Isaiah 66 - Mercy And Judgment

Turn to Isaiah chapter 66.

Isaiah 66 · chapter mention

The very last chapter of the book of Isaiah.

You can find that on page 661 if you're using the Pew Bible this morning.

We're going to be going through this final chapter today.

It's actually not going to be the last message in our Isaiah series.

Next week, we're going to be looking back over the book with one final summary message.

But this is our focus for today, Isaiah chapter 66.

Isaiah 66 · chapter mention

I'll read beginning at verse 1 down through verse 24.

This is God's word.

This is what the Lord says.

And where would my resting place be?

My hand made all these things, and so they all came into being.

This is the Lord's declaration.

I will look favorably on this kind of person.

One who is humble, submissive in spirit, and trembles at my word.

One person slaughters an ox, another kills a person.

One person sacrifices a lamb, another breaks a dog's neck.

One person offers a grain offering, another offers pig's blood.

One person offers incense, another praises an idol.

All these have chosen their ways and delight in their abhorrent practices.

So I will choose their punishment.

And I will bring on them what they dread, because I called and no one answered.

I spoke and they did not listen.

They did what was evil in my sight and chose what I did not delight in.

You who tremble at his word, hear the word of the Lord.

Your brothers who hate and exclude you for my name's sake have said, Let the Lord be glorified so that we can see your joy, but they will be put to shame.

A sound of uproar from the city, a voice from the temple, the voice of the Lord paying back his enemies what they deserve.

Before Zion was in labor, she gave birth.

Before she was in pain, she delivered a boy.

Who has heard of such a thing?

Who has seen such things?

Can a land be born in one day or a nation be delivered in an instant?

Yet as soon as Zion was in labor, she gave birth to sons.

Will I bring a baby to the point of birth and not deliver it?

says the Lord?

Or will I who deliver close the womb?

says your God.

Be glad for Jerusalem and rejoice over her, all who love her.

Rejoice greatly with her, all who mourn over her, so that you may nurse and be satisfied from her comforting breast and drink deeply, and delight yourself from her glorious breasts.

For this is what the Lord says I will make peace flow to her like a river, and the wealth of nations like a flood.

You will nurse and be carried on her hip and bounced on her lap.

As a mother comforts her son, so I will comfort you, and you will be comforted in Jerusalem.

You will see, you will rejoice, and you will flourish like grass.

Then the Lord's power will be revealed to his servants, but he will show his wrath against his enemies.

Look, the Lord will come with fire.

His chariots are like the whirlwind to execute his anger with fury and his rebuke with flames of fire.

For the Lord will execute judgment on all humanity with his fiery sword, and many will be slain by the Lord.

Those who dedicate and purify themselves to enter the groves following their leader, eating meat from pigs, vermin, and rats, will perish together.

This is the Lord's declaration.

Knowing their works and their thoughts, I have come to gather all nations and languages.

They will come and see my glory.

I will establish a sign among them, and I will send survivors from them to the nations, to Tarshish, Put, Lud, who are archers, Tubal, Javed, and the coasts and islands far away, who have not heard about me or seen my glory, and they will proclaim my glory among the nations.

They will bring all your brothers from all the nations as a gift to the Lord on horses and chariots and litters on mules and camels to my holy mountain Jerusalem, says the Lord.

Just as the Israelites bring an offering and a clean vessel to the house of the Lord, I will also take some of them as priests and Levites, says the Lord.

For, just as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, will remain before me, this is the Lord's declaration.

So your offspring and your name will remain.

All humanity will come to worship me from one new moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another, says the Lord.

As they leave, they will see the dead bodies of those who have rebelled against me.

For their worm will never die, their fire will never go out, and they will be a horror to all humanity.

This is God's word.

Briefly, let's pray again.

Lord, there's so much here.

And we can say, who is sufficient to take all these things in?

Who is sufficient to deliver your words?

But we want to hear from you.

So bring the clarity of your Holy Spirit to our hearts, even now.

We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

In the late 1800s, a woman named Anne Cousin wrote a poem called The Sands of Time Are Sinking.

It's a song that's still sung today.

And verse 4 in our hymnals begins this way with mercy and with judgment, my web of time he wove.

That that verse is a personal testimony, but it pictures something of the way the Lord seems to work throughout his word, even throughout history, with mercy and with judgment.

And you see those two themes of mercy and judgment woven in and out of our chapter here in Isaiah 66.

Verse number 12.

I will make peace flow to her like a river.

Mercy.

Verse 20, they will bring all your brothers from all the nations as a gift to the Lord.

Mercy.

Verse 22.

There's mercy.

And there's also judgment.

Verse 4.

I will choose their punishment.

Verse 6, the voice of the Lord paying back his enemies what they deserve.

Verse 15 and 16 Look, the Lord will come with fire, his chariots are like the whirlwind to execute his anger with fury and his rebuke with flames of fire.

For the Lord will execute judgment on all humanity with his fiery sword, and many will be slain by the Lord.

Judgment.

We often are tempted to put it together like this.

Well, mercy for me, judgment for everyone else.

Mercy for the people that I like, judgment for everyone that I don't like.

But here in our text, Isaiah is inspired by God.

So God is the one who is placing mercy and judgment side by side, weaving them in and out throughout our passage.

Why does he do that?

God places mercy and judgment side by side to showcase his glory.

God places mercy and judgment side by side to showcase his glory.

As we consider this passage today, we're going to look at three threads of mercy and judgment.

And I'll give those to you at the outset and then we'll work through these.

Number one, mercy comes to those who receive God's word, but judgment comes to those who reject God's word.

Number two, second thread, mercy brings new creation, but judgment brings desolation.

And then number three, we'll spend the least time on this, but it's here in the text.

Mercy endures and judgment endures.

First thread.

This is the Lord's declaration.

I will look favorably on this kind of person, one who is humble, submissive in spirit, and trembles at my word.

God's going to look favorably, he's going to show mercy on people who tremble at his word, those who receive his word.

And if we're going to rightly tremble at his word, we need to understand who is speaking.

At the beginning of verse 2, God says, My hand made all these things.

What things?

Go back to verse 1.

Heaven is my throne and earth is my footstool.

So in the beginning, God made heaven and earth.

He uses this image here.

Do you see how receiving God's word relates to God as the creator of heaven and earth?

God's word is so powerful, he spoke galaxies into existence.

God is so powerful, just through his mere word, species came into being.

Flowers were seeded in distant unknown meadows.

That's how powerful God's word is.

Who are we to think we can stand before God and take his word and say, I'll leave it or take it as I want to?

That's not the way to respond to the God who made heaven and earth.

Job had to learn this lesson.

He had some questions about his life circumstances.

And when God comes to Job, God says, Have you considered creation?

Look at it carefully.

And Job says, You're right.

I need to be quiet before your word.

It's too wonderful for me.

So the God who speaks is a God of majesty, and he's a God who desires worship.

In verse 1, God asks two questions.

Where could you possibly build a house for me?

And where would my resting place be?

Those are two questions that Solomon also asks when he first dedicates the temple.

Even heaven, the highest heaven, cannot contain you much less this temple I've built.

So God had given these elaborate instructions for the tabernacle, then for the temple, and God repeats here before Isaiah, yes, I had those instructions, but ultimately, where is the house of my resting place?

God gave those instructions in part because he wanted people to see their need to listen to him and do what he said.

Israel couldn't just worship in their own way at their own time.

They had to take their worship cues from the living God, and he was kind to give them instructions.

Mercy comes to those who receive God's word.

But judgment comes to those who reject God's word.

Look at verse 4.

God called.

He quotes the first two verses from Isaiah.

Why does he do that?

Well, he's telling the listeners that they're part of a pattern of people who have rejected God's servants who brought God's word.

They persecuted the prophets, they killed the Lord Jesus, now they're persecuting him.

They've tried to worship in their own way, they've rejected God, and now the very God of heaven and earth that they're thinking they have the temple on their side, they don't have God on their side.

They're guilty, and judgment is coming on them.

That's how he uses the passage here.

A key arena for judgment in our passage is the context of worship.

That's a first and basic place where people receive God's word or reject his word.

So look again at verse number three.

As you read that verse, you might be a little confused.

It's not really primarily about cruelty to animals.

It's about how the people come before God and worship.

Yes, they're coming, but they're coming either hypocritically, doing evil things throughout the week, or they're coming with the kinds of offerings God never asked for or intended.

They're delighting in idols more than the living God.

Let's think about it this way.

Last weekend was Valentine's Day weekend.

Let's say that on Valentine's Day night, I get a call.

And in this call, I hear that Mrs.

Jones is in the hospital.

So I go over to the hospital, I find Mr.

Jones in the waiting room.

I say, What happened?

Well, I guess she had an allergic reaction.

I said, Wow, I'm sorry to hear that.

God, they're taking care of what tell me more.

And Mr.

Jones says, Well, I wanted to cook Valentine's Day dinner for my wife.

That's great.

That's nice.

He said, I wanted to make shrimp scampi, but I I guess she's allergic, you know.

I said, Oh no, and you you didn't know?

He said, Oh, I knew.

I said, now, now, now wait a minute here.

You this is this is your covenant partner.

This is the most precious person in the world, all of you.

That you you forgot that she's allergic to shellfish?

And he said, Well, no, I didn't forget.

I just I really wanted I really wanted shrimp, and I thought it would be okay.

What has Mr.

Jones revealed about himself?

He's revealed that his wife actually isn't the most important person in his life.

He's revealed that the most important person in his life is looking at it in the mirror.

That's who the most important person is.

How much greater when we come to God or come before God and think, I'll just do it my way.

Never mind what God's actual character and nature demands and expects of me.

When we worship not valuing God's words, what we're showing is that we don't value God Himself.

And that brings his judgment.

So, how do we approach the Bible?

We're called to tremble at his word.

This word here, tremble in verse 2, it's used in many other places.

I'll give you a few examples.

Psalm 97, verse 4, his lightning lights up the world, the earth sees and trembles.

Psalms 97:4

Psalm 96, verse 9, worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness.

Psalms 96:9

Let the whole earth tremble before him.

Hosea 11, 10.

They will follow the Lord, he will roar like a lion.

When he roars, his children will come trembling from the west.

When we rightly see God high and lifted up, like Isaiah in chapter 6, we'll be humble and submissive before him.

We will tremble at his word.

And God puts both of these things next to each other in our passage.

Mercy for those who receive God's word, judgment for those who reject God's word.

Now, why am I using the word mercy here?

You know, the people that listen and respond get the Lord's gaze of favor.

Those who reject get judgment.

That's just what they deserve.

Where's the mercy coming?

Well, when we really recognize God and His Word in ourselves, part of the humility of the contrite heart is seeing I don't deserve anything.

I I haven't trembled at God's word to the extent that I should.

I'm I'm at heart still an unprofitable servant.

Everything I have is God's mercy.

Nothing is actually deserved.

Now, now before I move on to the next thread, that's thread number one.

Before I move on, I want to encourage us.

This is such a delight for me to come here.

It's not a perfect church, but when I come week after week, I see people who are trembling at God's word, who are eager to receive it.

Praise God for that.

I see people thinking about worship.

I don't see people who are living in hypocrisy throughout the week and then coming to raise their hands to God as though everything is alright.

I see a consistency and a sincerity throughout the week.

You're eager to look at God's word even with one another.

I see people eager to hear it, to pray, to sing songs, to love one another and hug one another.

Keep doing that.

Don't presume on God's mercy, but continue in His mercy as we love God's word together.

Second thread mercy brings new creation, but judgment brings desolation.

Verse number one again, heaven is my throne, earth is my footstool.

Then look down to verse 22, just as the new heavens and the new earth which I make will remain before me.

So at the very beginning of the passage and at the end of the passage is heaven and earth.

You see it both places.

God's gonna make all things new.

This is continuing a theme we looked at last week from chapter 65, where God says, I will make a new heavens and a new earth.

You see that same idea here in our passage.

God's going to restore what was lost.

He's gonna look over this fallen world and once again remake this fallen world.

That is mercy.

If you look at verse number 12, God's wrath in Scripture is often compared to a flood.

But in verse number 12, it's the wealth of the nations entering this new Jerusalem like a flood.

That's that's mercy.

And we need to understand that this new creation, it's a place of beauty, it's a place of worship, it's a place of beautiful worship.

This language of a house and a resting place points us back to the tabernacle and temple, the central place of Israel's worship.

God resting, you've got to think of the very first days of creation.

When God on the seventh day rested from all of his labor.

He took time, as it were, to step back and gaze over his work and rejoice in his work.

Isaiah's doing something here.

We've got to think carefully about this.

He's comparing the temple to the original creation.

He's saying, yes, in one sense, God is symbolically enthroned in the temple over that Ark of the Covenant.

But really, God from the very beginning was enthroned over the whole universe.

God wanted all of creation to be a kind of worshiping temple.

There's a lot of parallels we won't trace out here, but listen to Psalm 132, verses 7 to 9.

Psalms 132:7–9

Let's go to his dwelling place.

Let's worship at his footstool.

Resting, footstool, temple imagery, matching creation imagery.

So in God's mercy, the new creation is going to be a place not just of beauty, but of perfect worship.

Another part of God's mercy in this new creation is a new creation that includes the mercy of one unified family of God.

God's instructions at the very beginning be fruitful and multiply.

And then the promise to Abraham, I'm going to make you a great nation, but in you all nations will be blessed.

It's not just one family or one little group.

It's people from every tribe and tongue coming together in praise of the Lord.

And you see it here in verse number 8.

As soon as Zion was in labor, she gave birth to her sons.

There's going to be the kind of glorious multiplication that God desired all the way from the beginning.

He's going to make it happen in his tender mercy.

In verse 13, he compares himself to a comforting mother.

In Galatians chapter 4, Paul contrasts the earthly Jerusalem, which is in bondage to works.

Galatians 4 · chapter mention

He contrasts that with the heavenly Jerusalem that embraces the gospel message.

Listen to what he says.

Of a barren woman having offspring, and even that offspring going out beyond Israel to include surrounding nations and peoples.

Here in our passage in Isaiah 66, that unified family of God that's part of his new creation design and goal that spills out to encompass many peoples.

Verse 18.

But God has to be saying something even more than that here.

He doesn't just say some nations, he says all nations.

He doesn't just just say certain places.

How is it that there's not even just Christians here?

There's churches here.

We are 5,000 miles away from Jerusalem.

I mean, we human nature, we tend to think of ourselves as the center of the world, and all the other places are the distant places.

From Isaiah's perspective, we're the distant places.

The gospel has come here, and God is worshipped and celebrated here.

Even here in this very room, we see people from different tribes and tongues and nations and people.

This is all God's mercy.

It's his doing and it's glorious.

In verse number 19, Isaiah speaks of this sign.

He doesn't give a lot of detail, but a number of other commentators think of this sign as pointing ultimately to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And Christ himself did say, You want a sign?

Here's your sign.

The Son of Man will be buried in the earth for three days and three nights after his crucifixion, coming out again.

Verse 19 speaks of survivors.

One person says, I will send, which you see there in that verse, send the survivors.

I will send is the Old Testament's expression of the New Testament missionary mandate.

Certainly, God has called the remnant of his people to go out with his good news and his message everywhere we can.

But whether or not you could view some of those things in verse 19 as more immediate to Isaiah's own day, or something happening right now in our own day, or something still yet future, we can still see in the beginning of verse 20 that God's reiterating his purpose to bring brothers from all the nations.

He's got a global purpose, just like he's had from the very beginning.

Helps to reiterate this.

Each one was born there.

Born in Zion.

No, they weren't.

Well, it's God's purpose and intention to bring people from all kinds of places and backgrounds to his own glorious family.

Ephesians 3, verse 6.

Ephesians 3:6

The Gentiles are co-heirs, members of the same body, partners in the promise of Christ Jesus through the gospel.

So there's this glorious, bright thread that mercy brings new creation.

But there's another necessary, dark part of this thread that God's judgment brings desolation.

Verse 14.

Look at the end of verse 14.

He will show his wrath against his enemies.

And then the next two verses give us more explanation of that.

Verse 15.

The Lord will come with fire.

His chariots are like the whirlwind to execute his anger with fury and his rebuke with flames of fire, for the Lord will execute judgment on all humanity with his fiery sword, and many will be slain by the Lord.

What do whirlwinds do?

They destroy things.

What does fire do?

It burns things up.

What do swords do?

They cut people into pieces.

This is the undoing of God's creation.

This is desolation and chaos.

And we've seen this kind of desolation described already in Isaiah.

Isaiah 34, listen to verse 4.

All the stars in the sky will dissolve, the sky will roll up like a scroll, and its stars will all wither as leaves on the vine.

When my sword has drunk its fill in the heavens, it will then come down on Edom and on the people I have set apart for destruction.

Here in Isaiah 66, the imagery that Isaiah gives us matches the imagery of God's original judgment in the Garden of Eden.

Remember, God expels Adam and Eve, and he places the cherubim to guard the way.

And it it says that the cherubim are given a flaming, whirling sword.

Genesis 324.

What do we find here in Isaiah 66, verses 15 and 16?

Isaiah 66:15

Whirlwind, flames, and a sword.

Part of what that shows us is the deepest form of God's judgment, the deepest experience of God's judgment, is alienation from God Himself, just like Adam and Eve had back in the garden when the angel blocked the way.

Yes, God's judgment includes physical pain.

Yes, it includes isolation.

But the most heartbreaking part of God's judgment for those who will experience it is they're cut off from knowing and enjoying the greatest of all beings.

So again, we need to keep in this chapter these threads of mercy and judgment side by side.

We can't improve on what He's given us here.

Thread number one, mercy comes to those who receive God's word, judgment comes to those who reject God's word.

And then thread number two, we just looked at mercy brings new creation, but judgment brings desolation.

And then one final thread this morning: mercy endures, and judgment endures.

We've been comparing and contrasting mercy and judgment here in this particular way, they run together.

They both are enduring.

Verse 22.

Just as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make will remain before me.

This is the Lord's declaration.

So your offspring and your name will remain.

All humanity will come to worship me from one new moon to another and from one Sabbath to another, says the Lord.

So if you're thinking today, God is merciful and He's shown mercy, and will it last?

Isaiah's answer is a resounding yes.

Yes, it will last.

And God's mercy takes us to a place that's beyond even what Adam and Eve had in the garden, because in God's mercy, there will one day come a time when we're never able to sin ever again.

There's no threat of a fall or God's judgment.

For those who know the Lord, for those who have embraced Jesus Christ, his mercy endures forever.

The enduring nature of heaven and earth, God promised to Noah, I'm not going to destroy the earth again with a flood.

He hasn't done that.

He has said he'll bring fire on the earth, but he's going to once more shake all things in order that what can't be shaken would remain.

The new heaven and new earth will endure, and God's people who enjoy this new creation will endure forever.

Think about the glory of unending worship.

I take it that we will never get a sore throat throughout all the worship of eternity.

We'll never have to stop singing and take a drink of water.

Maybe we will, I don't know, but you get the point.

Worship is going to be perfected in that new creation.

Now, I know some of you believe verse 23 refers to a temporary time period of a thousand years in the future.

So let everyone be fully persuaded in their own mind.

If that does happen, I think we can agree that that interlude would just be a precursor for an eternity of future worship.

What's a few hundred years compared to forever?

And that's what God is pushing us towards and setting up today is there's going to be mercy that endures forever and forever and forever.

And I think we can also agree that in some sense this this enduring mercy has begun now.

You yourselves, as living stones, a spiritual house are being built.

It's God's mercy that built us together.

But the way Peter describes it, we're being built to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

And we do that each and every week.

Thank God for his mercy.

And his judgment endures.

Verse 24.

Their worm will never die.

Their fire will never go out.

It's the very same language our Lord uses in Mark 9, verse 47 and 48.

Mark 9:47

If your eye causes you to fall away, gouge it out.

It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.

Jesus borrowing these very words from Isaiah.

Kurt Cameron is just wrong on this one.

It's what our Lord says.

Now, if you don't know what I'm talking about, don't worry about it.

If you're just reading your Bible and loving your neighbor and worshiping God, you can live a faithful life without knowing about every Christian podcast controversy.

So don't probably better that way, honestly.

You notice no one ever seems to question God's everlasting mercy.

It's always the everlasting judgment they question, not the mercy.

Why is that?

It's because we have sometimes a high view of ourselves and a low view of God.

Enduring judgment matches the problem of worship.

It matches the problem of the God whose word we've rejected.

We're not judged as finite beings merely because we sinned against some other finite beings.

We're judged because we've rejected the word of an infinite God.

That's not a small crime.

That's an infinite crime that is worthy of enduring punishment.

Isaiah ends his book that way with a sobering word of warning, and we do well to consider that.

All throughout this chapter, God's weaving together mercy and judgment.

Why does he do that?

You would think he might just talk about mercy for a while and then leave that aside and then talk about judgment or perhaps reverse it and end on the mercy note.

That's not what he chooses here.

It's back and forth throughout this passage.

Mercy, judgment, mercy, judgment.

Why does he do that?

To showcase his glory, certainly.

I don't know that I can give a full answer, but Paul gives us part of the answer in Romans.

Listen to what Paul says in Romans 9.

What if God, wanting to display his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much patience objects of wrath prepared for destruction?

What if he did this to make known the riches of his glory on objects of mercy that he prepared beforehand for glory, on us, the ones he called, not only from the Jews, but also from the Gentiles.

In our own lives, we can be all the more grateful for this water of God's mercy when we know that the soot of hell is right on us, too.

And it's it's near us, it's all there.

We can be more astonished at the wisdom and mercy of God throughout history when we see that all throughout history, God's judgment is right there as well.

And we see this pairing of mercy and judgment most exquisitely at the cross.

At the cross, Christ wasn't merely taking on some small finite sin that I committed by not obeying my parents one time when I was young.

I disobeyed more than that.

So at the cross, you have the fullest display of God's holy and righteous anger against sin.

You have judgment right to the fullness on the cross.

But then at the cross is also the place where you have this inexplicable mercy.

Because the justice and judgment that was required, God provided himself.

The very Son of God took on that weight of punishment so that all those who come in faith to him could be saved and rescued.

What an amazing display of mercy.

So we can look no further than the cross to see that, yes, we have to keep mercy and judgment perfectly together.

We can never do enough good things to earn God's mercy, but we can trust the Son who shed his precious blood for us.

I mentioned at the outset the sands of time are sinking with mercy and with judgment, my web of time he wove.

There's another verse to that song, and I'll quote it, and we're going to sing it in a moment.

This is verse number five in our hymnals.

Oh, I am my beloved's, and my beloved's mine.

He brings a poor vile sinner into his house of wine.

I stand upon his merit.

I know no other stand, not even where glory dwelleth in Emmanuel's land.

Let's pray.

God, we anticipate the glory of Emmanuel's land.

We don't think soberly enough about you in both your judgment and in your astonishing mercy.

But we want to know more of the weight of it in our souls.

We don't want to be blind to it.

We want it to grip our hearts and our lives, even through tears and laughter and everyday chores, that the eternal God would be the one who is underneath us, that the cross would be casting a light over all that we do, that the hope of the tomb and the resurrection would bring joy to our lives because we're objects of mercy.

Thank you, O God.

And we sing not only of future love, we sing of a present love.

We sing of the one who in mercy draws us with everlasting cords of kindness.

So even as we sing now to you, would you grant our hearts the ability to rejoice with trembling?

In Jesus' name.

Amen.