Isaiah 17:1-11
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
[READING - Isaiah 17:1-11]
1 The oracle concerning Damascus. “Behold, Damascus is about to be removed from being a city And will become a fallen ruin. 2 “The cities of Aroer are forsaken; They will be for flocks to lie down in, And there will be no one to frighten them. 3 “The fortified city will disappear from Ephraim, And sovereignty from Damascus And the remnant of Aram; They will be like the glory of the sons of Israel,” Declares the Lord of hosts. 4 Now in that day the glory of Jacob will fade, And the fatness of his flesh will become lean. 5 It will be even like the reaper gathering the standing grain, As his arm harvests the ears, Or it will be like one gleaning ears of grain In the valley of Rephaim. 6 Yet gleanings will be left in it like the shaking of an olive tree, Two or three olives on the topmost bough, Four or five on the branches of a fruitful tree, Declares the Lord, the God of Israel. 7 In that day man will have regard for his Maker And his eyes will look to the Holy One of Israel. 8 He will not have regard for the altars, the work of his hands, Nor will he look to that which his fingers have made, Even the Asherim and incense stands. 9 In that day their strong cities will be like forsaken places in the forest, Or like branches which they abandoned before the sons of Israel; And the land will be a desolation. 10 For you have forgotten the God of your salvation And have not remembered the rock of your refuge. Therefore you plant delightful plants And set them with vine slips of a strange god. 11 In the day that you plant it you carefully fence it in, And in the morning you bring your seed to blossom; But the harvest will be a heap In a day of sickliness and incurable pain.
[PRAYER]
Assyria was the big bad to be feared. It had gobbled up nation after nation, and it even threatened to gobble up Judah. Israel and Syria to the north of Judah formed an alliance in hopes of withstanding Assyria’s onslaught, but instead God would use Assyria to bring judgment on the apostate nation of Israel and the pagan nation of Syria.
That judgment is described here in Isaiah 17.
It is a word of doom about Israel (referred to as Ephraim in this passage) and a word of doom about Syria (referred to as Damascus).
But this word of doom would be a word of hope and challenge to Judah.
Although Syria and Israel threatened Judah because it refused to join in with them against Assyria, Judah had nothing to fear.
Judah’s hope was in God and deliverance would be their’s so long as they were faithful to God.
But therein was the challenge—would Judah remain faithful to God?
[TS] We’ll look at this passage in four PARTS…
Major Ideas
Major Ideas
PART #1: Cities Disappear (Isa. 17:1-3)
PART #1: Cities Disappear (Isa. 17:1-3)
1 The oracle concerning Damascus. “Behold, Damascus is about to be removed from being a city And will become a fallen ruin. 2 “The cities of Aroer are forsaken; They will be for flocks to lie down in, And there will be no one to frighten them. 3 “The fortified city will disappear from Ephraim, And sovereignty from Damascus And the remnant of Aram; They will be like the glory of the sons of Israel,” Declares the Lord of hosts.
[EXP] Damascus was the capital city of Syria, and Aroer was another of its prominent cities. Because of its rebellion against God in general, and its attack on Judah in particular, God would lay waste to these cities—cities that were the strength of Syria’s existence.
When Assyria comes, these cities will fall in ruin and be nothing more than a place for shepherds to graze their flocks.
Those places will be vacant; no one will be there to frighten the shepherds and their flocks away.
The fortifications of Ephraim and Damascus will disappears along with any power or sovereignty they once had.
But there will be a remnant of Syria (Aram, v. 3) whose glory will be like the sons of Israel.
At first, this seems positive until we realize that “the sons of Israel” is in reference to the apostate nation of Israel north of Judah.
And then we read in v. 4 that “the glory of Jacob will fade.”
So, yes, a remnant of Syria will remain but it will be a remnant whose strength fades like the glory of Israel, the rebellious northern kingdom of God’s people.
[ILLUS] They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I don’t know how many words are used in Isaiah 17:1-3, but these words do paint for us a picture of God’s judgment.
[APP] Let us be warned: this is a picture of what happens to those who oppose God and His people.
[TS]…
PART #2: Israel Gleaned (Isa. 17:4-6)
PART #2: Israel Gleaned (Isa. 17:4-6)
4 Now in that day the glory of Jacob will fade, And the fatness of his flesh will become lean. 5 It will be even like the reaper gathering the standing grain, As his arm harvests the ears, Or it will be like one gleaning ears of grain In the valley of Rephaim. 6 Yet gleanings will be left in it like the shaking of an olive tree, Two or three olives on the topmost bough, Four or five on the branches of a fruitful tree, Declares the Lord, the God of Israel.
[EXP] The northern kingdom of God’s people, Israel, had aligned itself with the pagan nation of Syria and attacked the southern kingdom of God’s people, Judah.
Judah was the rightful kingdom of God’s people, so the glory of Jacob would fade, the times of fatness (i.e., plenty) would become times of leanness (i.e., want).
The valley of Rephaim was an especially fertile valley southwest of Jerusalem, but it too was left bare after the reapers reaped and the gleaners gleaned.
That once fruitful field now left fruitless was a picture of what God would do to Israel.
God’s judgment would thin Israel out so that it would be like a field or vineyard after the reapers reaped and the gleaners gleaned.
You recall that God’s people were to leave a little of their crop on the edges of the field when they brought in the harvest.
This was so that the needy could glean what remained for their own sustenance.
But the judgment on Israel would be so complete, that it was likened to a field or vineyard where the reapers and gleaners had gathered 99% of what was available.
In other words, there wouldn’t be much left of the northern kingdom of Israel when God was done.
What little would remain in Israel is compared in v. 6 to an olive branch after the harvest.
During the olive harvest, people would put a cloth under the olive tree and then beat the branches until all but a few of the high, unripe olives had fallen down.
Those few olives on the olive tree after the harvest was a picture of what little would be left in Israel after God brought His judgment against it in the form of Assyrian invasion.
[ILLUS] When I was a little boy, I went with my family to the orange groves of Florida to pick oranges. I know that’s the sort of thing people do today “for the experience,” but we were doing it to make a living.
We’d shake the limbs, gather the oranges that fell, and put them in a big round tub that would be emptied into a trailer before being taken to the plant for processing.
By the time we had harvested the oranges from a tree, there was no visible fruit left beside what was lying rotten on the ground.
[APP] Whether its wheat, olives, or oranges let us be warned: this is a picture of what happens to even God’s people when they rebel against Him.
[TS]…
PART #3: Idols Rejected (Isa. 17:7-8)
PART #3: Idols Rejected (Isa. 17:7-8)
7 In that day man will have regard for his Maker And his eyes will look to the Holy One of Israel. 8 He will not have regard for the altars, the work of his hands, Nor will he look to that which his fingers have made, Even the Asherim and incense stands.
[EXP] At this time in Judah’s history, King Ahaz had encouraged the worship of Baal and Asherah throughout the land.
Baal was the chief pagan God of the Canaanites, the people who possessed the Promised Land before God’s people took possession.
Asherah was sometimes viewed as Baal’s romantic partner.
They were each worshipped as gods of fertility.
Altars were built.
Idols were carved.
Asherah poles were installed.
And incense was burned.
But there was no hope in any of these things—a point proven as fact when Assyria rolled in in 732 B.C. and took Israel into captivity.
At that point, Israel knew there was no point in looking to idols. The idols had failed them.
Israel’s only hope was to look to God.
And on that day of great judgment, it seems that a remnant would; they would turn from their idolatry and look on their Maker, the Holy One of Israel.
[ILLUS] Some people gotta learn the hard way. Some people only learn by pain.
Some people will only see the impotence of false gods when those false gods finally fail them.
[APP] What about us? Do we have to learn the hard way or can we learn from Israel?
Rather than learning the hard way that false gods will let us down, let us learn from Israel’s experience.
When the false gods failed them, they finally looked to the one true God who had never failed them.
Let us be warned: false gods will fail us just the same.
We had better keep looking to the one true, living God.
[TS]…
PART #4: Judah Warned (Isa. 17:9-11)
PART #4: Judah Warned (Isa. 17:9-11)
9 In that day their strong cities will be like forsaken places in the forest, Or like branches which they abandoned before the sons of Israel; And the land will be a desolation. 10 For you have forgotten the God of your salvation And have not remembered the rock of your refuge. Therefore you plant delightful plants And set them with vine slips of a strange god. 11 In the day that you plant it you carefully fence it in, And in the morning you bring your seed to blossom; But the harvest will be a heap In a day of sickliness and incurable pain.
[EXP] The judgment coming on Israel will live its cities forsaken and its land desolate.
When God brought them into the Promised Land under the leadership of Joshua, the Israelites set the pagans to forsaking and abandoning their cities and land.
But now the pagans of Assyria will set Israel to forsaking and abandoning the very same land.
Why?
Because Israel had forgotten the God of their salvation.
But notice in v. 10 things get personal. Isaiah had been using “they” and “them” language when talking about Syria and Israel, but in v. 10 there is a sudden turn to “you” language—“For you have forgotten the God of your salvation and have not remembered the rock of your refuge…”
That “you” language continues through v. 11, and it seems almost as if Isaiah is in the very presence of the Israelites to the north who are doomed to experience this judgment.
But he isn’t.
Isaiah is in Judah, and the “you” language in vv. 10-11 is a direct confrontation of Judah’s sins and a direct warning concerning the judgment of God.
Judah has forgotten God (v. 10a).
Judah has cultivated idolatry (vv. 10b-11a).
And Judah will reap a harvest of pain if it does not repent (v. 11b).
This is a word of doom for Israel and Syria, but a word of warning to Judah.
Judah is no better that Israel or even Syria.
If Judah continues to rebel against God, it too will suffer His judgment.
Today is the day to repent.
[ILLUS] “I’ll get it checked out if it gets too bad.”
Many times people have said that about some ailment in the body, but they keep putting off getting it looked at by a doctor.
Sometimes when it finally bothers them enough, they get it looked at and find that its too late to do anything about it.
[APP] In this case, what is true of those physical ailments is also true of spiritual idolatries.
We might say to ourselves, “I’ll repent some day, maybe even some day soon,” but we just keep ignoring the idolatries we are cultivating in our hearts until one day we find out that it’s too late.
That’s when we reap a heap of spiritual sickliness and incurable pain.
As the great Puritan theologian John Owen said, “Be killing sin or it will be killing you.”
[TS]…
Conclusion
Conclusion
But remember that I said that this passage is a word of warning to Judah but also a word of hope.
We’ve covered the word of warning part, but in what sense is this a word of hope to Judah?
It is a word of hope in two ways…
First, it is a word against Judah’s enemies Israel and Syria.
If these nations were going to fall under God’s judgment, then Judah was going to be delivered from these enemies.
Jesus is God’s word against our enemies of sin and death.
Because Jesus paid the price for our sins on the cross and defeated death in His resurrection from the dead, we have a certain hope of being delivered fully and finally from sin and death.
Second, this prophecy of Isaiah was a word of hope to Judah in that it was a word of opportunity.
God’s judgment hadn’t yet fallen on Judah, so it was too late. Judah had the opportunity to repent and avoid the sort of judgment that coming to Syria and Israel.
But through faith in Jesus Christ, we have much more than an opportunity to repent; through faith in Him we have power to repent.
Because of what Jesus did in His death and resurrection, sin no longer has any power over those who trust in Him.
And because of what Jesus did in sending the Holy Spirit to live within those of us who trust in Him, we have the power to cultivate faithfulness rather than idolatry.
Don’t put it off to tomorrow, Christian.
If you really are a Christian, begin to cultivate faithfulness to God through the power Jesus has supplied in the Holy Spirit right now.
[PRAYER]