Bible Reading Challenge Blog

This begins a very powerful next few chapters that speak about the man of sorrows, and the suffering servant that we have already touched upon in the past.  If you look at vs.13 we read that the servant of the Lord shall prosper.  That prosperity shall be revealed by him being exalted and lifted up.  Now, we know that the ultimate servant, Jesus Christ, was lifted up and exalted high on a cross.  This may not be what you had in mind when you think that we would prosper.  But is there any greater prosperity than to die so that all could live?   That is the fate of our Savior, that is the task that Jesus came upon this earth to fulfill so that we could have eternal life.  

If you back up to vs.7 you will see a harbinger of John the Baptist as he is called a beautiful messenger who announces peace.  We see these verses referenced in later Gospels and it is directly tied in to John the Baptist.  There is some confluence of ideas in these verses.  You have Israel who is told to wake up after a very traumatic experience where they had the uncircumcised and the unclean invade their land and lay them waste.   There is a promise that this will happen no longer.  But as they are recovering from that experience they are encouraged to stand up and shake off their dust, even as they have been traumatized by what has happened.  

This then moves us to a celebration because God is sending his servant who will be the read guard sent directly from the Lord.  We all need a read guard who watches our back.

Let’s be clear here that when the author speaks about Rahab in vs.9 it is not the same Rahab that we find in Joshua 2 and then again appears in Jesus’ genealogy.  This Rahab is a sea creature that the people of Israel were terrified of along with Behemoth and Leviathan.  Here we see that this creature has been defeated by the Lord, which is not a usual portrayal.  Normally this creature is seen as invincible, but the Lord is portrayed as having defeated it and cut it up into pieces.  

There is a theme in Isaiah about comforting my people.  You have the classic, comfort, oh comfort my people found in Isaiah 40 which we saw already.  I love this classic piece which is based upon that Scripture in Isaiah 40.

Not really a chapter in Isaiah that you would want to read at wedding.  It is a bit of a downer, but what would you expect from people who  were taken away from their home land and forced into captivity and slavery.   This is the result of their time away from their homeland.  In the first few verses of this chapter you read the questions that are asked as to why they were sold into slavery.  The answer comes back very clearly that it was because of their sins (vs.1).  Now, we cannot, absolutely cannot extrapolate this verse into the 18th century era slavery.  The sin that was committed was not by those who were taken into slavery, but by people like us who went to a foreign land and took people for our own use.  God’s judgment will come down upon us one day for that, I am sure.  But here since God is speaking to His own people, the people of God, he tells them that they were sold because of their sin.  This was the relationship that God had with His people.

Starting at vs. 5 and following we read this servant song in Isaiah which speaks about this person being disgraced.  He was struck, his beard pulled, they spit upon him.  I’m wondering if any of that sounds like what happened to my Savior.  It actually is a direct reference to the suffering that the Messiah would undergo.  It is a direct reference to the suffering that Jesus underwent.  At some point we read  in vs.9 that it is the Lord who helps and declares us innocent.  

This is a pretty famous chapter for a number of different reasons.  First of all, if you read it from beginning to end I hope you sense the feeling of unease that I felt as it described a very graphic ending to the enemies of the Lord, especially as we look at vs.24ff.  But all of this is within the context of the Lord restoring the former glories to the people of God.

The former is actually not two of the things that I wanted to talk about.   The first is found in vs.6 where we read one of the few times a quasi evangelistic tone to a Hebrew Scripture.  Jesus often said go and make fishers of men and women and there was always a sense of evangelism within the Christian Gospel that we do not find in Hebrew Scripture.  In Hebrew Scripture there is a designated people of God, and the story ends with those people.  There is no real need to bring others on board who are  not the people of God simply because they were not chosen by God to be His people.

But when we get to vs.6 we see that there is an outreach to people of other nations who have not been automatically included into the moniker of the people of God.  “I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”  That is a pretty radically evangelistic statement for the Old Testament.  I like it.  

I think the second topic will come up later.  I’ll address it later if it does.

We see some references to very familiar imagery as Isaiah states that God is the first and the last (vs.12).  We see that Jesus is described as the alpha and the Omega which are the first and the last letters of the Greek alphabet.  But, of course, we wouldn’t see that in Isaiah because it is written in Hebrew.  But the sense is that before the beginning of time, God was.  Once time is over and this world has come to an end, God will be.  God laid the foundations of the earth and spread out the heavens.  

As a result of this declaration then is it too much for God to choose to liberate the people of Israel as He sees fit?  In vs.6 we read that God will reveal new things.  These new things will include in vs.20ff the redemption of Israel as was seen when God led them out of Egypt and through the desert  by splitting open rocks to provide water.  

Not sure what this last verse represents.  It is a bit of a harbinger of things to come as we read something similar in Isaiah 57:21.  There is no peace for the wicked.  Oh, if that were true then we would see a whole lot of people having a hard time sleeping at night, but I’m afraid that even the wicked sleep peacefully while the righteous are a bit fitful because they recognize what is at stake.

We get a not very dignified image of a woman who has been stripped and her nakedness has been uncovered.  It is the image of God stripping Israel because of her unfaithfulness to the Lord.  He says in vs.6 that he was angry with his people because they had become a mistress to foreign gods.  He had just in the previous chapter told the people of Israel not to sell themselves out to foreign gods, but they had.  I mean, everyone else is doing it, so it is so very tempting to fall into the trap of what other nations and people around them are doing.

He is a little more specific in vs.8 when he speaks not about idolatry but about them pursuing pleasure as an idol.  Okay, now Isaiah is speaking to the 21st century church.  People are so secure in who they are and in their own abilities that they never believe that anything negative will befall them.  You see this reflected in vs.8-9 where people say I will never be a widow or see the death of my children.  Tell that to people who live in areas where gun violence is an epidemic.  There are more widows and losses of children than we would like to admit.  It happens today.

God says that those who are so secure in things other than in the Creator can stay just like they are.  But they are like stubble and in a flash can go up in flame.  We know that about life.  It can change within an instant.  This quote is foreboding: “They all wander about in their own paths; there is no one to save you.”  This chapter is very, very sobering.

Isaiah consistently speaks out against the idols which other nations worship and the fact that they are created by our hands and then worshiped.  How is that possible?  How are we capable to create something which we then turn around and worship?  He goes on in vs.7 to speak about the inanimate nature of these gods that you place them in one place and they are immobile, they cannot come rushing to the rescue like our God does.  Our God is not created or formed but creates and forms, is not placed but places, is not carried from place to place but carries us from one place to another.

If you notice in vs.12 and following you see that it is God himself who brings deliverance.  The salvation of the Lord will not wait around for someone to come to Him and ask for it.  God is the one who is proactive and who moves to save those in need.  What a God we serve.  I seem to be on a roll for songs that bring joy to my heart.  Here is another one.

“Only in the Lord…are righteousness and strength.”  The prophet Isaiah continues the theme of reminding us who made us and that we are the clay and God is the potter.  You see him take up that theme in vs.9 and the reminder that God has made all things on heaven and on earth.  We are not to question, we are to live out the life that God wants us to live.  This life, we are reminded in vs.18 is one that is to be lived not in chaos, but in freedom and order and established in God’s timing and purposes.

For some reason this song came to my mind as I was reading this Scripture.  I think because of vs.8 which speaks about God showering from heaven His presence which is powerful and life changing.

I wonder if you ever thought that the actual physical Bible, the book itself, could be seen as an idol?  How do you feel if someone throws a Bible away?  Isn’t there a sense that goes well beyond waste, a sense that there is something morally wrong in that?  Isaiah warns us in this chapter about making idols.  He goes into deep detail about the wood that is used by the craftsman to heat himself, to bake bread, to cook meat over its coals, and then the rest of it he fashions it into an idol which he worships.  He calls that in vs.20 a fraud.  How can anything inanimate provide security and safety?  It simply cannot.

I love the beginning of this chapter where we read in vs.2: “…the Lord who made you, who formed you in the womb and will help you.”  What a great image of God who creates us literally in the womb will never forget nor forsake us.  In this chapter the prophet categorically declares the glory of the Lord forever over any idol or human made object.  There is no other god like the God of Israel, he is the only rock.  Once again in vs.24 we find repeated that it was the Lord, the redeemer, who formed us in the womb.  I don’t know about you but I get great consolation in knowing that the God that I worship created me and formed me just  like Genesis 2 tells us He did.  

One random thought that I had while I was reading this chapter is found in vs.12 where Isaiah has the Lord say to us: “You are my witnesses.”  So, Stacy and I served for 4 years within the Waldensian Church in Italy.  A very well known Italian author wrote about this church in a book entitled: “You are my witnesses.”  I am not encouraging you to buy it, but just showing it here to prove that it is a real thing: https://www.amazon.com/You-Are-My-Witnesses-Waldensians/dp/8870160890.

The story of the Waldensians is uplifting.  A small pre-Reformation group that formed 300 years before the Reformation and believed that the Bible should be readable to all and that all people had a right to interpret the Bible. They were persecuted and fled from Southern France to the Northern Alps in Italy.  As Waldensian Pastors in Italy, keep in mind these churches ministered to Italians and were in Italian and not to English language folks, we were daily aware that we were in the minority and that as Protestant in Italy you  were constantly subjected to misunderstandings and assumptions which were at times very hurtful.  

But there was also a sense of pride that this small minority was a significant minority as it established hospitals and schools and churches across the country.  My two oldest daughters were born in a Waldensian hospital in Southern Italy.  So when I read Isaiah tell us that we are the witnesses that the Lord has to use, I think, right you are.

Other verses in this chapter that are significant are found in vs.18-19 where we find that the Lord is doing a new thing.  He describes this new thing as making a way in the wilderness (we have seen this John the Baptist thing already a number of times) and making rivers in the desert.   These two examples are picked up today as examples of ways in which God is doing new things among us which often times conflict and contradict what has been church orthodoxy for a number of years.  I’m not really on board with that, although I do believe that God has done and will do new things, but they will not conflict and contradict His Word.  Just sayin…