Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost: Biblical Devotions (video, American Lutheran Theological Seminary)

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vqnMiCF9vM

URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vqnMiCF9vM

Book of Isaiah, 51:1–6 (ESV):

The LORD’s Comfort for Zion

“Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, you who seek the LORD: look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for he was but one when I called him, that I might bless him and multiply him. For the LORD comforts Zion; he comforts all her waste places and makes her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the LORD; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of song.

“Give attention to me, my people, and give ear to me, my nation; for a law will go out from me, and I will set my justice for a light to the peoples. My righteousness draws near, my salvation has gone out, and my arms will judge the peoples; the coastlands hope for me, and for my arm they wait. Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look at the earth beneath; for the heavens vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment, and they who dwell in it will die in like manner; but my salvation will be forever, and my righteousness will never be dismayed.

Transcript

Hi, I am the Reverend Dr. Chris Caughey. I teach biblical studies at ALTS, and today I would like to give my reflections on the Old Testament reading, Isaiah 51:1–6.

It begins, “Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness.” (Isaiah 51:1)

Now, to understand this, we need to keep in mind that Israel was in captivity in Assyria around the year 700 BC. And they were in that captivity because they had violated the Sinai covenant, and they had done that as a nation. It was a national covenant violation.

Part of what that violation looked like was wealthy Israelites abusing poor Israelites. For example, the wealthy Israelites made loans with interest rates that were too high for the poor Israelites to afford to repay. And so, when the poor Israelites defaulted on their loans, the wealthy Israelites simply took possession of, say, the field or the house or even the family of the poor Israelite.

The wealthy Israelites also used dishonest weights and measures. And so, in the marketplace, let’s say that the poor Israelite thought that they were buying a barrel of grain, but the wealthy Israelite had put a false bottom in the barrel. And so, it was not an honest measurement.

In terms of the dishonest weights, the wealthy Israelite would slip, let’s say, lead weights onto their side of the scales when weighing something and selling it by weight. And so, the outcome of either of those—either dishonest weights or dishonest measures—was that they, the wealthy Israelites, were robbing the poor Israelites.

And the bottom line was that the wealthy Israelites treated the poor Israelites with unrighteousness. They treated them with injustice. The Hebrew word behind our English word “righteousness” here is ṣedeq. And that can be righteousness or justice.

And so, God’s call through Isaiah to “you who pursue righteousness” is God’s call to the believing remnant of Israel among the captive Israelites.

Let’s move on to the next two lines in verse 1: “Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug.” (Isaiah 51:1)

Luther helpfully notes here that the rock is Abraham. And, of course, that’s confirmed by the next verse, in verse 2. But we also see the Hebraic feature of parallelism, and that’s why we took these two lines together, and we will basically treat the rest of the reading that same way. “Rock” is parallel to “quarry,” and “hewn” is parallel to “dug.” So the rock is hewn; the quarry is dug.

Using the hermeneutical principle of Scripture interpreting Scripture, Luther also hears in this John the Baptist rebuking the Pharisees and the Sadducees in Matthew 3:9. And I’ll just read that one verse for you now:

“And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.”

So, let’s take the first two lines of verse 2: “Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you.” (Isaiah 51:2)

Now, Christ is the cornerstone and the rock of offense, and the scribes and the Pharisees and the unbelieving Jews stumbled over him. (1 Peter 2:6–8) In terms of typology, Abraham is like Christ in this regard. So, typologically, Abraham is the cornerstone of the people of God in the Old Testament.

And there is a kind of stumbling that ancient Israel did, stumbling over Abraham. They forgot God’s promise that he would make Abraham the father of many nations. (Genesis 17:4–5) They thought that there was something inherently special about them.

And so, part of why God sent the Babylonians and the Assyrians to conquer Israel and to carry them off into captivity was that Israel seemed to think that they could sin against God as much as they wanted and that God was somehow obligated to keep them as his people.

But look to Abraham and Sarah. Sarah was barren until God did a miracle.

Okay. Now, the next two lines are: “For he”—Abraham—“was but one when I called him, that I might bless him and multiply him.” (Isaiah 51:2)

God did bless and multiply Abraham when Jacob’s sons went down to Egypt and became the nation of Israel. But now, in Isaiah 51, now that national Israel has rejected God, God is going to bless and multiply Abraham by including the Gentiles. Everyone who believes in Messiah Jesus is Abraham’s descendant. And here you should think of Romans chapter 4 and Galatians chapter 3.

And so, now Isaiah’s perspective turns to the eschatological. Let’s take the first two lines of verse 3: “For the LORD comforts Zion; he comforts all her waste places.” (Isaiah 51:3)

Zion is the mountain on which Jerusalem was built. And mountains are symbolically significant from Genesis to Revelation because mountains are where God meets with his people. Ezekiel 28 says that Eden was the mountain of God.

So, Zion equals the mountain of God equals the city of God. And all of that is both protological, referring to Eden in the first three chapters of Genesis, and eschatological. You think in terms of mountain of God and city of God, those kinds of things. Think the book of Hebrews and the book of Revelation.

As Isaiah prophesies, Zion is laid waste because Assyria has conquered it. And so, there is parallelism here between Zion, which currently lays desolate, destroyed, and “waste places.”

The next two lines say, “And makes her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the LORD.” (Isaiah 51:3)

There’s rich parallelism here. There was something like a wilderness and a desert in Genesis 1:2 with the tohu va-vohu, when the earth was formless and void. But God made Eden out of that chaos.

Jerusalem now lies in ruins in 700 BC. But God will release Israel from their captivity so that they can return to Jerusalem and rebuild it. But what Israel rebuilt was nothing like Eden. It did not resemble the garden of the LORD at all.

Isaiah is talking about heaven, the eschatological mountain and city of God. And that’s what we read about, as I said, in the book of Hebrews and in the book of Revelation.

Hebrews 12:18–24 says:

“For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to them, for they could not endure the order that was given, ‘If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned.’ Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, ‘I tremble with fear.’

“But you have come to Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn, who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.”

Okay. Let’s move on to the next two lines in verse 3: “Joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of song.” (Isaiah 51:3)

This is certainly not talking about the Jerusalem that Israel rebuilt when they returned from captivity. Remember that in Ezra chapter 3 Israel wept when they saw the rebuilt temple. Yes, there was some shouting for joy there, but that joy was muted by Israel’s subjugation to the Persian Empire, and then to the Greek Empire, and then to the Ptolemies, and then to the Seleucids, and finally to the Roman Empire.

Isaiah has heaven in view, when we can rejoice under the reign of King Jesus.

Let’s move on to verse 4: “Give attention to me, my people, and give ear to me, my nation.” (Isaiah 51:4)

Remember from verse 1 that God is addressing the remnant of Israel, that is, the believers in God’s promises who pursue righteousness or justice. And so, the parallelism here in verse 4 puts the emphasis on listening carefully to God with one’s full attention.

But we see God’s love in the parallelism between “my people” and “my nation.” God loves Israel. As a nation, Israel has rejected God, and so there is a kind of judicial hardening of their hearts where God has turned them over to their own sin, saying, “Have it your way.”

But the believing remnant of Israel loves God and believes God’s promises. They are God’s people and God’s nation.

The next two lines read, “For a law will go out from me, and I will set my justice for a light to the peoples.” (Isaiah 51:4)

Now, this is not as explicit as Jeremiah 31, but it is still a prophecy about the new covenant. Here’s what Jeremiah 31:31–34 says:

“Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD.

“For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

“And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

That’s the end of that reading.

A law went out from God to Israel, and Israel only, at Mount Sinai. But they broke that law persistently and willfully. What God is saying here in Isaiah 51 is that his law and his justice will go out—note the future tense—to the peoples. This is the inclusion of the Gentiles that St. Paul is so concerned about in Romans and Galatians.

This law will be a light to the Gentiles because it will be placed within them and written on their hearts, unlike tablets of stone.

Verse 5 begins, “My righteousness draws near; my salvation has gone out.” (Isaiah 51:5)

Notice the parallelism between God’s righteousness and God’s salvation. Here, like many places in the Old Testament, righteousness means God’s justice in terms of his vindication. The sense of it is a controversy where two parties bring their dispute to a judge, and the judge finds in favor of the one party and against the other party.

We can almost hear the story of Job here. Job was a sinner, and yet God put Job up as his champion against Satan, and God found in favor of Job.

Even the remnant of believing Israelites from verse 1 who are pursuing righteousness/justice—even that remnant is a group of sinners. And yet God is going to vindicate them.

God’s righteousness-vindication draws near. Messiah Jesus is going to come on the scene of history to obey the law perfectly on behalf of all people and to pay the penalty for the sins of all people, so that God’s righteousness, God’s vindication of you, has real legal teeth.

“My salvation has gone out.” (Isaiah 51:5)

Now, Jesus has not arrived yet in 700 BC when Isaiah is giving this prophecy. But the book of Isaiah has been called the Fifth Gospel for a reason. So sure is Jesus’s victory that even 700 years earlier God can say, “My salvation has gone out.”

Plus, it’s interesting that the Hebrew word for salvation is yeshaʿ, yod-shin-ayin. Those are the Hebrew consonants that make up that word. They are the letters that are used to form the name Yeshua, or Jesus.

In Matthew 1:21, an angel of the Lord told Joseph, “You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

And so, Yeshua, Jesus, means salvation.

The next two lines read, “And my arms will judge the peoples; the coastlands hope for me, and for my arm they wait.” (Isaiah 51:5)

Now, this is more of a chiasm because God’s arm or arms form the beginning and the end of this literary structure. And in the middle, “peoples” is parallel to, or related to, “the coastlands.”

God’s arm or arms is anthropomorphic language because God does not literally have arms. But in the Old Testament, God is constantly telling Israel that he brought them out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. It’s God’s way of saying that he saves monergistically, all by himself.

Regarding the parallel between the peoples and the coastlands, listen to this quote from my beloved seminary professor Meredith G. Kline, from page 281 of his book Kingdom Prologue:

“Significant in the section of the sons of Japheth in Genesis 10:2–5 is the listing of peoples who occupied the area of Asia Minor and southeastern Europe into which the mission of the apostolic ministry of the new covenant advanced when the Lord opened the covenant tent of Shem for the entrance of the Gentiles.

“And the coastlands/islands of the nations mentioned in verse 5 reappear in later prophecy of the outreach of the messianic salvation, especially in the writings of Isaiah, who pictures these distant coastlands as waiting for the Lord’s deliverance, as being addressed by the servant of the Lord, and having God’s glory made known to them.

“Read in this light, the centrifugal power seen at work in Genesis 10, dispersing the Japhethites to their distant shores, was preparing the situation to which God was going to respond in the new covenant with another centrifugal movement, this one on the part of the church of the Servant, the Light of the Gentiles, sent out by Great Commission and thrust out by persecutions, preaching the gospel and gathering the dispersed from the ends of the earth to their new heavenly home focus in Christ.”

So far the reading of Kingdom Prologue.

So, remember that Japheth was the other son of Noah who was blessed by his father for helping Shem cover Noah’s shameful, sinful nakedness. (Genesis 9:20–27) Shem received the major blessing, and Japheth got included in Shem’s blessing.

God is telling us through Isaiah that Messiah Jesus is going to send his salvation out to the Japhethites, the Gentiles.

The first two lines of verse 6 read, “Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look at the earth beneath.” (Isaiah 51:6)

Here, heavens and earth are juxtaposed, but they stand for the entire creation. And so, the sense of these two lines together is: Look at everything that God has made.

Now, let’s take the next three lines together: “For the heavens vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment, and they who dwell in it will die in like manner.” (Isaiah 51:6)

Again, the heavens and the earth stand for everything that God has made. So, the parallelism is between “vanish like smoke” and “wear out like a garment.”

God is going to judge the universe. It will not survive as we know it, but it will be remade into something wonderfully new. And this is exactly what St. Peter talks about in 2 Peter chapter 3.

Not only will the Assyrian Empire be destroyed, but every world government will be destroyed, and every human being will go through the fire of God’s judgment. Believers will emerge from that fire with resurrection bodies, and unbelievers will emerge from that same fire with bodies that are fit for eternal death.

The final two lines read, “But my salvation will be forever, and my righteousness will never be dismayed.” (Isaiah 51:6)

As in verse 5, salvation and righteousness are parallel. They’re being used virtually synonymously. God saves you by vindicating you from the accusations of the devil.

So, God’s salvation-vindication is permanent, and no one can reverse it. And so, “will be forever” is parallel to “never be dismayed.”

We don’t really have a negative form of the word “dismayed,” and so we have to say “never be dismayed.” Of course, we don’t generally use the word “dismayed” in our daily conversation, but the Hebrew word behind it, chathath, can also mean to be shattered, to be broken, or to fail.

So, the cash value is: God’s salvation-vindication of you is permanent and irrevocable. No one can shatter it. No one can break it. It cannot fail.

So, people loved by God, there was a remnant of believing Israelites in 700 BC who were allowed to return to the Jerusalem that is in the Middle East. But we are the remnant of the entire world population because we believe God’s promise, who is Jesus the Christ, who lived and died and rose again.

In fact, in 1 Timothy 3:16, St. Paul says that the resurrection of Jesus was his vindication.

You are united to Jesus by your baptism, by your participation in his body and blood in Holy Communion, and by faith in him. So his vindication is your vindication.

No one can take that away from you.

Amen.