Exposition by Max A Forsythe
There is a young lady at school who is of a very independent mind. Any hint of things religious were adamantly denied, since she is a nominal atheist. Her moods vary from day to day, and even hour to hour. Like many young people of our time, her problems are many and varied. This week, she looked particularly down in the mouth on Friday. So, I asked her to stay a minute after class to see what this week’s problem was all about. She told me that her doctor has discovered cancer in her body and she is only seventeen years old. The hard crust of independence, vanity, and know it all attitude had disappeared. I asked her if she wanted our Church to be praying for her. I actually think that there was a tear in her eye as she quietly murmured consent.
Does it take life experiences like this to bring members of our proud race to their knees where they can begin to consider the existence of a holy and righteous God? We here assembled all know of course, that One Day, there will come an end to the present age. And in a moment, the sea and land will give up their dead, and saints and sinners alike will stand before their Maker. Of course, the exact sequence of these events at that point are not fully understood by us here on earth. But leaving the end time viewpoints aside, however the events transpire, we will finally get to the main event, which is the last judgment. The fact of this coming judgment is certainly well noted here in this last passage of Isaiah.
Should we be embarrassed with this concomitant judgment and salvation? Should we hold back the warning of hellfire, damnation and eternal suffering so as not to offend those most likely to be well on their way to spending eternity there? Of course not; we see that Isaiah ends his message not only with the hope of heaven but also the warning of hell. Verse fourteen sounds the theme for this final section. Look at the words of comfort there in the opening for you: “When you see this, your heart will rejoice and you will flourish like the grass.”
Have you noticed the greening of the earth this last week? It seems like only yesterday that the tree tops just turned purple with their buds. In just the last few days the grasses have turned every shade of emerald. I sometimes wonder if our brief existence here on earth is much like the brown and brittle grass of fall and winter. And when heaven finally comes, how much greater and greener will be our joy? But, that great green spring morning of the Last Day will so far surpass the material world we have loved because the “hand of the Lord will be made known to his servants.”
But along side of the good news of salvation is the bad news for the wicked, as we see in the final strophe of verse fourteen: “but his fury will be shown to his foes.” And so this is why we must compare and contrast the joys of heaven with the tears of hell. Verses fifteen and sixteen detail the righteous rage of our furious Avenger. Fire and sword are both mentioned here as means of His judgment. Just this week one of our local fire departments was called out to fight a grass fire which almost got into a row of houses. One spring when the boys were young, we had twenty-seven grass fires in thirty days in our township. The planting of crops and the work of the village were set back even before the year’s taxes had been earned!
The sword of war is just as gruesome in many lands and places. We have indeed been fortunate in this fair land. Battles have not been fought in our counties since colonial times. Most of the world could only wish to be as fortunate as we have been. And yet, even as pleasant as we have had it, there is still a better time coming One Day. However, what pleasantries we see in our material world is all that some will ever see and know.
These pleasant gardens have often been turned to nature worship or worse. The worship that ought to be given to the God of heaven is turned instead to worldly things. These things, the Lord declares, will be destroyed with their worshipers. And because of these abominations the Lord’s coming will not be slow.
His coming will be for a purpose, and that purpose is stated at the end of verse eighteen. He will come to gather all nations and tongues to see the glory of the Lord of heaven. Even more, the next verse tells us that He will “set a sign among them”. This reference can only be to the first coming of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. From the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD the Lord promises to send out righteous survivors to the nations so that all the earth may hear of God’s glory and God’s only Son. Verse twenty tells us that these messengers will bring all the saintly brethren from every clime and nation to the New spiritual Jerusalem and to the Holy Jerusalem at the end of time.
These newcomers will gain full admittance to fellowship in being allowed to share in the work of leading the Lord’s faithful. As proof of the promise the Lord guarantees the future of the church in the certainty of the second coming. “As the new heavens and the new earth that I make will endure before me ... so will your name and descendants endure". And in that new heaven all of the elect will gather to bow down before the Lord their Maker. Now we must be careful how we understand the ending of this prophecy. Remember, the image of Jerusalem and the worship there are in mind.
Just as the valley of Gehenna where the trash, garbage and dead animals were thrown reminded the residents of what hell might be like, so may we be assured that there is a final separation between the righteous and the wicked. Today, we have “neat and tidy” landfills where suburban garbage is tucked away out of sight. Years ago, there were dumps where scavengers cleaned up the edible garbage and accidental and purposeful fires consumed what could be burned. In the rural areas some people still burn junk mail, sacks and packaging. Whenever broken branches, moldy grain and last season’ garden cleanings are thrown in, you can get a smoldering fire for several days on end. You can smell it forever, it seems. And if you stir it up, deep down inside the coals glow ominously like the fires of hell.
I think this Jerusalem dump, which probably smoked for over a thousand years, is the image Isaiah and Isaiah’s God would have us keep in mind as the proper image of hell. Hell, if it is to fit this image, is not a flash fire, where everything is burnt to a crisp and the ashes are blown away. No, no indeed, it is a dump fire where the refuse of humanity who will not worship the God of heaven are dumped for eternity. And just as in those old dumps, rodents and bugs worked in and around the smoldering ruins, so will the broken spiritual remnants of worldly humanity be subjected to eternal punishment.
Once, instead of burying a dead animal, I threw it into a dump fire. I quickly learned that they should be buried instead. The loathsomeness of the final verse of Isaiah is really, really bad. And for that reason if none other, the worldly should be urged to repent of their great wickedness and seek the God of heaven. If my words do not convey the proper image here, then I wish we still had some old fashioned dumps where you could go to experience first hand the image being conveyed. If that could not change your mind about things eternal, then neither can anything that Isaiah has said do you any good. May the Holy Spirit use the words of Isaiah and His Lord to prepare you for heaven instead.
Resources Used:
Ellis, Charles..
The Wells of Salvation.
Thomas, Derek..
Welwyn Commentary Series: God Delivers.
Young, Edward J.
The Book of Isaiah.
The Holy Bible.
New International Version (1984 Edition)
NOTE: I am not able to automatically
recommend any future editions.
Christ Covenant Reformed (Presbyterian Church in America) -
Box 13926 - Columbus, OH 43213
(c) 2001
26 March 1995
Permission granted to redistribute unedited versions with this notice.