September 5, 2021 Prophets – “3rd Isaiah”

            A colleague and I were recently talking about the way a great commitment made in a crisis can become eroded away by the mundane drudgery of daily life.  When you are in the crisis you really mean it from the bottom of your heart that you are going to change.  You have to!  You know it!  But then daily life wears you down and your commitment begins to wane.

How often have people been told by their doctors that they need to lower their cholesterol.  But they ignore it.  After all, you don’t feel any different if your cholesterol is high or low.  It’s just numbers on a paper from a blood test.  But then they have a heart attack.  Stents are needed, or maybe even bypass surgery.  Maybe there is heart damage.  And so the person has gotten a serious wake up call.  Change is needed! 

Then they do indeed change.  They eat better.  They know they have to.  But old habits die hard.  Sometimes a person just indulges.  Sometimes there is a bad day, or a bad week and it is hard to eat right.  And let’s face it.  Most days are pretty ordinary – perhaps even boring.  Nothing exciting happens.  And so the commitment made in a crisis slowly erodes away.  Again, there are no immediate consequences for indulgence and so it is easy to do it.

The same could be said for someone who commits to quit drinking after a drunk driving charge.  Or someone who promises to act better after beating his/her spouse.  Or a student who commits to studying harder after failing an exam.  Or a person who is praying for a miracle in a health diagnosis.  He or she prays to God for healing and in return promises to be a more faithful person.  Or just about anything. 

My point is not that we make a commitment in a crisis and then fail at it down the road.  My point is that daily life can often be mundane drudgery.  There is little excitement to keep us on our toes.  Commitments made in crisis can erode.

That life is often routine is probably a good thing.  Constant stress, change, and excitement is exhausting.  But it does mean that unhealthy ways easily creep back.

Isaiah 57 addresses a time when old unhealthy ways had crept back and become reestablished.  You’ll remember that the book of Isaiah is rooted in the ministry of the 8^th century B.C.E. prophet Isaiah of Jerusalem.  But the book includes writings from well after his death.  Chapters 40-55 were probably written after the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians.  Chapters 56-66 appear to be written after the fall of Babylon and the Jews were able to return and rebuild.

I’ve been calling these three time periods of Isaiah what many biblical scholars call them: 1^st Isaiah, 2^nd Isaiah, and 3^rd Isaiah.  But such a distinction is perhaps too artificial.  There are consistent theological themes throughout.  They are all genuinely rooted in the work of the original Isaiah.  And quite possibly the person who wrote chapters 40-55 also wrote 56-66, just at a later time.

Last week we read Isaiah 40 with its famous wonderful words, “Comfort, O comfort my people says your God.”  They come from the time period when the handwriting was on the wall for Babylon.  Its end was near.  Hope was flourishing among the Jews.  The Babylonian captivity lasted for 70 years.  That meant that all of the Jews alive in Babylon were born there.  The original generation that was taken from Jerusalem was gone.  Almost all of the Jews in Babylon had never even seen their homeland.  They had certainly heard stories and been indoctrinated with the faith of their ancestors.  But they had never seen it.  For them the future was probably full of hope and promise.  They would return.  God was with them.  It was a new beginning!  I imagine the hope and promise they felt as Babylon easily fell to the Persians.  Then there was joy when Persian king Cyrus let them return. 

I imagine them traveling back to the ruined city.  Their minds were filled with the possibilities.  They had heard of the land flowing with milk and honey.  They had heard of the great city of Jerusalem.  Their expectations were high.

And then they saw it for real.

Babylon, near modern day Baghdad, was built along the banks of the Euphrates River.  While it wasn’t exactly green and lush it was easy to be prosperous.

Jerusalem… well, it was a pile of rubble on a hilltop.  Not big.  Not nice.  And even though it lay in ruins it had inhabitants.  Some people were still living in the area.  They weren’t too keen on being displaced by these returning Jews who claim the rights to it.

I don’t know what the returning Jews expected, but I believe they were disappointed.  History shows that many Jews stayed in Babylon and created a prosperous community there.  Other Jews who had fled to Egypt when Jerusalem fell stayed there too; again creating a prosperous community.  Those who returned to Jerusalem to rebuild the promise had it rough.  There’s little wonder that leaders like Ezra and Nehemiah struggled to inspire the people.  Other prophets of the time, like those we’ve already covered: Haggai, Zechariah, and a little later Malachi, echo the complaints.

The sustaining faith and wonderful hope that had come from the crisis of Babylon was eroding away.  Life in the Promised Land was hard.  I think it was mundane drudgery for most. 

So much for a great and glorious future led by God! 

So much for being the example the world would be turning to!

If they had any pride in themselves for being the chosen people and having a great future easily brought about by God they were disappointed. 

Here’s the thing.  If life for the Jews who returned was obviously and noticeably easier than those of people of other placed and other religions staying faithful would have been easy.  But that is not the way of the world.

Isaiah 57 takes us into some deep truths – and they are truths we may not like.  These same truths show up also in the heart of the New Testament, but it is easy to ignore them. 

Isaiah 57 has two messages.  Both are intended for those who are righteous.  The first of those messages is that God sees the ways of the wicked.  God sees the way people are returning to the same Canaanite fertility religions their ancestors had participated in.  Isaiah uses sexual imagery because those fertility religions also involved a lot of sexuality. 

And so the word to the righteous is that even though it does not look like God is punishing the wicked for what they are doing, God still sees.  God knows.  They will be dealt with by God accordingly.

And that takes us to the second message for the righteous.  And this is the kind of thing we don’t like.  The message is that just because you live righteously – just because you have faith and your heart in is the right place – does not mean that your life will be any better or easier than someone who is “bad”.  In fact, you are still a sinner.  You are still living in need of God’s grace. 

I want to reread verses 14-17 for you.

 

 ¹⁴It shall be said, “Build up, build up, prepare the way, remove every obstruction from my people’s way.” ¹⁵For thus says the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with those who are contrite and humble in spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite. ¹⁶For I will not continually accuse, nor will I always be angry; for then the spirits would grow faint before me, even the souls that I have made.

¹⁷Because of their wicked covetousness I was angry; I struck them, I hid and was angry; but they kept turning back to their own ways. ¹⁸I have seen their ways, but I will heal them; I will lead them and repay them with comfort, creating for their mourners the fruit of the lips.

 

The tough part comes when you realize who is being referred to here.  When it says in verse 17, “Because of their wicked covetousness I was angry; I struck them, I hid and was angry; but they kept turning back to their own ways…” that is referring to those who are righteous.

You see, Isaiah 57 points out that even the most righteous are not truly righteous before God.  Even the humble and contrite have so many sins to their name that God finds them reprehensible.  The only real difference is that the righteous are still turning toward God with some measure of humility.

And so, God is still going to work on them with a righteous passion to cleanse them.  That means life for the righteous is not easy.  In fact, as our psalm today pointed out (Psalm 73) the lives of the righteous may well be a lot harder than the lives of the wicked. 

Ultimately though, God’s final word to the righteous is peace.  God will bring healing.  That is something we can understand.

Let’s conclude with the truth God speaks in verse 16, “For thus says the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy:”  In other words, God is simply bigger and beyond us.  But yet the verse continues, “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with those who are contrite and humble in spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite.”  So the immeasurably big and powerful God also choses to dwell in the small and insignificant.

Can you ever understand God, or fully know God’s will?  No.  Can you predict or control God?  No.  Will your life be easier because you turn to God in your life?  No.  But God is at work in you, shaping and refining you.  God’s ultimate word for you is peace and wholeness forever.