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Have you ever had all your support and comfort taken away and found yourself stronger as a result?
In our passage today, we’ll see that God uses discomfort to purify a remnant of believers who will work for restoration in our world.
Isaiah prophecies disaster brought on by Israel’s sin, but also the promise of a remnant God is purifying to become His embodied presence on earth.
God Uses Discomfort to Purify the Faithful
When you want to wake someone up, you have to create discomfort.
If you have a light sleeper, it can be a nudge on the shoulder.
But for someone that is deep under, fast asleep, nothing else will work, you need a bucket of cold water.
In Isaiah 1 and 2, we saw that God has a plan.
His plan is His people, who would be a light to the nations, to awaken the nations to the knowledge of God.
The nations would stream to God to learn to walk in His ways.
But God’s people were rebellious children, and the book begins with God telling them,
Isaiah 1:3 (ESV)
The ox knows its owner,
and the donkey its master’s crib,
but Israel does not know,
my people do not understand.”
The people of God were going through the motions of worship, but their hearts were given over to idols.
Instead of being a light to the nations, they were walking in darkness.
What happens when the redeemed people of God are distracted by idols of their own making?
There isn’t any hope for the nations to know the Lord and to learn from Him.
Israel has become comfortable in the darkness.
In chapter 3, God says, “I will not support you in that.”
He won’t let His redeemed people become comfortable in the darkness of their idolatry.
In Isaiah 3:1-7, Isaiah says the Lord will take away all of their comforts.
In verse 1, Isaiah says,
Isaiah 3:1 (ESV)
For behold, the Lord God of hosts is taking away from Jerusalem and from Judah support and supply,
The Hebrew words for support and supply are actually just the masculine and feminine of the same word, “mashen and mashenah”.
It’s Isaiah’s way of saying, God is removing every kind of help.
And this word has the connotation of something that makes your life more comfortable.
You could paraphrase it as God is taking away couch and cold drink, or home and hearth, or as Isaiah spells out, bread, water, mighty warrior, judge, prophet, oracle and elder, etc.
All of the means Israel has used to make herself comfortable, the Lord is removing.
God is creating discomfort to awaken His people, to purify them.
In just the last two years, we have been made more and more uncomfortable as Christians.
We can get angry and blame somebody, or we can ask, “Why?”
Isaiah makes clear why.
In Isaiah 3:8, he says,
Isaiah 3:8 (ESV)
For Jerusalem has stumbled, and Judah has fallen, because their speech and their deeds are against the Lord, defying his glorious presence.
Israel could blame her leaders, they could blame the godless empires around them for the trouble in the world.
But really, the problem lay within them.
Isaiah tells a parable to explain.
In chapter 5, Isaiah says Israel is the garden of the LORD, a vineyard.
Isaiah 5:7 (ESV)
For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting;
He planted it, He cultivated it, He cared for it, and protected it.
But instead of bearing good grapes, it bore bad grapes.
Isaiah uses another play on words.
God was looking for the fruit of justice, “mishpat”,
Isaiah 5:7 (ESV)
and he looked for justice (mishpat), but behold, bloodshed (mispah); for righteousness (tzadaqah), but behold, an outcry (tzaqah)!
but instead, He found bloodshed, “mispah”.
He was looking for righteousness, “tzadaqah”, but instead He found an outcry, “tzaqah”.
God had redeemed Israel from slavery in Egypt in Exodus, and He had been faithful to His promise to protect and provide for them in the Promised Land.
And He had called them to do justice and righteousness in that land.
But their security and prosperity had made them too comfortable, and they began to make worship idols of their own making rather than being true to God.
And idolatry always leads to injustice.
Because idolatry is really about worshipping self, and self always wants more at the expense of others.
So Israel had become unjust and unrighteous.
The rich were taking advantage of the poor (3:14-15), the young were disrespecting the old (3:5), their criteria for choosing leaders had become about appearance rather than character (3:6-7).
So, God will cause some discomfort by removing His protection and support for their lifestyle.
Isaiah 5:5 (ESV)
And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard.
I will remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured; I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down.
God was going to allow Israel to feel the consequences of living against the Lord.
He didn’t really have to do anything.
Isaiah 3:9 (ESV)
For they have brought evil on themselves.
And when God stops protecting you from the consequences of your sin, you’d better be prepared for discomfort.
This “devouring” that was going to happen to Israel is fleshed out in chapter 3. Isaiah says Israel is going to be chewed up by its own leaders.
He says in 3:5 that “the people will oppress one another”.
But when that includes those with power and money, the oppression goes to another level.
Isaiah talks about societal oppression with devouring language in 3:12-15.
First, he says their leaders who should be guiding them would mislead them by “swallowing up” the course of their path.
Isaiah 3:12 (ESV)
My people—infants are their oppressors, and women rule over them.
O my people, your guides mislead you and they have swallowed up the course of your paths.
We should understand that Isaiah isn’t equating women with infants in their ability to lead.
He’s saying Israel’s leaders are infants, so confused that the right path for the nation has been swallowed in a fog.
Sound like anything we’re experiencing today?
And there are some women in the ruling class too, and he’s going to single them out.
In verse 16, Isaiah says these women have misplaced values.
They are caught up in the latest fashion and are holding themselves above the common people.
Isaiah prophesies wars with Assyria and Babylon that will decimate the ruling class of its men and leave the women humiliated.
But it’s worse than just misguided leaders.
These leaders are predatory, like wolves feeding on the sheep rather than feeding the sheep.
Isaiah uses imagery like this,
Isaiah 3:14–15 (ESV)
The Lord will enter into judgment with the elders and princes of his people: “It is you who have devoured the vineyard, the spoil of the poor is in your houses.
What do you mean by crushing my people, by grinding the face of the poor?” declares the Lord God of hosts.
The rulers have been chewing up the poor by taking what little means they had to live on for themselves.
We find out in chapter 5 when Isaiah pronounces six “woes” upon Israel the extent of what was happening.
Isaiah doesn’t exactly name names, but he does name sins.
1.
The first woe is against the ruling class for confiscating the properties of poor families to build estates for themselves, most likely through predatory lending (5:8-10).
2. Celebrating the good life instead of celebrating God.
Isaiah says (5:11-12) people were rising early in the morning to drink and party, but
Isaiah 5:12 (ESV)
They have lyre and harp, tambourine and flute and wine at their feasts, but they do not regard the deeds of the Lord, or see the work of his hands.
We’ll come back to this in a moment.
The final woes name the sins of
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