Isaiah 21 - Fallen, Fallen

The oracle concerning the wilderness of the sea. As whirlwinds in the Negeb sweep on, it comes from the wilderness, from a terrible land. 2 A stern vision is told to me; the traitor betrays, and the destroyer destroys. Go up, O Elam; lay siege, O Media; all the sighing she has caused I bring to an end. 3 Therefore my loins are filled with anguish; pangs have seized me, like the pangs of a woman in labor; I am bowed down so that I cannot hear; I am dismayed so that I cannot see. 4 My heart staggers; horror has appalled me; the twilight I longed for has been turned for me into trembling. 5 They prepare the table, they spread the rugs, they eat, they drink. Arise, O princes; oil the shield! 6 For thus the Lord said to me: “Go, set a watchman; let him announce what he sees. 7 When he sees riders, horsemen in pairs, riders on donkeys, riders on camels, let him listen diligently, very diligently.” 8 Then he who saw cried out: “Upon a watchtower I stand, O Lord, continually by day, and at my post I am stationed whole nights. 9 And behold, here come riders, horsemen in pairs!” And he answered, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon; and all the carved images of her gods he has shattered to the ground.” 10 O my threshed and winnowed one, what I have heard from the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, I announce to you. 11 The oracle concerning Dumah. One is calling to me from Seir, “Watchman, what time of the night? Watchman, what time of the night?” 12 The watchman says: “Morning comes, and also the night. If you will inquire, inquire; come back again.” 3 The oracle concerning Arabia. In the thickets in Arabia you will lodge, O caravans of Dedanites. 14 To the thirsty bring water; meet the fugitive with bread, O inhabitants of the land of Tema. 15 For they have fled from the swords, from the drawn sword, from the bent bow, and from the press of battle. 16 For thus the Lord said to me, “Within a year, according to the years of a hired worker, all the glory of Kedar will come to an end. 17 And the remainder of the archers of the mighty men of the sons of Kedar will be few, for the Lord, the God of Israel, has spoken.”

Target Date: Sunday, 16 June 2024

Thoughts on the Passage:

This passage represents God who weeps over those He judges.

He gave the Law not to make us good, but to bring us, in our abject spiritual poverty, to Christ.

The underlying message of this passage is “Be Saved!” Babylon is fallen, at it is such a tragedy of life, such a spurning of the gospel.

Babylon loved he idols and, thus, excused her sin. She did not cry out to the God who saves.

Salvation is all of faith in Christ, all of grace, all a gift from our holy Creator.

But why would a man follow and obey if there is no threat from the Law?

How can you follow if a single threat remains?

Why would a man follow and obey if there is no promise due to the faithful adherence to the Law?

Because if a promise resulting from faithfulness remains for us to lay hold of, then the curses of the Law are still active as well, and grace does not exist.

So why would they obey?

You mean – why would a person who is freed from their bondage to sin and death? Will they long to return to their bondage if their Beloved stands before them?

The greatest desire of the apostles was not to be holy – that was the MEANS. Their greatest desire was to b reunited with Christ forever.

They longed above all to be with Him again – three years of miracles of God and missteps by them only whetted their appetite for the overwhelming love of Christ to shine eternally on their hearts.

There are teachers today that joyfully proclaim God’s judgement on unbelievers – and they declare that judgment with no concern for the horror and terror of that day.

Isaiah (and the Spirit) weep at the results of the judgment that falls on Babylon, the great whore of the world that leads other nations to her idolatry.

It is not goodness or faithfulness to look forward in glee to God’s judgment of the wicked. It will be a dark day, a terrible day, that our holy God has done EVERYTHING POSSIBLE to allow people to avoid.

But what of those who say He could have called more? Done more?

I do not understand all of God’s purposes, but we can be sure His gospel is meant to call ANY who hear it, and He graciously enables SOME to obey.

But we can also see in Isaiah, Jeremiah, David, and Jesus Himself that He is not unaffected by the judgment that will befall His creatures who remain His enemies.

He needs nothing from them; He gains nothing from their success, obedience, or their destruction. He loves, and that alone is why He sent our all-sufficient Savior.

Look into the hell into which the wicked will go, and know that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, you deserve to go there too.

See the slaughter and humiliation of those who experience our Sovereign’s temporal judgment, and know that they are NO MORE WICKED than you.

See those who reap disastrous consequences of their sin and know that if you got what you deserve, you would also be crushed in those straits.

And know that the only thing that stands between you and them, between their fate and yours, is the unmerited grace of God that is poured out to you in Christ.

God does not love the wicked LESS than you, even if they are estranged from Him and will remain lost to Him for all eternity.

God loves His enemies – if He did not, you would have no hope because you were His enemy also.

God saves the wicked, or else no one would be saved.

God weeps for those who deserve His judgment and receive it.

And so must we.

If we forget the great truth of our complete unworthiness, we will neglect those who are outside God’s church.

We will stand like the Pharisee and walk away from our prayers unchanged.

If we forget our great unworthiness, we will see those who oppose us as our enemies, worthy of God’s wrath.

And forget that, in that moment, we are SIDING with His enemy in the suppression of the gospel of Jesus Christ and of His love.

There are times when I hope the postmillennial vision of the complete rule of Jesus Christ will come to pass in this world, even in our time,

But it will never be through the passing of laws and enforcements of codes.

It will come only by the individual conquest of the gospel as it brings all God’s sheep, those formerly-wicked, into His loving kingdom.

We think the only weeping we should do is for our own sin. We should weep for that, but that is not the only thing.

If we do not weep for those who deserve God’s wrath, even those who oppose and betray us, how will we EVER reach them with His gospel?

How shall we pray for them?

How shall we love them?

How shall we go father than they compel us to go?

How shall they be saved?

Sermon Text:

Have you ever had a dream you tried to tell someone about?

While you were asleep, everything in it made so much sense, but when you started to describe it, you found the story jumped around a lot in your memory and you had to fill in some gaps to make sense of it?

But what you really wanted to get to is how the dream made you FEEL?

Whether it was a nightmare or a comforting dream, the point of you telling it was to describe how your feelings were changed, and to let someone else experience that with you.

It didn’t matter that our dream skipped from a school bus to a duck pond to a space ship landing on the moon – what mattered was how we felt when we awoke.

That was what we are trying to get across.

Now, the passage in front of us today is nothing as fleeting or vaporous as a dream, but it is not as specific as many of the other oracles, “burdens”, from the pen of Isaiah.

It jumps around, it changes places quickly, and none of the elements are fleshed out enough to make a single story.

Those elements are:

V. 1 – the “wilderness of the sea” – a sea of wilderness. This is a picture of the flood plains around Babylon, and in between Babylon and Jerusalem.

Almost as if Isaiah were flying over these, like the first scene in a movie.

V. 5 – a party for the nobles – where they are spreading their rugs, eating and drinking in complete security. But Isaiah cries out “Arise, oil the shield” to them – make ready for battle instead of wasting your time in a party.

And we don’t hear about them again.

V. 6 – A watchman is set up – we don’t know if this is in Jerusalem or in Babylon.

V. 8 – The watchman reports that a great army is coming in triumphant column.

V. 9 – the news – Fallen, fallen – the dust and debris of her great idols litters the ground, as useless as they have ever been.

V. 11 – to the end of the chapter, the aftermath and reports from other places. Constant questions – how long until morning? How long until the dawn?

And so we come to the problem: what are we to learn from this passage? How are we to find the word of the Spirit to us today in this vision?

No doubt, some seek to interpret these pictures in the light of history, whether in the past or in the future.

Historical matches are not hard to find.

Babylon was conquered at least three times in history, the “last” time as the head of the great Chaldean Empire we read about in the books of Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah.

And the great reference to this passage in Revelation 18, with the refrain “Fallen, fallen, is Babylon the great” causes many to think this is simply a reference to the Parousia of Christ, the last days of this present world.

But the problem is that these elements are not distinct enough to state these clearly so we might draw application from them.

In fact, with many of these pictures and scenes, we might make them say almost anything.

Harper Lee, in her “sequel” to To Kill a Mockingbird, chose the title Go Set a Watchman to declare the theme of her story.

And you may remember, Isaiah has already had one oracle for Babylon in chapter 13.

So why is this one here?

And why is the tone of it so very different from the clear proclamation of God’s judgment in chapter 13?

So this morning, I would like to focus on what seems to me the clearest teaching of this chapter – how Isaiah (and the Holy Spirit behind his writing) FELT about this judgment of the city of Babylon.

In verse 2, this vision is described as a “stern vision”.

Only three times in Isaiah is the word “vision” used, and this one is described as “stern”:

It is grievous, hard, rough, fierce.

This is a vision hard to see, hard to think about.

It is tragic, not glorious.

It is terrifying, not comforting.

The destruction of the one empire who, until Rome, will be the greatest enemy of Jerusalem, is a HARD vision.

This great traitor will betray and be betrayed.

This great destroyer will destroy and be destroyed.

All the sighings she caused I will bring to an end.

But see how Isaiah deals with the vision of this destruction:

THEREFORE…

On account of this destruction and judgment and pain.

He does not begin to feel these things until AFTER God declares an end to these great evils of Babylon.

Therefore my loins are filled with anguish; pangs have seized me, like the pangs of a woman in labor; I am bowed down so that I cannot hear; I am dismayed so that I cannot see. 4 My heart staggers; horror has appalled me;

We don’t have to go into each one in detail, treating them as separate symptoms.

This is the picture of someone doubled over in grief, overtaken in mourning.

This is the cry of a mother holding her dead child in her arms.

This is the cry of a father learning his son will not be returning alive from the war.

This is the echo of every grief that this cursed world can deliver to the human heart, bending us and bowing us until we can see and hear nothing but our own cries of grief and pain.

And I want you to understand this morning, if you hear nothing else, that this is God’s grief over the sin and ruin of this world.

It is God’s cry over the destruction sin has wrought on every human heart.

It is the Holy Spirit’s cry of grief over the continuing destruction of sin.

The Holy Spirit, through the apostle Paul, tells us in Ephesians 4:30ff:

do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. 31 Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. 32 Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

Isaiah got a taste of the grief of God over the sin and death of this world, and he declares it to us.

He finally sees the result of that which he had longed for – the destruction of Judah’s enemies:

the twilight I longed for has been turned for me into trembling.

He had looked to the downfall of the enemies of God, the downfall of the wicked, but now he sees the truth…

And WAILS over its execution.

Recall our Lord, when He lamented for Jerusalem:

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! – Luke 13:34

But that wasn’t the only time:

And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, 42 saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. 43 For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side 44 and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.” - Luke 19:41-44

It is also the cry of God through Hosea:

How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? - Hosea 11:8

For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord God; so turn, and live.” – Ezekiel 18:32

Too much of the church has forgotten that truth.

Too many people live or act or believe as if we are the good guys and everyone else are the bad guys.

There are teachers today that joyfully proclaim God’s judgement on unbelievers – and they declare that judgment with no concern for the horror and terror of that day.

Isaiah (and the Spirit) weep at the results of the judgment that falls on Babylon, the great whore of the world that leads other nations to her idolatry.

It is not goodness or faithfulness, it is not even good Christianity, to look forward in glee to God’s judgment of the wicked. It will be a dark day, a terrible day, that our holy God has done EVERYTHING POSSIBLE to allow people to avoid.

We do long for the day when we will be freed from this body of sin, no doubt.

But are we as concerned for those who will be eternally separated from God in hell?

But there may be some who say God could have called more? Done more?

I do not understand all of God’s purposes in election, but we can be sure His gospel is meant to call ANY who hear it, and He graciously enables SOME to obey.

As for people: He needs nothing from them; He gains nothing from their success, obedience, or their destruction. He loves, and that alone is why He sent our all-sufficient Savior.

Dear believer: Look into the hell, into the flaming abyss, into which the wicked will go, and know that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, you deserve to go there too.

See the slaughter and humiliation of those who experience our Sovereign’s temporal judgment, and know that they are NO MORE WICKED than you.

See those who reap disastrous consequences of their sin and know that if you got what you deserve, you would also be crushed in those straits.

And know that the only thing that stands between you and them, between their fate and yours, is the unmerited grace of God that is poured out to you in Christ.

We don’t like to think that way.

We like to think we are better, we are more good.

We like to believe we have earned something by our faithfulness to God, our fidelity to Him.

That our worship, our offerings, our prayers, have earned us some favor before Him.

And they have not.

If we rely on any of our righteousness before our holy God, we stand condemned.

It is only by the righteousness of Christ that we stand.

God does not love the wicked LESS than you, even if they are estranged from Him and will remain lost to Him for all eternity.

God loves His enemies – if He did not, you would have no hope because you were His enemy also.

God saves the wicked, or else no one would be saved.

God weeps for those who deserve His judgment and receive it.

And so must we.

If we forget the great truth of our complete unworthiness, we will neglect those who are outside God’s church.

We will stand like the Pharisee declaring our hollow thanks to God and walk away from our prayers unchanged.

If we forget our great unworthiness, we will see those who oppose us as our enemies, worthy of God’s wrath.

And forget that, in that moment, we are SIDING with His enemy in the suppression of the gospel of Jesus Christ and of His love.

There are times when I hope the postmillennial vision of the complete rule of Jesus Christ will come to pass in this world, even in our time,

But it will never be through the passing of laws and enforcement of codes.

It will come only by the individual conquest of the gospel as it brings all God’s sheep, those formerly-wicked, into His loving kingdom.

It will only come through a thoroughly loving church filled with thoroughly loving followers of Jesus Christ who are doubled over in pain for the world that has not yet come to Christ.

Who will do whatever it takes to share the good news of Jesus Christ with everyone.

Who will give their lives to that end. Not just dying for our faith – that might be the easiest path.

Denying ourselves and giving our life to save someone we might not even want to give the time of day to.

We dare not love the Law as our hope – it carries no hope in it.

The Law measures every single person and declares us all guilty.

Our hope is in the complete and finished work of Jesus Christ.

Who took the punishment for our sin because God made Him sin who knew no sin.

And gave to us His righteousness.

The perfect obedience to the Law that Jesus lived is the very righteousness placed onto us.

And it is that righteousness alone that covers our great nakedness before God.

And not ours alone: it is sufficient for everyone. It is enough.

So that anyone who calls out in faith to Jesus Christ will be saved.

If we do not weep for those who deserve God’s wrath, even those who oppose and betray us, how will we EVER reach them with His gospel?

How shall we pray for them?

How shall we love them?

How shall we go farther than they compel us to go?

How shall they be saved?