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.
