Isaiah 17 - The Work of Your Hands

An oracle concerning Damascus. Behold, Damascus will cease to be a city and will become a heap of ruins. 2 The cities of Aroer are deserted; they will be for flocks, which will lie down, and none will make them afraid. 3 The fortress will disappear from Ephraim, and the kingdom from Damascus; and the remnant of Syria will be like the glory of the children of Israel, declares the Lord of hosts. 4 And in that day the glory of Jacob will be brought low, and the fat of his flesh will grow lean. 5 And it shall be as when the reaper gathers standing grain and his arm harvests the ears, and as when one gleans the ears of grain in the Valley of Rephaim. 6 Gleanings will be left in it, as when an olive tree is beaten— two or three berries in the top of the highest bough, four or five on the branches of a fruit tree, declares the Lord God of Israel. 7 In that day man will look to his Maker, and his eyes will look on the Holy One of Israel. 8 He will not look to the altars, the work of his hands, and he will not look on what his own fingers have made, either the Asherim or the altars of incense. 9 In that day their strong cities will be like the deserted places of the wooded heights and the hilltops, which they deserted because of the children of Israel, and there will be desolation. 10 For you have forgotten the God of your salvation and have not remembered the Rock of your refuge; therefore, though you plant pleasant plants and sow the vine-branch of a stranger, 11 though you make them grow on the day that you plant them, and make them blossom in the morning that you sow, yet the harvest will flee away in a day of grief and incurable pain. 12 Ah, the thunder of many peoples; they thunder like the thundering of the sea! Ah, the roar of nations; they roar like the roaring of mighty waters! 13 The nations roar like the roaring of many waters, but he will rebuke them, and they will flee far away, chased like chaff on the mountains before the wind and whirling dust before the storm. 14 At evening time, behold, terror! Before morning, they are no more! This is the portion of those who loot us, and the lot of those who plunder us.

Target Date: Sunday, 19 May 2024

Word Study/ Translation Notes:

10 – God of your salvation - literally ‘God of your salvation’. In this idiom ‘salvation’ is not an occasional act but a constant attribute: he is a ‘saving God’, and the possessive ‘your saving God’ means that this attribute is ever available and active for his people.

11 – flee away - נֵד nêd, nade; from 5110 in the sense of piling up; a mound, i.e. wave:— heap.

i.e. - The harvest made upon the costly vines and plants you have labored over will not be carefully picked, sorted, and used for food; it will rot in a heap, spoiled and useless to anyone.

11 – grief - חָלָה châlâh, khaw-law’; a prim. root [comp. 2342, 2470, 2490]; prop. to be rubbed or worn; hence, (fig.) to be weak, sick, afflicted; or (caus.) to grieve, make sick; also to stroke (in flattering), entreat:— beseech, (be) diseased, (put to) grief, be grieved, (be) grievous, infirmity, intreat, lay to, put to pain, × pray, make prayer, be (fall, make) sick, sore, be sorry, make suit (× supplication), woman in travail, be (become) weak, be wounded.

The action of this verb implies a repetitive injury, a rubbing, scraping, wearing away that causes constant pain, like the chafing of a shoe or clothing that cannot be changed or escaped.

11 – incurable - אָנַשׁ ˒ânash, aw-nash’; a prim. root; to be frail, feeble, or (fig.) melancholy:— desperate (-ly wicked), incurable, sick, woeful.

A good translation, since this is a feebleness or affliction that will not be cured. From the point of view of the sufferer, it is entirely incurable; although God is capable of curing the affliction, it is He himself who has caused it.

11 – pain - כְּאֵב ke˒êb, keh-abe’; from 3510; suffering (phys. or ment.), adversity:— grief, pain, sorrow.

Suffering seems to be the common thread, even agony. It is not simply writhing pain, although it could be used in that way; in this passage, it is much more the agony of the apostate, who finds he has no other hope than the One he has turned his back on.

Psalm 73:25-26 – (of Asaph) Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. 26 My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

Thoughts on the Passage:

This passage speaks to both Damascus and Ephraim.

It is a much more terrible thing than we often realize today to mix the devotion to God with our worldly efforts to merit reward from God.

Galatians 3:1-6 - O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. 2 Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? 3 Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? 4 Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? 5 Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith— 6 just as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”?

3 – Note the difference in the effect of the promised judgment: Israel will lose its security at this time and Syria, its kingdom.

The glory of Israel is diminished greatly, but the very life of Syria, and its dominance, is forfeit.

3 – the fortress will disappear – not only the security of the nation that has been compromised, but the defense of the Almighty God, the Rock and Refuge (v.10), will be removed form among them.

3 - for when we are blinded by our prosperity, we flatter ourselves, and cannot hear the voice of God. It therefore becomes necessary to remove these obstructions, that we may perceive our helplessness, as was the case with the Israelites, who were bereft of their aid after Syria had been destroyed.

4 – Israel is depicted as wasting away, as by cancer, consumption or old age. It is a long-developing condition, not sudden, like Syria, who was conquered in his strength.

Hosea 5:11-14 - Ephraim is oppressed, crushed in judgment, because he was determined to go after filth. 12 But I am like a moth to Ephraim, and like dry rot to the house of Judah. 13 When Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah his wound, then Ephraim went to Assyria, and sent to the great king. But he is not able to cure you or heal your wound. 14 For I will be like a lion to Ephraim, and like a young lion to the house of Judah. I, even I, will tear and go away; I will carry off, and no one shall rescue.

4-6 – Those left after God’s judgment are not left because of their innate goodness or worthiness. Nowhere does God declare that it is the most faithful who will be spared in the end – not the biggest fruit, the ripest, the choicest, or anything of the sort.

6 – God’s mercy alone leaves some, depending entirely on His sovereign will. These are the gleanings, the unripe, the unfallen, or those who were simply unreached by the invader prior to the exercise of God’s renewed mercy.

The remnant in both cases is the result of God’s sovereign election and nothing else.

This is not an analog of the Wheat and the Tares parable: this is the utter shaking of the tree to detach all its fruit, the tempest of God ruining the work of men’s hands.

5-6 – Although the conqueror will desire to kill and destroy even the gleanings in his avarice, God promises some will be left.

declares the Lord God of Israel.

M. Henry – The most desolating judgments in this world are short of the last judgment, which shall be universal and which none shall escape.

5 - he employs the metaphor of a harvest because the people, trusting to their great number, dreaded nothing; but as the reapers are not terrified by the large quantity of the corn, so he declares that their vast number will not prevent God from utterly destroying them.

7-8 – The result of His mercy to the remnant is salvation from among them. It is not the faithful or the good who were preserved; it is from the remnant of the wicked that some will be brought to God.

They will be able to return because of God’s prior favor on them, His word through the Law and the Prophets.

In striking everything else in which they placed their trust, He brought their eyes to Himself.

10 – This is the great sin of Israel – they have forgotten the God who saves.

Teachings:

God must be trusted completely. Trusting in your works along with Him will bring judgment.

Applications:

We must fear such a holy God who will judge with perfect righteousness and from whom will no flesh be hidden.

We must handle holy things with the utmost care.

We must fear Him for His power and holiness.

For believers, it is the fear of the good Father, who will chastise His beloved sons.

For unbelievers, it is the fear of the inescapable Tyrant of creation who is sovereign, holy, and unforgiving in that He provides no escape from His wrath save through Jesus Christ.

For the Christian:

Be wary of anyone who would bring the church in alignment with their quest for power.

Be wary of placing your trust in any work of your own hands.

For the Backslidden:

For the Unconverted:

Sermon Text:

This morning we will consider the teaching of the word of God in the 17th chapter of Isaiah.

It begins with the heading in the text: An oracle concerning Damascus.

But from a very high level, it might appear that it amounts to much the same message as the other oracles we have seen against the nations around Judah: God’s judgment is coming.

In fact, I am certain for many people, that when they come to this section of Isaiah, or the corresponding sections in the other prophetic books, where there is one judgment pronounced after another, it is easy to become impatient with them.

We like to summarize things, to see the bottom line, and for many of these chapters, it amounts to the same thing: God is going to judge you.

Even preachers can be guilty of believing the only distinction in the teaching of these chapters is the geographic area, their particular sins, and the poetic method God uses to describe their destruction.

Years ago, I lived in Kansas, and many of my neighbors seemed to be upset at a term used to describe our state: “flyover country”.

The idea was that Kansas was, for many, just a state you flew over to get from one important place to another important place, like flying from California to Washington, DC or New York City.

It is easy, if we are not careful, to relegate vast sections of God’s word to the status of “flyover verses”.

Passages it is ok to zone out on, or to ignore the details of because “we got the gist of it”.

Passages we endure because they lie between the Emmanuel chapters and the Suffering Servant chapters – the important stuff.

But we must be careful thinking in this way because the Holy Spirit has not included one extraneous word in this holy Book.

Not one unnecessary description, not one irrelevant jot or tittle.

If anything, there are vast things about our great God that are not included in here simply because, as John tells us at the end of his gospel account:

John 21:25 - Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.

And in this, he is just talking about a single short lifetime of Jesus Christ; how much more could be written about the eternal God?

We should be ravenous for more, knowing that what has been revealed is an exceedingly small portion of the fullness of God.

Every word is precious; every description an opportunity to mine the depths of God’s revelation.

But we are confident that we have in this Bible a complete account of everything we NEED to know:

2 Peter 1:3-4 - His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, 4 by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises

The Bible gives us that knowledge; it delivers to us His great and precious promises.

If anything, rather than letting our eyes glaze over when we read another account of judgment, we must train ourselves to ask: “Why is this passage included? What does it reveal about God and His work that had not been included in the others?”

Now certainly the Bible does teach the same things in multiple places; we count on that.

We use that to make sure we are not inventing a doctrine out of a single verse or phrase because we have misunderstood.

We let the plain teaching of Scripture illuminate the more difficult passages.

But in passages like our text today, we can find things in here that set it apart from the other prophecies of judgment in this section of Isaiah.

So let’s begin to take a look.

The most obvious thing, and the thing that drives this passage, is the fact that even though the prophecy is labeled as an oracle against Damascus, from verse 2 on, it is talking about not only Syria, but “Ephraim”, the northern kingdom of Israel.

That is one reason these difficult place names are important:

We see Damascus in verse 1, Aroer, which is a city on the border between Israel and Damascus at this time (probably owned by Israel), and then Ephraim, the heartland of the kingdom of Israel, where Samaria was.

So we see a progression, a line drawn from Damascus all the way to, in verse 6, the Valley of Rephaim, which was the breadbasket of Israel.

And what is more, much of the prophecy here is for Israel, not for Damascus.

I have told you with the other prophecies we have looked at that the nation they are about might never have heard these words.

But Israel, Ephraim, may very well HAVE heard it.

God sent them prophets: Elijah, Elisha, Amos, and Hosea at the very least.

So we have to ask: why did Israel not rate their own prophecy here, or at least to be the “name” at the top of this one?

Why were they just lumped in with Damascus, kind of like they were the junior partner in some unholy alliance?

Because that is EXACTLY what they were – the smaller, weaker nation that Syria had invited to ally with them in a war against Judah.

If you want to read about it, some information about it can be found in 2 Chronicles 28 and 2 Kings 16.

It was this invasion of Judah, you may remember, that caused such fear for King Ahaz in the “Emmanuel” chapters (7-8) that we looked at last Christmas.

The king of Damascus had some to the king of Israel offering to be their friend in exchange for invading their brothers in Judah, and they had done it.

They had made this unholy alliance.

And this is one of the great reasons God had declared to them through Hosea:

you are not my people, and I am not your God.” – Hosea 1:9

So here in Isaiah, they got a message from God, but it was sent to them in Syria’s envelope.

These are the people whose ancestors had heard the voice of God shake the mountain,

And now God addresses then in their judgment through their new master, the king of Damascus.

And the doom of each is to receive not only their judgment, but the judgment of the other as well.

It is tempting for us today to say “Is that all? They made an alliance with Damascus, and God is judging them for it?”

Yes.

Some might disagree, arguing that it must have been something else: idolatry or wealth or something else besides having an unholy alliance.

You shall make no covenant with them and their gods. 33 They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against me; for if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.” - Exodus 23:32-33

This is a good place to remind us once again that God is HOLY.

And he calls His people to be holy – a LOT of times:

Leviticus 11:44-45, 19:2, 20:7, 1 Peter 1:16: You shall be holy because I [God] am holy.

Holy means “separated”, set apart. It doesn’t mean “good” or “righteous”. Just SEPARATE.

So we see in Leviticus 20:26, He tells Israel: You shall be holy to me, for I the Lord am holy and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine.

I have looked, but I have found no example of God EVER telling His people, Old Testament or New, to ally themselves with someone who is not His people.

I have LOTS of examples where God forbids it:

Marrying pagans or idolaters (which are the same thing).

Being unequally yoked with unbelievers (2 Corinthians 6:14). This is in marriage or other relationships.

The commands we have already seen today about the other nations in the land.

I could find NOT ONE time God ever even APPROVED of an alliance with someone who is not His.

Preaching, yes. Fellowship, no.

Evangelism, yes. Membership in the church, no.

Tolerance of the sojourner, yes. Inclusion in the assembly, no.

Kindness, yes. Partnership, no.

Brothers and sisters, you are called to be HOLY – set apart.

And I have something that should come as no shock to you: there are unholy, worldly forces all over the place that want to ally with you so they can use you.

And even people who claim to be Christians can be espousing things that threaten to yoke you in an unholy match.

They want the church’s numbers, or our money, or our voting bloc to support their agenda, and they will do everything they can to bring us into alliance with them.

What do they do when the abortion rights people want to lead people astray?

They parade out a “pastor” ally who supports them.

What do the MAGA organizers do?

Print a version of the Bible and ask Christians to open their political meetings with prayer.

Every political debate in our nation attempts to militate or split the “Evangelical vote”.

And now we have “Christian” nationalism – that kind of alliance would have saved many a believer from death in the Roman circus or on Roman crosses.

God does NOT need your political power to rule this nation.

He does not require your aid to build His kingdom. He does that Himself.

He does not call you to align yourself with unbelievers to push through a “Christian” agenda.

And God has won many a “culture war”. But it has ALWAYS been through the penetration of the gospel into individual hearts.

Even the Old Testament revival under Josiah, although it was short-lived, did not come from politics, but from the proclamation of God’s word.

But Israel didn’t heed God’s command. They tied themselves to the great power in their area – mighty Syria.

And God is, in our passage today, declaring His judgment on both peoples in this unholy alliance.

The fortress will disappear from Ephraim, and the kingdom from Damascus; and the remnant of Syria will be like the glory of the children of Israel, declares the Lord of hosts. (3)

Ephraim, Israel, will lose their security, while Syria will lose EVERYTHING.

And those few, that remnant of Syria who are left, will be “like the glory of the children of Israel”. What does that mean?

We might think that the glory of the children of Israel is a good thing. Glory is a good thing, right?

We see in the next verse what that glory is like:

And in that day the glory of Jacob will be brought low, and the fat of his flesh will grow lean. (4)

That glory of Israel that started out so well:

The Red Sea parted, the manna given, the land conquered, King David on the throne…is wasting away in their friendship with the world.

Their glory will be like the fat of the flesh growing lean.

That is not some weight-loss plan – it is the picture of a healthy man losing his health with cancer, or consumption, or old age.

It is a picture of decay, wasting away.

Just like a branch cut away from the vine – shriveling up, drying out, and dying.

They had placed their trust and hope in the power of this world rather than the Power OVER this world.

And so God’s judgment falls, with an adversary to His errant people who see their population and wealth the way a harvester sees a field full of ripe corn – something to be taken in.

And if God didn’t intervene, the Assyrians would have taken every last person and left no remnant at all.

But God promises He will intervene:

Gleanings will be left in it, as when an olive tree is beaten— two or three berries in the top of the highest bough, four or five on the branches of a fruit tree, declares the Lord God of Israel. (6)

Now, very quickly, I want you to notice what God says about these remnants.

He doesn’t tell them that the good or the faithful will be among those left. There may honestly not have been any of those around.

He doesn’t say that those who are left will be the most promising, the ripest, the highest quality.

He says that they will simply be unreached by the invader before God renews his mercy to Israel. Before He cuts off Assyria Himself.

There was nothing special about these remnant fruits UNTIL they were found remaining.

Those who would be left after Assyria’s cruel conquest were no more holy or deserving, no less wicked, than those who had been taken away.

But after they have remained:

In that day man will look to his Maker, and his eyes will look on the Holy One of Israel. (7)

God’s election of these is to bring them out of their darkness into his light.

Not because they were better or more promising, not because God needed anything FROM them, but because they will look to their Maker.

That is important, because in the next verse, we see this contrast:

He will not look to the altars, the work of his hands, and he will not look on what his own fingers have made (8)

A person is saved when they look to THEIR Maker rather than the things they have made, the work of their hands.

Put another way, it is their FAITH in God through Jesus Christ that saves, not their FAITHFULNESS to Christ that does.

They are NOT the same thing.

without faith it is impossible to please [God], for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him. - Hebrews 11:6

Self-righteousness trusts the works of our own hands, the things we have made.

Faith trusts those things which God has wrought for us and in us.

Lastly, we see God summarizing the sin of Israel in this unholy alliance:

For you have forgotten the God of your salvation and have not remembered the Rock of your refuge (10)

In their desire for power, wealth, and security, they had made an alliance that served those covetous things.

And they would lose THEM ALL.

Because God was their Savior, not Damascus.

Because God was their Rock, not the fortresses they built.

Christian, don’t allow your trust in God be compromised by your lust for the things of this world.

Paul told the Galatians the same thing:

Galatians 3:1-6 - O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. 2 Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? 3 Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? 4 Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? 5 Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith— 6 just as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”?

God does not, will not, share your allegiance – to things of this world or to the work of you own hands.

It is the Lord your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear. 14 You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you— 15 for the Lord your God in your midst is a jealous God - Deuteronomy 6:13-15