This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Isaiah’s Christmas Children” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, January 17, 1999.
About this sermon
The prophets use time in a way that looks anachronistic to modern readers, and 10:28-32 and 36:2 show the difficulty. Isaiah 11:1-10 describes the kingdom of the Branch, where the wolf dwells with the lamb. Many stumble over Jesus’s own prophecies about Jerusalem and the end of the world for the same reason.
Sermon transcript
Tonight we are reading from Isaiah 10. We are beginning our reading at verse 28. This is the word of God. Isaiah 10, verse 28. He has passed through Migron, at Michmash. He deposited his baggage. They have gone through the pass, saying, Giba will be our lodging place. Rema is terrified, and Gibeah of Saul has fled away. Cry aloud with your voice, O daughter of Galim. Pay attention, Laisha, and Richard, Amethyst. Mabnena has fled. The inhabitants of Gabin have sought refuge, yet today he will halt at Nab. He shakes his fist at the mountain of the daughter of Zion, the hill of Jerusalem. Behold, the Lord, the God of hosts, will lop off the bowels with a terrible crash.
Those also who are tall in stature will be cut down, and those who are lofty will be He will cut down the thickets of the forest with an iron axe, and Lebanon will fall by the mighty one. Then a shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse, and a branch from his roots will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and strength, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. and he will delight in the fear of the Lord, and he will not judge by what his eyes see, nor make a decision by what his ears hear. But with righteousness he will judge the poor, and decide with fairness for the afflicted of the earth, and he will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he will sway the wicked. Also, righteousness will be the belt about his loins, and faithfulness the belt about his waist.
And the wolf will dwell with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and a little boy will lead them. Also the cow and the bear will graze, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The nursing child will play by the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child will put his hand on the viper’s den. and they will not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountains, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. Then in that day the nations will resort to the Ruth of Jephthah, who will stand as a signal for the peoples, and his resting place will be glory.”
Let’s pray together. So there is much, O God, in your prophets that would seem to confuse us. We ask, O God, that we might have Father, may we be granted understanding, even in keeping with the promise of your kingdom, even though confusion continues to reign for the world. Father, may the light of your word then be a grace to us as we make our way through this wilderness, that with that light, O God, We would be confident of your leaving, and that we shall arrive at the desired destination. This we pray through Jesus Christ, who has gone before us. Amen.
My messages on Isaiah’s Christmas children had ended, but I realized that those messages demanded a post-lude. And after that, not so much to extend my comments about the children themselves, but in order to provide something of a wrap for the prophetic perspective about which I have had much to say over the course of the previous six messages.
You may recall, in the last couple of messages at least, I made much of the inherent difficulties in hearing and reading the prophets. So formidable are these difficulties that some simply, as a general rule and with the exception of a few golden passages, avoid the prophets altogether. You’re not long into any of the prophets before you are face-to-face with complexities, problematic constructions of language and images. that seemingly defy penetration.
Obscure names oblique historical and geographical references. But even more perplexing than these can be the inexplicable, breathtaking changes in mood and emotional direction. One moment the Prophet is declaring disaster, and the next, without as much as a bat of And in some cases, within the same sentence, he is announcing the startling intrusion of divine grace. Not that the note of grace isn’t welcomed.
Its startling appearance, however, often leaves us somewhat baffled. We also commented at length on another prophetic feature what seems to be the most disconcerting shifts in audience where we can’t make out who the Prophet’s talking about. For instance, we’re rolling along comfortably talking about the judgment that’s sure to come upon the Assyrians, and without any indication or warning whatsoever in the text, we suddenly find ourselves in the middle of the verse talking about Judah’s demise. Now, we have found examples of all these unsettling features in Isaiah 7-12, the so-called Book of Emmanuel, in Isaiah’s prophecy, that section in which the figure of the child figures so prominently. We have endeavored to explain these disturbing features in our previous messages. We didn’t spend much time explaining the first feature, the meaning of the obscure and oblique references.
But the meaning for these obscure and oblique references may be found in the deliberately hidden character of the Prophet’s message, a sort of ministerial extension of what the Lord says to Isaiah. in directing him to tell the people of Judah, keep on listening, but do not perceive. Keep on looking, but do not understand. Render the hearts of this people insensitive, their ears dull and their eyes dim. Otherwise, they might see with their eyes and hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and return and be healed.” speak in parables. The prophets deliberately speak in obscurities, and that’s by design. We spent much more time on the other features that we’ve mentioned this evening.
The meaning of the inexplicable changes in mood from wrath to grace. we locate it in the inexplicable and totally disarming nature of grace itself. God’s grace comes unexpectedly and undeservedly into this world and upon his chosen vessels, and that’s how it intrudes into the Prophet’s message. The meaning of the disconcerting shifts in audience where a word about Israel’s enemies suddenly slips into a word about Israel herself, we locate it in the settled but profound message that not just the Gentiles, the Jews’ enemies, but the Jews themselves are gathered under condemnation in order, finally, that the gospel of salvation through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ might come to Jew and Gentile alike. This, in keeping with the message that we finally hear in passages like Romans 3, where Paul makes it clear that all the world, Jew and Gentile together, is guilty before God, verse 19, and that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, verse 23.
All of these things, all of these devices, all of these features, then, conspiring to to prepare us for the presentation of the gospel, the gospel itself laid within the features themselves. So far, this message has been a summary and a review, and it hardly seems fair for me to get you out on a cold winter’s night merely to tell you what you’ve already heard. Actually, there is another prophetic feature, abundantly evident in Isaiah 7-12, about which we have said nothing thus far.
I have in mind the Prophet’s presentation of time, the Prophet’s presentation of history. and the apparent anachronistic character of the Prophet’s message. You know what anachronism is. Anachronism means to be out of place historically, time-wise. As if someone were to say, Julius Caesar lived in the seventeenth century in the Battle of Waterloo, Appendix today. Their treatment of time and their apparent anachronisms can be as startling and befuddling as their unexpected mood swings and their sudden shifts in audience.
In fact, it is this feature in the Prophet’s message, the whole matter of their treatment of time and history, that invariably causes so much excitement. about the prophets for so many. While their treatment of time may seem perplexing to us, it is all too clear to a great many people. But for the prophets, you see, events, if we read them properly, events appear to have the ability to reach out far beyond their historical setting, touching even the distant reaches of human history and the furthest extent of the plan of God. As the prophets speak, as they preach, as they declare their message, The events about which they speak seem to have the ability to reach far beyond their historical setting, touching even the distant reaches of human history and the far reaches of the plan of God.
We have a sweeping example of this in Isaiah 10 and 11, picking up at verse 28, where we began our reading in that tenth chapter. We find a passage that has not only thrown commentators, but in actual fact does the service of opening up for us the prophetic line as far as the historical development of the prophetic vision is concerned.
Verses 28 through 32 of that tenth chapter, as we have seen before, belong to a section speaking about the Assyrian threat. speaking about the Assyrian threat, a yet future threat for Judah. Assyria is mentioned explicitly in this chapter previously in verses 5, 12, and 24. You can check that out. When we come to verses 28-32, we would think that we have before us the incremental itinerary of the invading Assyrian army, the listing of all of the sites to which the army comes as it makes progression through the land. We have listed here, then, cities and villages to which the advancing Assyrian army comes as it makes its way toward Jerusalem. And with verse 32, Jerusalem is well imbued. But we have a problem. We have a problem if we move with this cat along this line.
For these cities mentioned all belong to the northern and eastern approach to the city of Jerusalem. the cities that lie along the route as you make your way south through Benjaminite territory. You’re coming down from the north through the territory of Benjamin toward Jerusalem in order to make your assault upon Jerusalem which is in the territory of Judah. You get the picture. A sudden course for the assault is in view in the mentioning of these cities as the army makes its way towards Jerusalem.
But when the Assyrians finally do make their assault, remember this is a prophecy concerning a future assault by the Assyrians, when the Assyrians finally do make their assault, And, as Isaiah 36 verse 2 tells us, they actually make that assault from the southwest. Not from the north, but from the southwest and from the city of Lachish, near the boundary of the territory of Philistia. The text in speaking about the Assyrians charts a southern course through the territory of Benjamin for Jerusalem. But the actual Assyrian assault comes from the southwest, and from the city of Lachish.
Well, what do you make of this? Well, in chapter 10, prior to the Assyrian invasion, Isaiah naturally thought, an Assyrian invasion will come from the north. So he wrote it up that way. When the actual invasion did occur, it seems that the Assyrians tripped up even Isaiah. How silly of them.
So much for prophetic and even biblical infallibility. Some might not be overly upset by this apparent discrepancy, and would say, Nor for Saul, who cares, it doesn’t make any difference. The main thing was that the invasion occurred and the Assyrians did in fact make an invasion, and Isaiah at least had that much right. After all, neither the Bible nor prophecy is an exact science. The tragedy is that people who talk like this hardly know how destructive they are. The balance is not only biblical authority and the Bible’s infallibility, but the squandering of a golden opportunity to grasp hold of an important feature of the Prophet’s revelation.
You see, what Isaiah is actually describing in the listing of all of these cities, is the advance of the combined army of the Israelites to the north under Pekah and the Syrians under Rezan. We read about their advance in chapters 7-9. Setting the tone for this section of Isaiah’s message is what we read in chapter 7, verse in the days of Ahaz, king of Judah, when Rezan, the king of Syria, and Pippa, the son of Ramallah, king of Israel, went up to wage war against Jerusalem, but could not conquer it.” Chapter 7, verse 1. The progression of this combined army of the Israelites and the Syrians is marked by the city-by-city march chronicled for us in chapter 10, 28 through 32. But what, we might ask, is the advance of this combined army doing in a section talking about the advance of the Assyrian army?
One of the devices of the prophets is to describe one event, it may be present or past, in such a way so as to anticipate a future event. Even in such a way so as to see laid within that event the most future and ultimate of events, the consummation of all things. It’s as if, in reading an event, the prophets are able to see in those events the coming judgment that is sure to come upon all of the world. Future events laid within present events, and even the most future event of all, the end of all things.
Therefore, Isaiah sees in the current events of the Assyrians and the Israelites, the future invasion of the Assyrians. When he speaks about the Assyrians in this passage, whose invasion is guaranteed, Isaiah says, by Judah’s reliance upon the Assyrians in her struggle against the northern alliance. But of course, you will note, and this drawing out our considerations concerning the Prophet’s estimation of time and history, this is not all that Isaiah is privileged to see. In verses 33 and 34, as the tenth chapter ends, he sees a devastation from which Judah herself cannot and will not be excluded. A devastation that comes to Judah to be sure in the Assyrian invasion, but an invasion in which Isaiah in turn sees the nation of Judah so fully laid low that the tree of Jesse is reduced to a bare stump.
And it will be many, many years in the future, and many, many more invasions still, before that shoot and branch will miraculously sprout. You see, in the event current with the Prophet, he sees the events that he visions in front of him in terms of those things that are future and yet to be realized. It will be many, many years still, and many, many invasions yet, before the shoot and branch from Jesse will miraculously sprout.
Verses 1 through 5 in that 11th chapter in Isaiah. And many, many years further still, when the perfections of his reign will manifest themselves in an environment reminiscent of Eden, verses 6-9. But a reign that will finally transcend Eden itself, as the root of Jesse is gloriously exalted and made sublime in his final resting place. which is nowhere else but glory itself.” The Prophet’s message here, as it deals with time, as it deals with history, lends an immediacy to all these events that are circumscribed. Truly then, the Prophet’s vocabulary presents many instances along this very line.
Jesus himself, the Prophet, preaches the end of the world in his predictions concerning the A.D. 70 destruction of Jerusalem. That is why the prophecies of Jesus concerning the coming destruction of Jerusalem are so hard for us to decipher and understand. He is speaking in those prophecies in prophetic form. He is looking at a near event, and he is seeing a yet future event superimposed on that near event, so that when he gives the declaration concerning it, it becomes very hard to sort out what is pertaining to the destruction of Jerusalem and what belongs to the end of the world. And how many exegetes had stumbled over his proclamation at that very point? How many churches have stumbled over Jesus’ proclamation of the coming destruction of Jerusalem and what it means concerning the end of all things?
And John the Apostle, writing the Revelation, will do the same thing as he speaks about judgments that come upon the Church and the world, judgments pertaining to the period in its extensiveness between the first and second coming of Christ. This is the Bible’s method. This is the Bible’s way of bringing us right up against the ultimate issues and the most conclusive considerations, oppressing upon us the urgency of God’s purpose and His call. The Prophet’s method of communication by the Lord’s design brings near the future distant blessings, but also the coming certain destruction of this world.
And it effectively sets before us the question, am I, in appropriating the salvation of which the prophets speak, ready for the judgment they announce? Am I, in appropriating the salvation of which the prophets speak, ready for the judgment they announce?” Are you ready?
Our Father, we pray that we would not be among those who run away from your prophets and even the difficulties that are encountered when we confront the prophets. Instead, O God, for the good of our souls, we pray that we might rush toward the prophets, that we might be busy considering the prophets’ message. May we take to heart, O God, all of the methods they use, as these are by divine design. and intended to help us with regard to the nature of our faith, character of our life, and the importance of the salvation and the judgment which the prophets present. Father, bless us, then, your children, that we would take to heart all that your word says, the law and the prophets, even as they bear witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ. And in all of this, O God, may we be prepared for the day which the prophets saw, and know that our souls are secure in Christ, and that we are ready to meet our Lord.
The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.