Isaiah_29

Isaiah 28 alerted us to God’s “strange work” (28:21). Sometimes God seems to act out of character. Isaiah 29 now tells us more about his strange work—not his absurd work, not his hateful work, but his surprising methods with us.

Isaiah 29:1-8 (ESV)
¹  Ah, Ariel, Ariel, the city where David encamped! Add year to year; let the feasts run their round.
²  Yet I will distress Ariel, and there shall be moaning and lamentation, and she shall be to me like an Ariel.
³  And I will encamp against you all around, and will besiege you with towers and I will raise siegeworks against you.
⁴  And you will be brought low; from the earth you shall speak, and from the dust your speech will be bowed down; your voice shall come from the ground like the voice of a ghost, and from the dust your speech shall whisper.
⁵  But the multitude of your foreign foes shall be like small dust, and the multitude of the ruthless like passing chaff. And in an instant, suddenly,
⁶  you will be visited by the LORD of hosts with thunder and with earthquake and great noise, with whirlwind and tempest, and the flame of a devouring fire.
⁷  And the multitude of all the nations that fight against Ariel, all that fight against her and her stronghold and distress her, shall be like a dream, a vision of the night.
⁸  As when a hungry man dreams, and behold, he is eating and awakes with his hunger not satisfied, or as when a thirsty man dreams, and behold, he is drinking and awakes faint, with his thirst not quenched, so shall the multitude of all the nations be that fight against Mount Zion.

V.1-  Isaiah is addressing Jerusalem and called it “Ariel” (Alter Hearth”).  Alter Hearth would be the top of the stone surface where fire consumed the substitutionary sacrifice.  This is a sarcastic remark to tell them to carry on with their religious routine, but it is getting you nowhere.

Problem:  Jerusalem does not see her privilege and peril.  God has a fiery personality, not erratic but holy.  The only refuge from his holy wrath is his holy love in Christ, our substitute on the alter.  Bottom Line:  The only escape there is from God is in God.

These people in Jerusalem are impervious to the heat of his anger as they neither tremble nor rejoice in God’s presence for they go through the motions of worship, but they are wasting their time as their hearts are far removed from God.

V.3 – “I will encamp against you…”  God allows their enemy to besiege them showing that He is judging them – listen and wake up.

Yield to the victory of God. Let him win. In your defeat, God will lift from your heart that old lust for control, and you will be free.  

When we are under siege it is God that we must reckon with.
Romans 8:26-27 (ESV)
²⁶  Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groaning’s too deep for words.
²⁷  And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

V.5 – “the multitude of your foreign foes shall be like small dust,…”

V.6 – these are spoken in ‘future tense’ as it is what God will do in the near future.  Isaiah is showing us what God is like.  He is a great force!

V.6 “visited…with thunder & with earthquake and great noise,”  –   God’s visible power shown via a thunderstorm, earthquake, and fire as God attacks the enemy of his people creating an astonishing reversal of the people‘s hopeless situation. 

Time Frame:  701bc with Sennaherib’s besieged the city…   In this area of time God   Jerusalem should learn that God is able to protect them, but they turn it into “Zion Theology”.

Yes, the alter is His, but God is not obligated to protect a sinful place.  For Jerusalem will become a place of slaughter and burning.

605BC (Daniel & people taken to Babylon) – 586 BC with complete ruin.

725BC was the year Jonah went to Nineveh.  – 612-608BC – Babylon conquers and destroys Nineveh.

562BC – 9/6/605BC – Reign of Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon.

From 605 – 586 BC – four invasions and deportations of Jews in Jerusalem by Babylon…

V.7 – “many enemies” or “the hordes of the nations”   (701BC) – God comes and delivers…

One MIGHT consider the ultimate time of God coming described in
Revelation 20:8-9 (ESV)
⁸  and will come out to deceive the nations that are at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them for battle; their number is like the sand of the sea.
⁹  And they marched up over the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city, but fire came down from heaven and consumed them,

Read Ps. 48 “God is the Lord…”  Psalm 48:1-14 (ESV)
¹  Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised in the city of our God! His holy mountain,
²  beautiful in elevation, is the joy of all the earth, Mount Zion, in the far north, the city of the great King.
³  Within her citadels God has made himself known as a fortress.
⁴  For behold, the kings assembled; they came on together.
⁵  As soon as they saw it, they were astounded; they were in panic; they took to flight.
⁶  Trembling took hold of them there, anguish as of a woman in labor.
⁷  By the east wind you shattered the ships of Tarshish.
⁸  As we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the LORD of hosts, in the city of our God, which God will establish forever. Selah
⁹  We have thought on your steadfast love, O God, in the midst of your temple.
¹⁰  As your name, O God, so your praise reaches to the ends of the earth. Your right hand is filled with righteousness.
¹¹  Let Mount Zion be glad! Let the daughters of Judah rejoice because of your judgments!
¹²  Walk about Zion, go around her, number her towers,
¹³  consider well her ramparts, go through her citadels, that you may tell the next generation
¹⁴  that this is God, our God forever and ever. He will guide us forever.

1. 9-10 – Astonishment

Isaiah 29:9-10 (ESV)
⁹  Astonish yourselves and be astonished; blind yourselves and be blind! Be drunk, but not with wine; stagger, but not with strong drink!
¹⁰  For the LORD has poured out upon you a spirit of deep sleep, and has closed your eyes (the prophets), and covered your heads (the seers).

Did God actually make them in a state of ‘sleep’?  But how did he do it?  He did it by giving them ‘light’ or instructions/directions and as He did this they continued to reject His directives/guidance.  They would not accept the truth.  They could not see or accept the warnings and were blind.  This is the way God puts people to sleep and the way He reveals that they are blind.  The prophets and princes of that day did not anticipate this deliverance from God.  They were as blinded as the enemies that God used at this time.

Quote: V. McGee:  This is the present–day attitude of many church leaders and preachers. I have heard seminary professors and ministers say, “Well, you know, the Book of Revelation is a sealed book. Nobody can understand it.” Those who insist that Revelation is a sealed book and that we are not supposed to understand it are saying exactly what the people in Isaiah’s day were saying about prophecy. Or, people today will say that they are too busy, that they don’t have time to study the Word of God. All kinds of excuses are offered by Christians for their own ignorance of the Scriptures.
The title “Revelation” is from the Greek word “apocalypse” that means ‘unveiled’.  God removed the seal from the book so it can be understood.  However, one needs the understanding of the other sixty-five books in the Bible in order to understand it.

That is what they were saying in Isaiah’s day. God will judge you for that kind of thinking because when He gives light and you will not open your eyes, you become blind to the light.  Read:  Revelation 1:3 and 2:20….

Revelation 1:3 (ESV)
³  Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near.

Revelation 2:20 (ESV)
²⁰  But I have this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols.

The inaugural vision of Isaiah’s prophetic ministry made him aware that as he declared the word of God, many of his hearers—far from being enlightened and coming out of sin-induced blindness into the full light of God—would simply shut their eyes to the truth (cf. 6:9–10). This theme of darkness and light has already received one major exposition in the prophecies (Isa. 8:16-9:7). ^[1]  (Quote: Expositor’s Bible Commentary)

Chapter 28 told about the spiritual blindness of the drunken religious leaders.  Here the theme is repeated showing the illusion they maintained.  (Zion Theology)   – A hanging on to man’s concept of what they consider to be God’s position to maintain His throne (alter).   Themes as ‘blindness’, ‘drunkenness’, and ‘sleep’, develops a picture of total inadequacy in the realm of spiritual leadership.. (v.9-10).

Will see in V.11-12 that Isaiah’s vision was a closed book to the people of Jerusalem.  It would be as a  Mystery of God to them.

Isaiah 29:11-12 (ESV)
¹¹  And the vision of all this has become to you like the words of a book that is sealed. When men give it to one who can read, saying, “Read this,” he says, “I cannot, for it is sealed.”
¹²  And when they give the book to one who cannot read, saying, “Read this,” he says, “I cannot read.”

“sealed”  The God reveals His truth to His people.  The leaders of that day were not His and thus were not able to see into the book.  A religious leader or another would be removed further still from understanding.

Isaiah 29:13-14 (ESV)
¹³  And the Lord said: “Because this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment taught by men,
¹⁴  therefore, behold, I will again do wonderful things with this people, with wonder upon wonder; and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the discernment of their discerning men shall be hidden.”

Without spiritual insight – what then takes over?  “It is Traditionalism.”  (Seen in the various churches that are steeped in tradition, not spiritual understanding or growth.)

Quote: “expositor’s Bible Commentary:”

The spiritual blindness of vv.9–12 is an appropriate partner of the externalism and traditionalism of v.13. So often these qualities are associated in godless religion. In 1:15 the God of Israel rejected prayers that were offered in a formalistic spirit. Here the spiritual condition is diagnosed and found to be malign indeed. Verse 13 is quoted by our Lord in Matthew 15:9 with reference to the Pharisees. The spiritual parallel is very striking. In both cases wrong teaching was based on a mishandling of God’s true revelation, the sacrificial regulations, and the Mosaic Law as a whole respectively. In each case tradition allied to bad theology resulted in a mishandling of Scripture, and in each the result was a self-justifying complacency in the presence of the most holy God. “Rules taught by men” would apply, of course, not to the Levitical teaching itself, but to the way it was applied by the priests. Human nature does not change through the years but finds different religious as well as nonreligious expressions of its fundamental rebellion against God.

The prophet suggested that such people have a completely illogical view of God. With out doubt total depravity so affects the mind that men and women can no longer think God’s thoughts after him in any adequate way.

… The Assyrian too had boasted of his independence from this sovereign God (10:15).

Paul quotes V.14- ¹⁴  therefore, behold, I will again do wonderful things with this people, with wonder upon wonder; and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the discernment of their discerning men shall be hidden.”

– in: 1 Corinthians 1:19 (ESV)
¹⁹  For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”

McGee quote:
If you had lived in Isaiah’s day, you would have wondered what Isaiah really meant, because the people were going to the temple. It was crowded—anytime a sacrifice was offered you would find people there. There was a place for the men, a court for the women, and a court for the Gentiles. Why was God finding fault with these people? They were all coming to church, but they went through all of the ritual with their mouths. It was as if they could say the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed, but it did not mean anything to them. They did not believe what they were saying; they did not accept God’s Word. God said that their hearts were far from Him. That is the reason He judged them, and that is the reason He is going to judge us today.

The curse of the world today is religion. God would like you to get rid of religion and come to Christ. Religion is the greatest barrier for many people today. I made that statement to a man not long ago. Immediately he countered by saying, “I want you to know, Dr. McGee, that I am a religious man. I am religious by nature.” He had a fallen nature, but he had a religious nature. I think I shocked him when I told him that he ought to get rid of his religion and that I was not a religious man. He said, “I cannot believe that there is a preacher who is not religious. If you are not religious, what are you then?” I told him that I am a sinner who came to Christ and that I have a personal relationship with Him today. It is not a religion but a relationship. Do you have Christ, or don’t you? That is the important thing.

V.15-16 – ¹⁵  Ah, you who hide deep from the LORD your counsel, whose deeds are in the dark, and who say, “Who sees us? Who knows us?”   ¹⁶  You turn things upside down! Shall the potter be regarded as the clay, that the thing made should say of its maker, “He did not make me”; or the thing formed say of him who formed it, “He has no understanding”?

This chapter contained two woes because (1) the people act as if God does not see or know, and (2) they act as if they are getting by with it.

Isaiah 29:17-24 (ESV)
¹⁷  Is it not yet a very little while until Lebanon shall be turned into a fruitful field, and the fruitful field shall be regarded as a forest?
¹⁸  In that day the deaf shall hear the words of a book, and out of their gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind shall see.
¹⁹  The meek shall obtain fresh joy in the LORD, and the poor among mankind shall exult in the Holy One of Israel.
²⁰  For the ruthless shall come to nothing and the scoffer cease, and all who watch to do evil shall be cut off,
²¹  who by a word make a man out to be an offender, and lay a snare for him who reproves in the gate, and with an empty plea turn aside him who is in the right.
²²  Therefore thus says the LORD, who redeemed Abraham, concerning the house of Jacob: “Jacob shall no more be ashamed, no more shall his face grow pale.
²³  For when he sees his children, the work of my hands, in his midst, they will sanctify my name; they will sanctify the Holy One of Jacob and will stand in awe of the God of Israel.
²⁴  And those who go astray in spirit will come to understanding, and those who murmur will accept instruction.”

Now we see into the future for there will be a time when there will be honor and glory in Jerusalem and in the land.   The deaf are going to hear, and the blind will see.

That was then and is today a ‘willful blindness’ and with that they will not understand the promises of God.  Yet in the “millennium” day they will see what God has done.

^[1] Grogan, G. W. (1986). Isaiah. In F. E. Gaebelein (Ed.), The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel (Vol. 6, p. 188). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House.