3; 48:16; 5919; Psalm 51:11; cf. Ne 9:20, 30; Haggai 2:5) This passage is full of the person of the Spirit as a distinct divine Being: Holy (10b, 11f), personal (grieved; cf. Ephesians 4:30), and the agent of the Lord’s care of his people (14). Along with (lit.) ‘the angel of his face (9b), and his ‘glorious arm’ (12; 51:9; 52:10; 53:1), these references to the Holy Spirit reveal the richness of the Old Testament’s understanding of the divine nature. God is ‘one’ (Dt 6:4) but not a bare unit. Rather, he is ‘one’ as the tabernacle was ‘one’ (Exodus 36:18), a rich unity of many elements.
Verse: 64: 6: “But we are all like an unclean thing, And all our righteousness are like filthy rages…”
Blessings for the remnant (65: 8-10) Not all participate in verses 2-7. The community was divided,… In the dark days of Isaiah’s ministry the remnant would have prized these words of comfort. Three reassuring pictures are sketched: the vintage (8) depicts delighted preservation, the land (9) depicts possession, and Sharon and Achor (10 depict renewal. …Isaiah uses Sharon to typify deterioration (33:9) and renewal (35:2). Achor (Joshua 7:24-26) symbolizes a bright beginning marred by disobediance. But the time is coming when Sharon will be what it was meant to be and Achor transformed from curse to blessing. Seek: those gathered from the world (1) and those preserved from the people (10) share one characteristic – their diligence to enjoy the divine presence…..
(pg 397) The God of truth is both the source of blessing and the great object of devotion. God of truth (lit) ‘the God of (the) Amen’ (explained by 2 Corinthians 1:20), the God who says ‘amen’ to all his promises. …..
Ch 66: Judgment and hope (66: 1-24)
… As Isaiah teaches, ,there is but one proper response to the presence of this ‘house’ and it’s holy Occupant: do we tremble at His word, or do we refuse Him when he calls?…”
(picking up commentary on the last 3 verses: 22 – 24):
“The new creation, new city and new house constitute the eternal climax of the Lord’s purposes. This is what I make, a participle expressing the impending future: ‘I am in process of making / am going to make’. This coming reality has all the eternal validity of the Lord himself (endure before me). It is his stated commitment (declares: ‘ is the word of’, 1:24). The Lord’s peole are here, (lit.) ‘your seed and your name’ referring to the Covenant Mediator of 59:21, the people of the Anointed Conqueror brought into their inheritance by his work of vengeance and salvation. They have the same permanence, eternal security and assurance as the new creation itself, and they are specifically the New Moon and Sabbath people…. The people enter into the reality of a worldwide community, acceptable in equality before the Lord (56: 1-14) in practical holiness. Each month as it comes and each week as it comes is met by joyful dedication of life’s programme to the Lord. Contextually, the locus of all this is Jerusalem, but the thought of ‘all flesh’ (all mankind) in one place shows that the prophet is thinking in terms of the wrold mountain of 11:9 and the world city of chapters 25-26, the Zion to which believers have already come (Hebrews 12: 22-23) and into which they will yet enter through the gates (Revelation 22:14).
There is a cemetery by the city, and when ‘all flesh’ comes to worship they make a point to go out and look at the fate from which they have been rescued. They enjoy the day of salvation, but they do not allow themselves to forget the day of vengeance. These are dead because the judgment of God is for real: they are those ‘slain by the Lord’ (16). The accusation levelled and made out against them is that they rebelled: they knew the word of the Lord but deliberately and wilfully went their own way (4). Consequently, the worm in the bud – the heart of rebellion, the corrupt, fallen nature – was the winner, and it is their endless lot to live the life of corruption (their worm will not die) under the endless antagonism of divine holiness, i.e. the unquenched fire. On the lips of Jesus, these words are used to express the burning ‘life’ of Gehenna (Mark 9: 43-48), and ultimately they become the reality of the second death, a final change of place and state with continuity of person (Rev 20:15). The purpose of visiting the cemetery is not to gloat (it is too awful for that), nor even to pity (though who could restrain pity?), but rather to register again something loathsome (Daniel 12:2), to be repelled and revolted; that is to say, to see again the wages of sin and fruit of rebellion, and thereby to be newly motivated to obediance and love of the word of God. There is also another thought which we noted in verse 14: it is part of the saints’ sense of the reality of their security to be assured that the Lord has dealt, finally and fully, with everything that could ever threaten or blight their eternal joy.”
Yeshua the Christ is the great unifier (salvation) and the great divider (vengeance). I recommend an excellent John MacArthur sermon titled:
“The Truth About Death” –
Soli Deo Gloria!