Isaiah 2 BLESSING IS COMING, BUT FIRST --- In chapter two the second sermon of Isaiah which is still given in poetic form, is not a vision which he saw like the first chapter, but is a specific word from the Lord to His servant regarding the future of the people of Israel. Throughout the book of Isaiah there are a number of different themes used by the Spirit of God to seek to awaken His careless people to their condition before the Lord and why punishment and judgment came upon them. A Holy God wants fellowship with holy people. When sin comes in among His people, He will punish them for their sin. Twenty-eight times in the book “salvation” is spoken of in many of its different aspects. The Messiah of Israel is promised as the coming Sovereign who will rule over His people, and over all the nations of the earth in peace and righteousness. Hope motivates all of us when we are in hard times and situations, so to His people God promises comfort and deliverance in the future when Christ comes.
In this chapter we see God’s goal for His people. He wants them to know experimentally and personally, spiritual victory, and peace that comes when He is supreme in the lives of His people. This is what He wants from us in our day. It should be foreign to a child of God to live in spiritual defeat and despair. The cause of that state of mind is our minds get turned off of our Lord Jesus Christ to the problems of life, the deceptive hope of success in this world, and a lack of faith in our Lord. When the people of God are in fellowship together in gathered companies to Him, and in His name, there is a strength and security that is not taken away by the affairs and the state of the world around us. We are renewed weekly when we gather unto Him and join our voices, hearts and minds in worship and praise to Him. When we read the scriptures together and discuss among ourselves the truths contained in God’s word, all the compromises, difficulties and deception that goes on around us in the name of success, pleasure and religion, fades into insignificance. The promises of God that are “Yea and Amen,” remain unchanged, and our faith is strengthened.
After the look ahead Isaiah gives into the future day of blessing, when the goals of the Lord will be real and established, and there is true peace on earth and good will to men, he gave a frank open challenge to the people of Israel and Judah as to what is going to happen to them first. Sadly, many people do not want to accept the fact that there is severe punishment for sin. People get so used to sin and evil, that they are willing to overlook its effects on humanity and the world in general, and with a tolerant attitude, indicate they don’t think sin is all that bad. So, humans kill their unborn children, while protecting animals as if they are equal in value to people who have been made in the image of God. The prophet made plain the fact that judgment on sin will come before peace comes under the rule of the Messiah.
The people of Israel and Judah were ripe for judgment. They were being adversely influenced by the religions of idol worshiping people and were attracted to the licenscious lifestyle of idolatry. That happens today as people add various attractions to what is supposed to be a spiritual exercise of worship and praise to the Lord. The people of Israel were yielding to the ideas of the world system and were ignoring the unchanging laws of God. Materialism had become as big a problem to them as it is to the world today. People now, live for what they can get, thinking they will find some satisfaction in “things” rather than in a relationship with the Lord. The heathen paganism of the Assyrian empire in that day was like the paganism of our day and our country. Punishment for sin was promised then, and it will not escape us either.
Idol worship insults God by demeaning the Creator when people worship that which is created instead of the Creator of all things. Idol worship keeps us from knowing and serving God when we put our confidence in anything else. Idol worship causes us to rely on our own efforts to please our basic need of spiritual life rather than on putting our faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Idols are anything that takes the place of God in one’s life. What I think about most, may be the idol to which I stand in awe and want to please. The focus of attention in the activities in which I daily am engaged, can be the idol that will keep me from happy fellowship with my Lord.
Before the blessings of the coming kingdom can be experienced, there will come “the day of the Lord.” The coming “day of the Lord,” is mentioned four times in the book of Isaiah as a warning that there will be judgment on some people from which there will be no escape. At the same time, blessing will come as a result of it to others. The nation of Israel was ripe for judgment at the time of Isaiah’s writing. The high and mighty; the proud and arrogant; the successful and pleasure-seeking people were all going to be brought down. The pride of man will always be brought low by those who dread the appearing of our Lord Jesus. People do not want Him to interfere with their lives today and try to convince themselves that there is nothing beyond the grave, nor a God who will judge them for their sin.
The “cedars” and “oaks” of leadership in society and the pride of nations will be humbled in the day of the Lord. The pleasure seekers who travel the world looking for new experiences and vistas to try to get some happiness will be humbled as well. Arrogant philosophers and false teachers who try to explain away the fact of God and the Person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ will be brought down before Him and will confess that “Jesus Christ is Lord.” The moral, spiritual and physical weakness of mankind will be exposed, and all who rejected the Savior will be humbled and look for a place to hide. The false religionists who have ornate idols of gold and silver, and who have formed entertaining things in the name of religion, so that God can be made “relevant” to people, will run from the presence of the Lord and the glory of His Person.
When the Lord returns to reign on earth, all that men have gloried in of their own making and their own imaginations, will be shown for what it really is – a temporary effort of people to exalt themselves and be their own god, and worship themselves in their own eyes. Those who fall for the deception of the antichrist, will find that he too only has “breathe in his nostrils.” Even though the world will exalt him for awhile and he will exalt himself, he will be of no lasting account. He is powerless before our Lord Jesus Christ. Our Lord alone has “all power in heaven and in earth.”
Lasting rest and peace only can, and will, come from our Lord. So, it is right to “Cease from man…”; stop trusting in human efforts and in the leadership of men who will eventually fail. The return of the Lord will bring an end to the man of sin and his self-exalting leadership. He will be cast into the everlasting burnings with the false religious leader and ultimately the devil who controlled them, will be in the lake of fire with them and all who followed them. The mortality of humanity limits any feeble power to be unreliable, unstable, shortsighted and selfish. Such ambition of human beings to exalt themselves will not last, will fail, and will be judged.
As those who know the Lord Jesus Christ as personal Savior, our trust is in the Eternal, Almighty God who knows all, is everywhere and has all power forever and ever. “Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh the flesh his arm, and who heart departeth from the Lord.”