Our God Reigns II

Isaiah 21:1-23:18

There is no hope in the world apart from redemption. If we try to separate hope from redemption, all we have is a facade. Now I could be talking on grand terms, but i’m more interested in the particular details of your life at this point. There is no hope in shame that is being covered up and hidden. It has to be redeemed.

That’s the only way that there can be any hope.

See it’s my guess that for many of us, we are full of hidden shames that we cover up with fake smiles and “I’m good, how are you’s.” But I think it is also possible that many Christians talk about hope but in the abstract because they aren’t sure what it truly means to have a biblical hope knowing that their lives are full of shame and hypocrisy. Is this true?

What Isaiah does for us today in these chapters is help us see the world with a prophetic eye. Maybe you haven’t really thought about this, but it is important. You need to start viewing the world prophetically. I don’t mean that you try to predict the future or something like that, but the Bible gives us the proper way to view the world. There’s nothing new under the sun. Every time evil rejoices that it has killed God or put an end the Christ’s kingdom, doesn’t have to be a time for us to fret. See it biblically.

In that same vein, every time tragedy strikes, every time someone stumbles in sin, see it as ripe ground for the gospel to be planted. Do you find yourself lulled to sleep by the passage of time? Engage your heart and mind as you walk through this world and see things as Christ sees them.

Now we looked at some of these nations last week, Isaiah circles back to them again this week. But this time he doesn’t speak in such concrete terms as last time. He’s pulling back a layer of reality and helping us to see underneath. We’ll look at these five oracles against the nations, but I want to help us see what Isaiah sees as he looks at them, and maybe help us see our own day with Biblical eyes. Is there hope in this world? Yes there is, but not through the false promises and circumstances of life… only through a redeemer.

Look first at Babylon. We talked about Babylon last week, but this time notice that he refers to her as the wilderness of the sea. You’ll see this as we look at these oracles, He doesn’t always refer to the nations by their names, instead he refers to them in a mocking prophetic sort of way.

There’s something terrifying about a desert. It’s dry and you die of thirst if you don’t get out. To call Babylon the desert of the sea is like saying they are full of water, but its undrinkable. Like a desert that mocks you while you die of thirst in her. He’s saying once again to Judah, don’t look to Babylon and it’s promises of satisfaction. Its all an illusion.

Second, Dumah. Now this is Edom. Why doesn’t he just say Edom? Well Dumah means silence. Notice what the oracle says Dumah calls out to God “watchman, what time of the night?” If you’ve ever suffered from insomnia this is something like looking at your clock at 2 am and then again at 3 am and wondering how much longer before the sun comes up.

The answer the God gives is essentially “i’m not listening.” Believer this is not an answer that we receive from God. He hears us. And he hears us because he has saved us and brought us near to himself. But are you getting the picture that Isaiah is painting about the nations that maybe Judah is tempted to trust for salvation? They offer endless waters, but you can’t drink them. And God is silent in their land in the midst of their desperation.

One more, the Oracle to Arabia, Arabia means “evening.” They are slipping into darkness, essentially. See it in verse 16, within a year the glory of Kedar will come to an end.

Believer this is a hopeless world. It is full of shame and hypocrisy, it drips with gloom, and there’s no possibility for redemption in the arms of this world’s system.

Babylon promises power. In fact that’s their means of conquest. They come in power. They take over, they destroy.

I haven’t been on this planet for all that long really, but i’ve been around long enough to see a few fads come and go. People chase fads don’t they? Why do they do that? They want to be a part of the group that’s in, they means they have some sort of grasp on the power the rules. Now it might be something small. You know a few years ago you were a complete loser if you had a mullet. Now you’re hot stuff. But we grab onto power in whatever way we can because it gives us a small covering for our shame. “If I fit in the group that rules maybe they won’t see my hypocrisy.”

It’s empty, it’s silent, it’s slipping into the night. There’s no hope there.

Perhaps the fourth Oracle is shocking. The valley of vision. This is aimed toward Jerusalem. This is not an endearing term, by the way. He is mocking them. Jerusalem is on a mountain, not a valley.

Listen if you want to get a better view of something do you go up or go down? No one goes into a valley to get a better vision. They can’t see past tomorrow, Isaiah says. Look at the wisdom of this people: Vs 11; 13.

Jerusalem is where the word of the Lord had gone forth for hundreds of years, and even now when his word is heard through the Prophet Isaiah all the people hear is “Tomorrow you die.” He gave them the solution, “repent and turn back to me,” but they only heard that it was all over, so they party.

It’s possible, you know that you aren’t placing your hope in other things, but you also aren’t hearing from the Lord. The word goes forth from this pulpit every week, but you may not hear it.

The last Oracle is given to Tyre. First notice that Tyre is all the way to the west and babylon all the way to the east. Isaiah is showing us some bookends here. From east to West there is no hope in this world. But there are a few other important details of difference between Babylon and Tyre. Babylon was known for its power, Tyre was known for it’s wealth and commerce. Babylon was a land power, Tyre a sea power. Babylon used force, Tyre used seduction. “The strategies differ from one culture to the next, but what matters in the one kingdom of man is money and power and ego and visceral pleasure—all the things that belong to time rather than eternity. This is our brilliant, heroic, costly, empty world.” - Ortlund.

I don’t know what you’re tempted by. Maybe it’s power, maybe it’s money, maybe it’s sex, maybe it’s trinkets… but there’s something. Are you going to allow yourself to be swayed and lulled to sleep in the arms of Satan, or are you going to view the world with prophetic eyes?

Satan isn’t all that interested in how you are lulled to sleep, just that you are! If endless pleasures are enough to curb your shame and hypocrisy, so be it, if power, so be it. As long as your shame and hypocrisy are not redeemed!

We should be shocked and amazed once again that Jesus would step into this world and come for sin filled people like you and me. But he did. And it isn’t that he simply came in and gave us ethical teachings on how to live better, he bore our shame in his own body on the cross.

He stood condemned in my place. See he took your sinful past and redeemed it. He is able to take filthy stories of corruption, sex, drugs, thieving, murder, and make them hope-filled stories of the depths of God’s grace to us broken sinners.

Look at it in verses 17-18. He called Tyre a redeemed prostitute!

See the age to come has broken into this present age of death. Jesus our redeemer has restored all the was fallen under Adam and is making all things new. And this work that began in his first coming will see fulfillment and completion at his second coming. Heaven is actually going to come down to earth, the New Jerusalem to us. Nothing unclean will enter it’s gates. No corruption, no shame, no hypocrisy.

But believer, you will be there. Why? How? Because the cross doesn’t merely cover our shame, but rids us of it.