Harry Foster
1. HIS GOSPEL EXPERIENCE
MARK did not call his book' A Gospel' but opened it with the intimation that he was about to write of 'The Gospel', and in doing so he associated what he had to say with the prophecies of Isaiah: "Even as it is written in Isaiah the prophet" (Mark 1:2). This stresses Isaiah's great contribution to the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. In this series I do not propose to try to deal with the book of Isaiah as a whole but hope to extract some gospel features from this most evangelical of the prophets who was also the most often quoted in the New Testament.[16/17]
In this first article we consider his calling and commission as he describes it in the well-known sixth chapter. This account is essentially a personal story, but it took place in the larger setting of a major crisis in Israel's history, for it happened "in the year that king Uzziah died". From then onwards, king Ahaz set the kingdom of Judah on its downward course which finished with the captivity. In a sense the independent kingdom of Judah was doomed. As always, the essential feature of the gospel is that it brings hope to the hopeless. This was first the personal experience of Isaiah and it then became the theme of his ministry.
When king Hezekiah made the captivity inevitable by his complicity with the emissaries of the king of Babylon, it was Isaiah who had to make the tragic announcement that everything would be carried away to that city and nothing would be left (Isaiah 39:6). With his mouth Hezekiah -- an essentially selfish man -- expressed a pious agreement with this divine verdict, but in his heart he thought, "Why not, if there will be peace and security in my days" (2 Kings 20:19). Seemingly he did not mind what happened to God's people so long as he did not live to see it.
How different was the spirit of God's servant Isaiah, whose whole life was devoted to God's future purposes. Warned from the first that those purposes would only be fulfilled in a remnant and that his own messages would meet with blind prejudice and misunderstanding, he turned at once from this tragic situation to give himself with renewed self-forgetfulness to offer hope beyond the calamity: "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God" (40:1).
He saw only too clearly the sin and failure of the people but beyond that, he saw the glorious triumph of the will of God. "What shall I cry?" he asked himself. Well, he had to cry of the utter failure of what was merely human ("All flesh is grass"), but he made the main theme of his message, "The word of our God shall stand for ever" (40:8). Peter, who was a keen student of Isaiah's prophecies, comments that this was "the word of good tidings which was preached unto you" (1 Peter 1:25).
What is more, it was a gospel available to the whole world. Isaiah's original vision was possibly received in the Jerusalem Temple but it was accompanied by heaven's assertion that "the whole earth is full of his glory". Time would show that the man who was thus gripped by a vision of the universal King would become a messenger of hope to the whole wide world.
It may help us to consider a few features of what we might call Isaiah's Ordination Service as it is found in Chapter 6. This was in a very real sense a gospel experience. He was brought low with a realisation of his own sinfulness, encouraged to faith by the cleansing power of the altar, and brought into close communion with His Saviour and King so that he could hear His voice and make his own willing response to it.
Nobody has a right to speak to others about their sinfulness who has not first been made aware of how great a sinner he is in himself. This is where the gospel begins. It began for Isaiah when in great dismay he cried out "Woe is me" and then added, "for I am lost". The word involves the idea of being silenced. He was struck dumb in the holy presence of God, as every sinner will be -- later if not sooner (Romans 3:19). The man who encounters God finds that he can no longer bring accusations against others or arguments to justify or excuse himself.
It was his lips which were unclean. This, I believe, may have been an indirect reference to leprosy. If so, it implies that Isaiah had discovered that he was no better than Uzziah whose inner corruption of pride had become a leprous physical condition which reduced him to ruin. It was not for Isaiah to pity the fallen king, still less to condemn him, for the sight of a holy God revealed that he himself was in the same ruined condition. One of Isaiah's favourite descriptions of the Lord, equally found in the second part of his book as in the first, was "The holy one of Israel". This was not merely phraseology but the result of a most personal and intimate awareness of God's true nature which came to him on the fateful day and laid him low in the dust.
As I have said, this is where the gospel begins but, as one who has been preaching it for very many years, I ask the great question, 'How can sinful man be convinced and convicted in this way?' In Isaiah's case it was not the thunders [17/18] of the law, as such, that brought him to repentance but it was a confrontation with the majesty of his holy God. I believe that this is an important truth. The sinner needs more than being challenged by commandments or threats; he needs to have the reality of the holy presence of God communicated to him. What brought Peter to repentance? Was it not a glimpse -- however partial -- of the majesty of Christ? (Luke 5:8). What brought the proud Pharisee Saul down into the dust in abject repentance? Was it not his personal encounter with the risen Lord? (Acts 9:5). These confirm the case of Isaiah, whose explanation for his cry of "woe is me" was "for mine eyes have seen the king".
I believe that this lay behind the words of the Lord Jesus when He said to His disciples: "I will send him (the Spirit) unto you. And he, when he is come, will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment" (John 16:7-8). The Lord plans to gather sinners to Himself by making His presence a glorious reality in His Church. It is for this that the Spirit has come.
It must have seemed like the end of the world to Isaiah. The ground rocked under his feet, the vision of glory was blotted out from his sight by the clouds of smoke, and the fiery seraphim flashed out their message of holiness. Happily when Isaiah could see nothing else in that Temple, he could still see the altar and, by a miracle of mercy, a heavenly messenger brought to him a live coal from it and applied it to those unclean lips. Later on Isaiah could preach, "Thus saith the high and lofty One, that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit ..." (57:15). That heartening message came from a firsthand experience of God's grace, as all effective gospel preaching must do.
Now of course the value of the altar did not lie in its fire, but in its victim. The divine solution to man's sinfulness is the death of a substitute. But the glowing coal was a proof that the altar was actually functioning at that moment and its application to Isaiah was an indication that God was dealing with him on the basis of atonement and substitution. As the years went on and the prophet grew in spiritual understanding, he was able to write the most graphic and moving account of our sacrificial Saviour's sufferings (Chapter 53), but happily the power of the cross does not depend upon our understanding of it, so that immediately Isaiah could be told that his iniquity was taken away and his sin purged. It was many years afterwards that he wrote those tremendous words: "The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all". Even then he could not have known, as we now do, the mysteries of Calvary.
This is the wonder of the gospel. The contrite sinner can find instantaneous relief and perfect cleansing in a moment of time. Isaiah did not have to rely on any action of his or on his feelings in the matter; heaven pronounced his pardon and that was what mattered. Yet, marvellous as that was, we should notice an equally great miracle, namely that of close communion between a pardoned sinner and his holy God. At one moment the Lord seemed wholly remote from Isaiah. He was high and lifted up on His throne, while the prophet was abased on the quaking earth. No sooner had the contact been made from the altar, however, than the prophet could actually hear the quiet conversations of the Godhead. No longer was he repulsed by the forbidding voice of burning seraphim but he was able to hear the confidential tones of the Lord Himself: "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" He could hear God for himself. That is what salvation does for a man. And what is more, Isaiah could speak freely and boldly to the thrice-holy God. "Here I am," he said, "send me."
I wonder what Isaiah expected to hear in reply to his impulsive offer. A kind rejection? A series of questions as to his fitness and the extent of his commitment? In any case what he did hear was the simple word "Go!" He was to have that command repeated as he moved in and out of affairs in Jerusalem (20:2 and 22:15) and all his life he was given messages to speak in the Lord's name, but this was a fundamental and unique experience; from now on he would be a man with a commission from the King of kings.
But let us look closer at the terms of this divine mandate. In preaching from this chapter I find that my messages have led up to this supreme "sending" and stopped there. What I [18/19] have not done, and what indeed I find very hard to do, is to apply to myself and my readers the implications of what God actually said to Isaiah. Already I have described it as 'Isaiah's Strange Commission' for on the surface it appears to be totally negative. "Speak to them," said the Lord, "but they will not understand you. Go on speaking and by your messages confirm them in their tragic ignorance." No wonder that Isaiah's immediate reaction was to ask, "How long, Lord?" The reply gave him little comfort but rather stressed the heavy nature of the responsibility committed to him.
What can we make of this perplexing command to tell people not to understand and so to speak to them that they gained no profit from his messages? There are wise commentators who suggest that this was not literally Isaiah's call, but reflects the disillusioning experiences which were to come to him through the years as he laboured among his people and in his beloved Jerusalem. If, however, we believe that this account is what truly happened to Isaiah, we cannot accept this as a full explanation for we are told that these were the words which the Lord actually used when appointing His volunteering servant.
There can be no doubt about their importance for they were quoted by the Lord Jesus Himself as well as by His apostles John and Paul. The Lord Jesus used the words to explain why He spoke in parables (Matthew 13:14-15), not meaning to imply that He tried to make His messages obscure but the very opposite. He used simple pictorial language in an attempt to get behind their hardness of heart and inability to grasp His truths. Incidentally this is how Isaiah operated, so much so that in their drunken carousels his critics accused him of treating them like kindergarten infants. "Whom will he make to understand the message?" they sneered, "small children?" (28:9). In the Hebrew verse 10 is in short, reiterated mimicry -- virtual baby-talk -- for which the N.I.V. is helpful with its rendering: "Do and do, rule on rule, rule on rule, a little here, a little there". It was not too complicated but starkly simple.
There was nothing mysterious or esoteric in Isaiah's ministry, any more than there was in the teaching of Jesus. It was clear enough to those who listened in faith; it did not make sense only to those who were set in their own preconceptions. The Lord Jesus prefaced His quotation of this part of Isaiah 6 with the statement: "To him who has will more be given ... but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away" (Matthew 13:12), meaning surely that truth accepted becomes growingly clear while truth rejected becomes even more obscure. It seems, then, that the Lord was preparing Isaiah for popular rejection of his message.
John's quotation of this same passage silences straight away the suggestion that there were two Isaiahs and stresses the stubbornness and prejudice which made it impossible for the Jewish leaders to believe and be healed (John 12:38-41). They could not because they would not. Moreover John makes a close connection between Isaiah's visions and the Lord Jesus Himself.
Came the cross, the resurrection and the wide-spread witness of the Church and still Paul had to find in this quotation from Isaiah 6 the divine verdict on his unbelieving compatriots (Acts 28:25-28). "The Holy Spirit was right when He made this sad statement through Isaiah" he commented, but Paul did not leave the matter in its apparently negative connotation for he added: "The salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles and they will listen ."
We observe, then, that Isaiah was informed by God of the long history of apparent failures which would come to His servants through the ages. It must have opened up a daunting prospect for the prophet, but clearly he was well aware of the positive implication of God's command to him: "As the terebinth and oak leave stumps when they are cut down, so the holy seed will be the stump in the land" (v.13). So convinced was the prophet that his ministry would ultimately prove successful that he gave to his firstborn son the name, Shear-jashub, "A remnant will return".
We find no difficulty in sympathising with Isaiah's first reaction to his so sombre commission, which must have been one of dismay. "Lord, how long?" he asked, only to receive an answer which may appear to have given him cold comfort. There was more to it than a negative message, though, for the gospel is nothing if not positive. I suggest that in his heart the prophet felt from the first a divine urge to convey to his hearers and readers a vital revelation of the King [19/20] of kings whom he had seen for himself on that critical visit to the Temple.
According to John 12:41 the One whom he saw was none other than Christ in His glory and, as I hope we shall see in succeeding articles, his whole life was devoted to sharing that vision with all who read his book. If that was the task near to his heart, we have to confess that he succeeded in a superlative way. How long, Isaiah? Why, until the last redeemed sinner finds resurrection life through the exalted Saviour.
As a young pastor I used sometimes to visit an old lady in her nineties who liked to tell me of her conversion many years before. It came about by means of a message on the words: "Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow ..." (Isaiah 1:18). This conversion took place when she was a young woman and greatly delighted an old uncle, himself a believer, who had prayed much for her. He called to see her and in his rather quaint old-fashioned way asked her: 'Tell me, my dear, did you come to know the Saviour by the ministry of Brother Paul or by that of Brother John?' She was equal to the occasion. 'It was neither,' she replied, 'it was Brother Isaiah who led me to Christ!'
Thank God for 'Brother Isaiah'! In subsequent articles from this series of 'Isaiah and the Gospel', I hope to be able to indicate some of the ways in which the prophet's ministry can still lead us to Christ.
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