Isaiah 25

Chapter 25. The Fourfold Gospel in IsaiahBut he was pierced for our transgressions,he was crushed for our iniquities;the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,and by his wounds we are healed.(Isaiah 53:5)The book of Isaiah provides us a marvelous picture of the fourfold gospel: Jesus Christ as Savior, Sanctifier, Healer and Coming King. Section I—SalvationThe first picture of Isaiah begins with sin and salvation. What an indictment against the sinner is contained in the opening appeal: Ah, sinful nation, a people loaded with guilt, a brood of evildoers, children given to corruption! They have forsaken the Lord; they have spurned the Holy One of Israel and turned their backs on him. Why should you be beaten anymore? Why do you persist in rebellion? Your whole head is injured, your whole heart afflicted. From the sole of your foot to the top of your head there is no soundness— only wounds and welts and open sores, not cleansed or bandaged or soothed with oil. (Isaiah 1:4-6) But what a message of mercy and salvation, “‘Come now, let us reason together,’ says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool’” (Isaiah 1:18). Again, what a glorious gospel of salvation is contained in Isaiah 53:5-6, “But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” How many it has brought to lay their sins upon Him and to come back to the Shepherd and the fold. Where can we find a more complete and attractive gospel invitation than Isaiah 55 : Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare. Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon. (Isaiah 55:1-2, Isaiah 55:6-7) How rich the metaphors under which the gospel is presented: water, wine and milk! How fine the figures of buying without money because some one else has paid the price, and eating until our soul delights itself in the richest of fare! How infinite the grace that calls the wicked to forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and to return unto the Lord who will abundantly pardon! How the call of the Jubilee rings through that splendid passage in Isaiah 61:1-2 : “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn.” This was the very text from which our Lord Himself preached His first sermon at Nazareth and it is the commission of every minister of the gospel. And finally, how stirring and awakening is the call in Isaiah 45:22, “Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other.” How it takes us back to the serpent in the wilderness and the third chapter of the Gospel of John, and how many eyes have turned at the call of this heavenly summons to look and live. Surely, Isaiah is the gospel for the sinner as well as for the saint. Section II—SanctificationThe call of the prophet recorded in the sixth chapter of Isaiah is a testimony of sanctification. It began with a vision of God; and, as the result, a vision of himself in all the depths of his sinfulness, as it stood revealed in the white light of the throne. Then came the cry, “‘Woe to me!’ I cried. ‘I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty’” (Isaiah 6:5). And then came the baptism of fire, the live coal upon his lips, which even the seraphim could not touch with their hands, and the glorious announcement, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for” (Isaiah 6:7). Then with sanctified ears and lips and feet he was ready to hear and obey the great commission that sent him forth to his long and glorious ministry. God must have holy ears and lips and feet to carry His messages and represent Him to the world. The same high standard of holiness is required from all the servants of the Lord. The Bible contains no finer portrait of the righteous man than Isaiah 33:15-17, He who walks righteously and speaks what is right, who rejects gain from extortion and keeps his hand from accepting bribes, who stops his ears against plots of murder and shuts his eyes against contemplating evil— this is the man who will dwell on the heights, whose refuge will be the mountain fortress. His bread will be supplied, and water will not fail him. Your eyes will see the king in his beauty and view a land that stretches afar. This man who walks righteously and speaks what is right, and who not only avoids evil himself but shuts his eyes and ears from seeing and hearing evil, he will enter in to the beatific vision, which so sublimely anticipates the parallel promise of the sermon on the mount, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God” (Matthew 5:8). How finely the highway of holiness is described in Isaiah 35:8-9 : “And a highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness. The unclean will not journey on it; it will be for those who walk in that Way; wicked fools will not go about on it. No lion will be there, nor will any ferocious beast get up on it; they will not be found there. But only the redeemed will walk there.” How suggestive is the figure of the highway, not the broad way, not the ordinary way trodden even by the ordinary pilgrim, but the narrow path where the separated ones walk alone with Jesus. How simple their life. They do not need to be wise or strong. They are wayfaring men and often counted fools by the world, but they have learned the secret of the skies and they walk in safety with the ransomed to their everlasting home. There is a fine passage in Isaiah 41:10 which suggests three progressive stages of our deeper life. The first is expressed in the promise, “I will strengthen you,” the second by the clause, “[I will] help you,” but the third, expressed by the phrase “I will uphold you,” reaches a higher plane where God’s strength and help are not sufficient, but, where, ceasing altogether from ourselves, we fall helpless into His almighty arms and He just upholds us with the right hand of His righteousness—that is, carries us altogether in His own everlasting arms. There is a still finer passage in Isaiah 44:3-5 : “For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants. They will spring up like grass in a meadow, like poplar trees by flowing streams. One will say, ‘I belong to the Lord’; another will call himself by the name of Jacob; still another will write on his hand, ‘The Lord’s,’ and will take the name Israel.” Here there are two types of spiritual life distinctly contrasted. The first are those who say “I belong to the Lord” and call themselves by the name of Jacob. This represents the experience of conversion, the Jacob life. These people are undoubtedly God’s people, but they have not yet reached their Peniel. The second class, however, have passed with Jacob through the gates of Peniel and come forth into the higher place of victory and entire consecration, “still another will write on his hand, ‘The Lord’s,’ and will take the name Israel” (Isaiah 44:5). All through this book of Isaiah we can trace these two types. How differently he speaks of them. Notice for example his striking words, “the Lord has redeemed Jacob, he displays his glory in Israel” (Isaiah 44:23). Poor Jacob is not forgotten or discarded because he has not got further on. The Lord goes with His people even through the wilderness. But “he displays his glory in Israel” (Isaiah 44:23), the life that is wholly surrendered and transformed, and showing forth “the praises of him who called [us] out of darkness into his wonderful light” (1 Peter 2:9). These passages are sufficient to show the deep insight of the prophet’s vision and the high and holy plane on which he himself walked and which he ever recognized as God’s true pattern for all His children. Section III—Divine HealingThere is no lack of material for the gospel of healing in the great Messianic prophet Isaiah. The foundation passage is, of course, Isaiah 53:4-5 : “Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.” This is the only verse in the chapter prefixed by the word “surely.” This is God’s great Amen to the truth proclaimed in this passage. The Holy Spirit emphasized it because He knew it was the truth that was to be questioned by the belief of later generations. There is no doubt about the literal reference of this passage to the redemption of our bodies. The word translated “infirmities” literally means sicknesses and is so translated in scores of parallel passages in the Old Testament. The word “carried” is the same as that used in the 12th verse of this chapter with reference to Christ’s atonement for sin, “he bore the sin of many.” In Matthew 8:17, this passage is translated “He took up our infirmities and carried our diseases.” The fifth verse gives a catalog of the blessings of redemption. “But he was pierced for our transgressions”; that is our act of sin. “He was crushed for our iniquities”; that is our heart of sin. “The punishment that brought us peace was upon him”; that is the spiritual blessing which His death has purchased. And, finally, “by his wounds we are healed”; that is the physical effects of His redemption. Here then we have the fullness of Christ’s atonement. To say that the last clause respecting healing means spiritual healing would be to make the sentence a barren repetition of what he had already said in the first part of the verse. In Isaiah 57:18-19, we have another reference to the Lord’s healing. “‘I have seen his ways, but I will heal him; I will guide him and restore comfort to him, creating praise on the lips of the mourners in Israel. Peace, peace, to those far and near,’ says the Lord. ‘And I will heal them.’” Here it is evident that the sickness had been caused by sin and that God had been dealing with the transgressor in chastening, “I was enraged by his sinful greed; I punished him, and hid my face in anger” (Isaiah 57:17). But repentance has come and the erring one has learned his lesson and returned to God, and now God’s promise is “I have seen his ways but I will heal him” (Isaiah 57:18). His healing is followed by deeper spiritual experiences, “I will guide him and restore comfort to him, creating praise on the lips of the mourners in Israel. Peace, peace, to those far and near” (Isaiah 57:18-19). This, in turn, is followed by further healing, “and I will heal them” (Isaiah 57:19). As we know God more deeply through the teaching of the Holy Spirit, we come into a more profound experience of His healing touch and power. “Through Christ Jesus, the law of the Spirit of life set [us] free from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:2). There is another passage, Isaiah 58:8-11, which leads us into the deeper experiences of the Lord’s life for the body. “Your healing will quickly appear” (Isaiah 58:8) is a fine figure of the springing life that comes to us through union and communion with the Lord Jesus. “He will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail” (Isaiah 58:11). This represents that inner nourishment which the indwelling Christ supplies to all our vital being, making fat our bones, not in the sense of mere physical flesh and increased weight and muscular strength, but that inner freshness and fullness of life which lifts us above exhaustion and disease and renews our youth like the eagle’s. Isaiah has given us a striking object lesson of divine healing in the story of Hezekiah, and his remarkable healing is described in chapter 38. In considering this let us notice:

1. That Hezekiah’s sickness was a fatal one. It is foolish to talk about his being healed through a mere poultice of figs of a disease that was declared by God Himself to be unto death.
2. In describing this event in the books of Second Chronicles (22) and Second Kings (20), the record shows that God performed a miracle and healed him. If it was a miracle, it was not a case of healing by remedies. A miracle is something performed by Almighty power when the case is an impossible one.
3. The figs were merely a sign to help his faith to rise from the natural to the supernatural, just as the oil of anointing is a sign of the touch of the Holy Spirit, but has not in itself any inherent healing power. It is mentioned in Isaiah 38:21 and Isaiah 38:22 as a “sign.”
4. We have an interesting account of Hezekiah’s state of mind during the time that he was waiting under the Lord’s hand for the message of healing. At first he completely sank in dejection and despair, and the prayer which the Spirit has recorded is a very weak and miserable failure, not unlike some of our wretched wailings when trouble comes to us. Listen to this, “I waited patiently till dawn, but like a lion he broke all my bones; day and night you made an end of me. I cried like a swift or thrush, I moaned like a mourning dove. My eyes grew weak as I looked to the heavens” (Isaiah 38:13-14). How it reminds us of some of our chatterings and mournings, but at last he reaches a turn in the dark road of doubt and fear and suddenly exclaims, “I am troubled; O Lord, come to my aid!” (Isaiah 38:14). No sooner has this gasp of honest prayer reached the heart of God, than a marvelous revelation comes to him and we hear him exclaim, “But what can I say? He has spoken to me, and he himself has done this” (Isaiah 38:15). He has heard the voice of God and his faith has answered back and the night is passed and dawn has broken upon his despair.
5. How tender, subdued and inspiring is his note of praise. “The living, the living—they praise you, as I am doing today” (Isaiah 38:19).
6. But at last Hezekiah forgot God’s great mercy and “he did not respond to the kindness shown him” (2 Chronicles 32:25). Because of this, in later years God’s chastening fell upon him once more because of vainglory and sinful pride. Oh, how sacred a trust the Lord’s healing is! Let us not forget that the life He has redeemed belongs to Him and must be given back in humble, loving and devoted service. Section IV—The Lord’s ComingIsa_11:1-16 is a picture of Messiah’s reign in the millennial age, the restoration of Israel and the transformation of the material world and the whole system of nature. Righteousness, peace and universal blessedness shall pervade the world, and the “earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:9). Isaiah 32:1-3 is a similar picture of the millennial earth when A king will reign in righteousness and rulers will rule with justice. Each man will be like a shelter from the wind and a refuge from the storm, like streams of water in the desert and the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land. Then the eyes of those who see will no longer be closed, and the ears of those who hear will listen. Isaiah 24:20-23 is strikingly parallel to the closing chapters of Revelation and the vision of the coming of the Son of Man. The earth reels like a drunkard, it sways like a hut in the wind; so heavy upon it is the guilt of its rebellion that it falls—never to rise again. In that day the Lord will punish the powers in the heavens above and the kings on the earth below. They will be herded together like prisoners bound in a dungeon; they will be shut up in prison and be punished after many days. The moon will be abashed, the sun ashamed; for the Lord Almighty will reign on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, and before its elders, gloriously. How vividly this describes the shaking of the powers of heaven at the coming of the Lord and the appearance of Christ in His glory! Then comes in chapter Isaiah 25:7-9, His appearing to Israel and the removing of the veil that has been upon the face of all people. Then in chapter Isaiah 26:19, comes the vision of the resurrection, “But your dead will live; their bodies will rise. You who dwell in the dust, wake up and shout for joy. Your dew is like the dew of the morning; the earth will give birth to her dead.” This is followed by the rapture of His saints as they are taken away from the great tribulation which is coming upon the earth. “Go, my people, enter your rooms and shut the doors behind you; hide yourselves for a little while until his wrath has passed by. See, the Lord is coming out of his dwelling to punish the people of the earth for their sins. The earth will disclose the blood shed upon her; she will conceal her slain no longer” (Isaiah 26:20-21). Finally in chapter Isaiah 27:1 we have the binding of Satan, described so vividly in Revelation 20:1-3 : “And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key to the Abyss and holding in his hand a great chain. He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. He threw him into the Abyss, and locked and sealed it over him, to keep him from deceiving the nations anymore until the thousand years were ended. After that, he must be set free for a short time.” Then comes the reign of Israel through the millennial years, Isaiah 27:6, “In days to come Jacob will take root, Israel will bud and blossom and fill all the world with fruit.” In the later chapters of Isaiah very many of the visions concerning Judah and Jerusalem belong to the millennial age. Chapter 35 is one of these. “And the ransomed of the Lord will return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away” (Isaiah 35:10). So is chapter 59: “‘The Redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who repent of their sins,’ declares the Lord” (Isaiah 59:20). The whole of the 60th chapter belongs to this glorious time. So also Isaiah 65:17-25 : “Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create, for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy. I will rejoice over Jerusalem and take delight in my people; the sound of weeping and of crying will be heard in it no more. “Never again will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his years; he who dies at a hundred will be thought a mere youth; he who fails to reach a hundred will be considered accursed. They will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit. No longer will they build houses and others live in them, or plant and others eat. For as the days of a tree, so will be the days of my people; my chosen ones will long enjoy the works of their hands. They will not toil in vain or bear children doomed to misfortune; for they will be a people blessed by the Lord, they and their descendants with them. Before they call I will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear. The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, but dust will be the serpent’s food. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain,” says the Lord. And Isaiah 66:18-23 : “And I, because of their actions and their imaginations, am about to come and gather all nations and tongues, and they will come and see my glory. “I will set a sign among them, and I will send some of those who survive to the nations—to Tarshish, to the Libyans and Lydians (famous as archers), to Tubal and Greece, and to the distant islands that have not heard of my fame or seen my glory. They will proclaim my glory among the nations. And they will bring all your brothers, from all the nations, to my holy mountain in Jerusalem as an offering to the Lord—on horses, in chariots and wagons, and on mules and camels,” says the Lord. “They will bring them, as the Israelites bring their grain offerings, to the temple of the Lord in ceremonially clean vessels. And I will select some of them also to be priests and Levites,” says the Lord. “As the new heavens and the new earth that I make will endure before me,” declares the Lord, “so will your name and descendants endure. From one New Moon to another and from one Sabbath to another, all mankind will come and bow down before me,” says the Lord. Only the fulfillment of these glorious passages can bring their full interpretation. We can complete the broken links in Isaiah’s imperfect chain from the writings of Daniel and John, and the prophetic messages from the Master Himself. No other key will solve Isaiah’s vision but the coming of the Lord, the restoration of Israel, the millennial reign of Christ and the glorious realities of the blessed hope which has grown so much clearer and nearer in the light of the New Testament and the events in the days in which we live. When that glorious day shall come, Isaiah’s splendid songs and visions of glory shall have a significance and a grandeur which even he but dimly comprehended when he wrote, as the apostle expresses it, “trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow” (1 Peter 1:11).