Isaiah 24

Behold, the Lord will empty the earth and make it desolate, and he will twist its surface and scatter its inhabitants. 2 And it shall be, as with the people, so with the priest; as with the slave, so with his master; as with the maid, so with her mistress; as with the buyer, so with the seller; as with the lender, so with the borrower; as with the creditor, so with the debtor. 3 The earth shall be utterly empty and utterly plundered; for the Lord has spoken this word. 4 The earth mourns and withers; the world languishes and withers; the highest people of the earth languish. 5 The earth lies defiled under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed the laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant. 6 Therefore a curse devours the earth, and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt; therefore the inhabitants of the earth are scorched, and few men are left. 7 The wine mourns, the vine languishes, all the merry-hearted sigh. 8 The mirth of the tambourines is stilled, the noise of the jubilant has ceased, the mirth of the lyre is stilled. 9 No more do they drink wine with singing; strong drink is bitter to those who drink it. 10 The wasted city is broken down; every house is shut up so that none can enter. 11 There is an outcry in the streets for lack of wine; all joy has grown dark; the gladness of the earth is banished. 12 Desolation is left in the city; the gates are battered into ruins. 13 For thus it shall be in the midst of the earth among the nations, as when an olive tree is beaten, as at the gleaning when the grape harvest is done. 14 They lift up their voices, they sing for joy; over the majesty of the Lord they shout from the west. 15 Therefore in the east give glory to the Lord; in the coastlands of the sea, give glory to the name of the Lord, the God of Israel. 16 From the ends of the earth we hear songs of praise, of glory to the Righteous One. But I say, “I waste away, I waste away. Woe is me! For the traitors have betrayed, with betrayal the traitors have betrayed.” 17 Terror and the pit and the snare are upon you, O inhabitant of the earth! 18 He who flees at the sound of the terror shall fall into the pit, and he who climbs out of the pit shall be caught in the snare. For the windows of heaven are opened, and the foundations of the earth tremble. 19 The earth is utterly broken, the earth is split apart, the earth is violently shaken. 20 The earth staggers like a drunken man; it sways like a hut; its transgression lies heavy upon it, and it falls, and will not rise again. 21 On that day the Lord will punish the host of heaven, in heaven, and the kings of the earth, on the earth. 22 They will be gathered together as prisoners in a pit; they will be shut up in a prison, and after many days they will be punished. 23 Then the moon will be confounded and the sun ashamed, for the Lord of hosts reigns on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, and his glory will be before his elders.

Target Date: Sunday, 14 July 2024

Sermon Text:

This chapter stands as the last chapter of this section of Isaiah that contains the oracles of judgment on the nations, including Israel and Judah.

And it is very easy if we don’t read carefully to look at this as more of the same terrible judgment as we have seen since chapter 13.

And perhaps we might be forgiven if we think that the judgments here are a summary or a restatement of those that have gone before.

But that is not the case.

This is bigger – much bigger than the mere judgment of a single nation like we have seen before.

This is a judgment on the entire world, not on a specific nation.

We see that not just the nation is judged but all the peoples of the earth are judged as well.

No one is left out – no one exempted – from God’s sovereign judgment.

Just because the kingdoms of China and India, or the other heathen nations of the world, are not listed in detail in the chapters of Isaiah, they will not escape God’s judgment.

Not even the nations of today, even those who might have the delusion that they are a “Christian nation”, will not escape the judgment of God.

Every nation’s time is in God’s hand.

Every people’s time of power or poverty, wealth or weakness, is declared in God’s perfect timing and judgment.

Verse 2 tells us with the extent of God's judgment and it shall be as with the people so with the priest as with the slave so with his master as with the maid so with her mistress as with the buyer so with the seller as with the lender so with the borrower as with the creditor so with the debtor.

This is a general judgment of the earth not simply a single judgment on the face of a nation.

And as we have seen before, the judgment cannot be averted: there is no call to repentance per se. There is no call to do things a different way.

There is certainly no call to pass better laws, or else.

To live holier lives or to enforce the penalties of the Law with more rigor.

There is not even a call to wear sackcloth or mourn over sin, although repentance is always appropriate.

The reason for this judgment on all people is found in verse 5 where it says “they have transgressed the laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant.”

Does that bother anyone else here? It is important to understanding the message of this chapter.

Who did God have a covenant with, particularly one that could have been broken? And broken by all these nations?

Of course, our thoughts go immediately to the Mosaic Covenant, the covenant God revealed through Moses to the people of Israel after God freed them from their Egyptian slavery.

And those laws and statutes would then be the Ten Commandments and the other laws God delivered through Moses to the people at Mt. Sinai.

But that covenant wasn’t given to Babylon – that if Babylon obeyed the law of God THEY would remain in THEIR land.

They didn’t even HAVE a promised land.

And it wasn’t because they worshipped idols;

They worshipped idols because they were not the True God’s people.

That covenant and the accompanying laws and statutes were particular to the descendants of Jacob, known as Israel.

They were a “people for God’s possession”.

They had the promises of God for blessing in the land and for the curses if they fell away from the Lord and chased after other so-called gods.

But that promise was not made to the Assyrians, nor to the Chinese of that time, nor to Rome a bit later, nor even to the United States in our day.

Only Israel (and Judah after they split) could break THAT covenant because they were the only ones who were parties to it.

So what covenant had ALL the people of the earth broken?

It occurred to me as I was considering this passage that it might be helpful to review the major covenants between God and men in the Bible.

I obviously won’t go into detail for each one, but it is an important part of our understanding of the history of God’s work in the Bible, so I think it would be good to quickly review them:

A covenant is a promise at its heart, and when two parties make promises, it becomes something like a contract.

Covenants between God and man are unbreakable from God’s side because He will never lie or deceive or break His word.

Depending on how people number them, there are six great covenants in the Bible between God and man (some split the Mosaic Covenant into two so there can be seven, but that seems to complicate just for the sake of making a seventh).

1. The very first covenant – with Adam, the first man who became the ancestor of every other man ever born – which we creatively call the Adamic Covenant. This was the covenant that required Adam’s perfect obedience in the Garden of Eden in exchange for life. He broke it – fast.

2. The second covenant is with Noah – called the Noahic Covenant. This was God’s one-sided promise that He would never again flood the entire world; He sealed that covenant with a rainbow.

And although Noah was given laws, like not murdering people, nothing mankind could do would make God go back on His promise.

In that way, this was what we call an unconditional covenant because there was no condition Noah had to keep for God to keep His side of the covenant.

As opposed to Adam’s covenant that was conditional on his obedience.

3. The third covenant was with Abram (Abraham) and called the Abrahamic Covenant. This was the promise that he would be the father of the nations that would produce the great Savior (Jesus Christ).

Without getting into the weeds here, this is what we might call a “faith-conditioned” covenant.

We see in Genesis 15:6 and Romans 4:3 this statement:

Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.

So the condition, as we are told in many places in the New Testament, was not on Abraham’s obedient acts, but on his faith in God.

4. The Mosaic Covenant – delivered through Moses – is the next one. This was the covenant that established God’s specific relationship with Abraham’s descendants through his grandson Jacob (Israel).

This covenant was conditioned on the FAITHFULNESS of the descendants of Israel to the Law of God.

If they obeyed and remained loyal to God alone, they would remain in the land of promise;

If they rebelled and went after other gods, perhaps those who were more fun to their flesh, God would cast them out of the Promised Land.

And, I assure you, I could spend hours on each of these, but one other thing we need to understand here:

This covenant and the laws and statutes God revealed through it provided the exact means God would deliver, reveal, and qualify the Savior promised to Abraham.

But like I said before, this covenant was not with anyone else but Israel.

And 5. The Davidic Covenant – with King David. He was the second king of Israel, and God promised him that the great Savior promised to Abraham would come through the line of his descendants.

This was unconditional, a promise by God to the man he chose to be the leader of that line.

Let’s hold on to the sixth one for a few minutes because that one had not been fully inaugurated when Isaiah was speaking here in our passage today.

So we come back to the question: what covenant had all the peoples of the earth broken?

Since it had to be breakable (conditional), and it had to be with everyone on earth, there is only one covenant this could be:

The covenant with Adam.

The covenant that declared life in exchange for nothing less than full and complete obedience.

And even today, every single person on earth stands guilty for breaking THIS covenant.

Later on in this book, Isaiah will declare this great truth:

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; - Isaiah 53:6

God looks down from heaven on the children of man [Adam] to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. 3 They have all fallen away; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one. - Psalm 53:2-3

That covenant of perfect obedience waited for someone, anyone, who could do EVERYTHING that God requires perfectly – that is why Isaiah calls it in our passage the everlasting covenant.

And because no one could, we see the result in verse 6:

Therefore a curse devours the earth, and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt; therefore the inhabitants of the earth are scorched, and few men are left.

Just in case you think Isaiah is not talking about the Adamic covenant, this should remove all doubt: the curse.

After our first parents fell, God delivered the curses that we live with to this day on the earth:

Death, pain, toil, and the constant warfare between man and nature and against other people.

In the Garden, in his innocence, Adam lived at peace with nature and in dominion over it;

When he fell, all nature did as well.

In verse 19, Isaiah says this:

The earth is utterly broken, the earth is split apart, the earth is violently shaken.

No more does man have dominion over the earth;

He is doomed, cursed, to try to dominate it.

He must scratch the dirt to raise his food.

He must slaughter animals for his clothing and protein.

And the heat, the cold, the floods, and the sea all will have no mercy on his life – they will kill him with no remorse.

And even those closest relationships, even his wife, will be at odds with him, striving and negotiating with each other.

That is why there is no call here to better living, better laws, or doing more for God or in God’s name: we are too polluted to do anything worthy toward Him.

The curse is literally all we know.

And I know it may be a bit late to summarize this chapter, but I think the entire chapter is Isaiah showing us our cursed state through God’s eyes:

The rubble, the ruin of the world God created and declared good.

The mourning and wailing over death that is, in every community, a daily occurrence.

It makes no difference if you are the priest or the people, the master or the slave, the buyer or the seller – everyone is living in the wasteland of the curse.

Everyone is living in impoverished squalor, not in the lush safety and security of the innocent world God created.

The finest mansions, the greatest estates on earth, the most majestic views are only cardboard boxes lined up row upon row by beggars who think they are rich.

And our state is even worse than that: God is the enemy of all sin, all pride, all unrighteousness.

And for every single person on the planet, they will hear the same verdict from God’s wrath: guilty!

Because we have broken the everlasting covenant!

The everlasting covenant that God would have favor on One who has perfect obedience could never be fulfilled by one of Adam’s ruined race.

His full descendants were all the ones in need of rescue, not the ones who could be the rescuer.

The everlasting covenant waited for God’s promised Savior, Jesus Christ, to do everything God required.

Now here I will have to cheat a little because Isaiah introduces our great hope in Jesus Christ in chapter 25.

But this points us directly to that sixth covenant: The covenant of Grace, also called the New Covenant, that was delivered once for all by Jesus Christ.

He did every righteous thing; He WAS completely righteous in the flesh.

What Adam and his descendants did not and could not do, Jesus Christ did.

He is God in the flesh – the eternal Son of God made in flesh so He could save those who are made of flesh.

Our sin? He paid the penalty we owed for it.

And through faith, through believing in Him, we receive His righteousness in exchange for our ruined state.

That is why He, a completely innocent man, died on a criminal’s cross – to pay for the sins of His people.

And you are His people if you repent – turn from directing your life and let Him direct your life – and believe – have faith in the great gift He has given you, the gift of salvation.

Some might say that this is a picture of the rejection of Israel the rejection of Judah the judgment on them because they are the ones who had God's law.

But this is not the case he talks of the entire earth he will empty the earth in verse one he will twist its surface and scatter its inhabitants in verse one in verse five the earth lies defiled under its inhabitants verse 6A curse devours the earth and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt.

The judgment he is proclaiming here is God's judgment on the earth the entire earth not simply the ones who had God's law in a written form or in a covenant form but here he even says broke the everlasting covenant.new line

So what covenant can he be Speaking of?

This cannot be the mosaic covenant because that was given only to the Jews only to the people of Israel.new line

And to hearken back to the noetic covenant would take us only halfway there, because the commands of the noetic covenant are abbreviated far fewer than what is given in either the mosaic covenant or the others.

So this covenant that is being called out here the one that the people have disobeyed so thoroughly that it it demands God's judgment can be nothing more nothing less than the covenant of works declared to Adam in the garden.

It was this covenant that told Adam do this and live, but if you break this covenant you will die.

It is this covenant by which all the nations will be judged and the terrifying thing about this judgment is that no one will be good enough to stand in the end.

A holy God requires holy people.

A holy God demands perfect obedience.

And we see here in this passage the simple declaration that there is not an inhabitant on this planet that will meet the criteria of God's perfect holy righteous judgment.

Everyone, no matter how good, will be found lacking when standing before our holy God.

Our works are impure.

Our motives are always mixed.

And even our best efforts result in utter failure when measured against the perfection of God's holy law.

And so the picture we have in this passage today is a picture of the prophet standing in the middle of the destruction the aftermath of God's complete judgment.

We see the rubble; we see the death; we see the desolation; we feel the terror of God's merciless judgment.

Nothing here is surprising. There really is nothing new except Isaiah is walking through the ruins of God's judgment rather than declaring the future of it.new line

There are some who might say that this is a picture of God's final judgment.

That what we are seeing here is the state of the earth after the judgment of God through Jesus Christ falls upon it at his appearing.

And even against the evidence that we'll look at this morning, there are some who still hold to that view.

They look at the complete destruction and they tell themselves there is no way that God would do this in judgment.

That this violates the mercy of God that we have come to know that we've come to rely on.

They look at the aftermath, and they are forced to believe that the only time this could happen that God's judgment could be poured out on mankind would be at the final judgment.

And that might be the case, were it not for verses 14 to 16- the most confusing verses of this chapter.

They begin in a familiar manner where we see people lifting up their voices singing for joy over the majesty of the Lord from the West and from the east they give glory to the Lord.

From the ends of the earth we hear songs of praise songs of glory to the righteous 1.

But then we have the end of verse 16 the declaration of the prophet with these words: “I waste away, i waste away. Woe is me!”

Why, if this is a prophecy of the appearing of our great Lord Jesus Christ is the profit morning? Why is he lamenting?

Why is he, to whom these great visions have been given, not leading the song of the righteous?

Why is he not rejoicing along with all the inhabitants of the earth?

Is it simply because he is more holy? That he has a better view of the tragedy of this judgment?

I don't think so. There's nothing to indicate that he is doing anything but lamenting.

But it doesn't seem that he is lamenting the joy of those on the other sides of the world.

If you notice the scene, he is in the middle of the wasteland of God's destruction; they rejoicing is coming from everywhere else.

The rejoicing is coming from the east and from the West.

The rejoicing is coming from the sea.

The rejoicing is coming from everywhere but here.