Isaiah 21-23: Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

Turn to Isaiah, please.

Isaiah, chapter 21.

Isaiah 21 · chapter mention

We're heading through this Old Testament book and the passage for this morning is going to cover chapters 21 through 23.

I'm not going to read all three of those chapters.

I want to read, to start with this morning, a portion from chapter 21,.

But we'll be looking at that whole section for our sermon text for today, isaiah 21,.

I'll read the first 12 verses.

This is what God's word says, a pronouncement concerning the desert by the sea.

Like the storms that pass over the Negev, it comes from the desert, from the land of terror.

A troubling vision is declared to me.

The treacherous one acts treacherously and the destroyer destroys.

Advance Elam, lay, siege you, medes, I will put an end to all the groaning.

Therefore, I am filled with anguish.

Pain grips me, like the pain of a woman in labor.

I am too perplexed to hear, too dismayed to see.

My heart staggers.

Horror terrifies me.

He has turned my last glimmer of hope into sheer terror.

Prepare a table and spread out a carpet, eat and drink.

Rise up, you princes, and oil the shields.

For the Lord has said to me go, post a lookout, let him report what he sees.

Then the lookout reported.

Lord, I stand on the watchtower all day and I stay at my post all night.

Look, riders come, horsemen in pairs.

And he answered, saying Babylon has fallen, has fallen.

All the images of our gods have been shattered on the ground, my people who have been crushed on the threshing floor.

I have declared to you what I have heard from the Lord of armies, the God of Israel, a pronouncement concerning Duma.

One calls to me from Seir watchman what is left of the night, watchman, what is left of the night?

The watchman said morning has come, and also night.

If you want to ask, ask, come back again to ask, ask, come back again.

Let's pray again briefly, lord, as we always pray.

We need your Holy Spirit to show us things from your word and we feel our own weakness and need.

But in that humility we come before you, knowing that you're so gracious to give wisdom from those who ask, to give understanding from those who seek it.

So give us that understanding.

This morning we ask in Jesus' name, amen.

Hello darkness, my old friend, I've come to talk with you again because a vision softly creeping left its seeds while I was sleeping and the vision that was planted in my brain still remains within the sound of silence.

If you're under 50 years old, let me explain that to you.

I was quoting a song.

It was the number one hit, first number one hit of Simon and Garfunkel over 50 years ago, called the Sound of Silence, and you might not know it was a number one hit in places like Australia and Japan.

It's kind of an eerie song.

Hello, darkness, my old friend.

What would be so resonant about a song like that?

Well, people seem to resonate with darkness, whether 50 years ago or today.

The portion of scripture I just read from the beginning of our passage, there's a lot of darkness.

In verse number one, storm clouds are gathering.

In verse number three of chapter 21, the prophet can't see.

In verse number four, the last glimmer of hope is fading.

Verse number eight a lookout is standing post all night.

And in addition to those things, we have this strange pronouncement in verses 11 and 12, where a night watchman is asked what time it is and then he says morning has come and also night.

Why would he answer that way?

Remember, in this time period people didn't have cell phones, they didn't have clocks.

So if you wake up in the middle of the night it's hard to know what time it is.

You could imagine a soldier maybe peeking his head out of the tent, these different watchmen that are posted for night shifts hey, how much longer until morning?

And the watchman here says, yeah, morning's arriving, but it'll still be dark.

You can keep asking, but I wouldn't bother, it's just going to be dark, night will stay.

Imagine the soldier putting his head back inside the tent.

Did the watchman just break up with his girlfriend, or what's going on?

Because he just said even when morning comes, night is still going to be here.

It's still going to be dark.

Darkness in these prophetic pronouncements, these oracles.

Darkness is normally here, a sign of God's judgment.

Darkness falls on those who deny God.

That's the prophet's message from this section of scripture.

Darkness falls on those who deny God.

You might think, well, darkness will be here for a little while, but then it'll get better.

Morning will come.

If you're denying God, that thought process is all wrong.

This is the burden of the word of the Lord.

Even with the morning, night comes.

Darkness falls on those who deny God.

Three points today Number one pain in darkness.

Number two guilt in darkness.

And then number three light in darkness.

Let's look first at the pain that's described here when the prophet gives these oracles and oracles that seem shrouded in so much darkness.

The pain of this darkness is a universal pain.

Why do I say that?

Well, so far in the book of Isaiah, isaiah has given a number of different oracles.

That just means a divine message certain to come true.

A lot of oracles or pronouncements about specific peoples or specific individuals an oracle against Egypt, oracle against Assyria, oracle against Israel or an oracle against the king of Egypt.

But when we come here to chapter 21, verse one, this is an oracle concerning the desert by the sea.

What did the desert ever do?

In verse 11, an oracle concerning Duma.

What is Duma?

It's?

We're confident it's not a South American plantain dish, but we're not sure what it is because it sounds very strange.

Verse 13 mentions Arabia.

That's a little more familiar to us, but it's a large area, more than a particular nation, arabia.

Chapter 22, verse 1, look there, here's a fourth pronouncement in this section concerning the Valley of Vision.

And then, finally, chapter 23,.

We come to a pronouncement against Tyre, which, if you read your Bibles, that gets us a little more into the realm of familiarity.

Okay, I've heard of Tyre, it's city over there by Lebanon.

It was a nation at this time.

So Egypt, moab, tyre Okay, I understand pronouncements against those places Arabia, a little more abstract, but a valley of vision and Duma and the wilderness by the sea.

Why is Isaiah speaking so cryptically?

This is how one person answers that question.

The enigmatic titles are Isaiah's way of showing that he's left the sharp clarity of his contemporary scene and is looking into the future.

If so, history is not a tale of everything getting better and better, but divine judgments become starker.

This passage and these oracles, they do relate in some ways to specific people or specific places.

There are some clues within the oracles.

So if you look at chapter 21, verse nine, it says Babylon has fallen.

So the desert by the sea, which is the title, seems to relate to Babylon in some way.

And then if you look down at chapter 21, verse 11, it mentions Seir, which is connected in other scriptures to Edom.

So that pronouncement seems related to Edomites.

And then verse chapter 21,.

The Valley of Vision in chapter 22 speaks of the destruction of God's dear people.

22, verse 4.

And then chapter 22, verse 8, says God has removed the defenses of Judah.

So the Valley of Vision relates to the city of David in some way, and the people of God.

So the Valley of Vision relates to the city of David in some way and the people of God.

But even though there are clues within the oracles about specific people and recipients, the titles are quite abstract.

The abstraction of those titles, those cryptic titles, that helps to show us that all those people everywhere who bear the image of these idolatrous places will likewise fall into darkness.

The pain of darkness is not simply for this nation or that time or those people.

It's a universal darkness, a universal pain.

It's almost like think about one of those horribly disfigured Picasso paintings.

He might've begun with a specific subject, but he breaks it up on the canvas to try to say something about the human condition that moves beyond that individual subject that he started with.

And this idea reiterates a theme that Pastor Doug has brought out a number of times here in Isaiah.

Isaiah prophesies and he speaks of different horizons.

On the near horizon, in Isaiah's prophecies, we have the events of his own day, peoples of his own day.

On a farther horizon, Isaiah speaks to the coming of Messiah, the birth and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the ascension and the glory of Christ.

And on a yet more distant, third horizon, isaiah speaks about the second coming of the Lord and final judgment and the end of all things.

And the section for today leans toward that final horizon of God's final judgment to come, even as it takes into view specific judgments about the people of Isaiah's day.

So in Isaiah 21, this watchman who's expressing this pain and despair of darkness becomes an emblem of all people everywhere who reject God and can await only darkness.

That's why scripture can speak of people who are cast into outer darkness.

Picking up on the same theme.

So the darkness here, the pain, is universal and the pain is also lonely.

Chapter 21, verse 11,.

Look there again at this pronouncement against Duma.

Who or what is Duma?

Look there again at this pronouncement against Duma.

Who or what is Duma?

We get a little more help from scripture.

Ishmael has a descendant named Duma, and Esau lives in a place that seems connected to Duma.

Who were Ishmael and Esau?

They were rejected brothers.

The pain of isolation.

Duma is also a Hebrew word that refers to silence.

So, for example, in Psalm 94, 17, it says if the Lord had not been my helper, I would soon rest in the Duma of Duma.

The silence of silence.

When you're in pure darkness, usually you don't want to speak, not because you're tired of gabbing but you don't see anyone.

It's lonely, that isolation that's there.

Why is there such pain in darkness?

There's pain in darkness because of guilt Pain and darkness because of guilt.

It's true, there are people in scripture, like Job, who experience pain not directly tied to their own guilt.

Here Isaiah is not speaking so much to the Job's of the world.

He's speaking to people who have rejected God, who have despised his word, so that the pain that's coming for them corresponds to the guilt of their rejection.

This is a darkness.

It's much more than seasonal sadness.

This is the very undoing of creation, again pointing forward all the way, in the final analysis, to that grand judgment at the hands of the Lord.

Pain in darkness stems from guilt in darkness.

And you see that chapter 21 says in verse number two treacherous people act treacherously.

People are doing wrong things, the way that this passage opens in chapter 21,.

Things, the way that this passage opens in chapter 21, like storms that pass over the Negev.

It comes from the desert, from the land of terror.

It comes what comes.

It's ominous, it's almost like a horror movie.

I'm not really a horror movie guy.

I know some of you like horror movies not really my thing.

But do you notice in horror movies sometimes who the victims are?

It's rarely ever a woman who's trying to lead a Bible study.

You know, it's usually people that are.

I shouldn't say usually.

It is sometimes people who are transgressing boundaries in some way.

It's the teens who are in the backseat of the car and they get attacked by the hockey mask.

It's the young people by the fire who are drinking too much and they're underage and the chainsaw comes out of the forest.

It's the children who are out after curfew and the monsters are going to get them that register of I'm transgressing a boundary and it's.

They should feel wrong and you as the viewer kind of feel like it's wrong.

And then, if they're doing that kind of bad thing, what greater bad thing might happen to them?

And then you get hooked in.

Michael, wait a minute here.

Underage drinking is not wise, but it doesn't mean you should get chopped in half by a chainsaw.

They're not that guilty when we come to the horror and pain of the darkness here in these oracles.

This is God's divine story.

God never makes an error in judgment.

Parents sometimes exaggerate threats to their children because they want to control behavior.

God doesn't exaggerate his threats.

All that God pronounces in the judgment he makes perfectly accords with the reality and nature of human guilt.

Look at verse number nine of chapter 21.

Babylon has fallen has fallen.

All the images of her gods have been shattered to the ground.

These are false gods and worthless images.

The Babylonian civilization crumbles, their light is snuffed out and the darkness is in every way deserved because of its idolatry.

The book of Revelation picks up this same language and applies it to all the Babylonian, like kingdoms of the world.

Revelation 18, verse two it has fallen.

Babylon the great has fallen.

Do you hear the words echoed there from our passage in Isaiah?

And God tells his people in Revelation come out of Babylon so that you wouldn't share in her sins or receive her plagues, for her sins are piled up to heaven and God remembered her crimes.

There's guilt.

That's there.

What's Babylon guilty of?

Well, revelation gives us a little more than this particular verse of Isaiah.

But it speaks of kings of the earth committing sexual immorality, with Babylon, with wealthy merchants growing in abundance and excess off of the backs of other people in an unjust way that Babylon sits as a proud queen.

There's a list of some of the guilt sex, money, power.

There's not unfamiliar themes and those are guilt-inducing themes.

Guilt-inducing themes.

But we want to notice how sin works.

Sin so often takes something God has given to us and twists it.

God doesn't say whatever you do, avoid sex.

Whatever you do, avoid money.

Whatever you do, don't take power.

Satan wants you to think that God says that.

That's not what God actually says.

Sex is a good gift in the context of a home and a man and woman in marriage.

Money is a wonderful tool to be used for your family, for society.

Authority, rightly exercised, can model and bring God's loving rule and reign to bear in the world.

But it gets distorted and the guilt comes when we fail to listen to God's instructions about those things and we listen to Babylon voices instead.

That's the crux of the matter.

Are we going to listen to the Lord's identification of all that's wonderful and good and true?

Are we going to listen to Babylon?

Look at Isaiah, chapter 22, one chapter over verse number nine.

Isaiah 22 · chapter mention

I'll start there.

You saw that there were many breaches in the walls of the city of David.

You collected water from the lower pool.

You counted the houses of Jerusalem so you could tear them down to fortify the wall.

You made a reservoir between the walls for the water of the ancient pool.

They're trying to protect themselves against an enemy possibly a reference to what happens with Hezekiah in 2 Kings, chapter 20, where, through his ingenuity, he allows a way for water to still be able to come into the city amidst a siege.

2 Kings 20 · chapter mention

Well, that sounds like a good thing, right?

But then look what Isaiah says here.

But you did not look to the one who made it or consider the one who created it.

Long ago, you trusted in your own engineering and you didn't look to God.

Guilt is there, judgment is coming, and a little verse like this, a passage like this, is a powerful reminder of the nature of our guilt.

When I say that darkness falls on those who deny God, I don't mean merely people who deny that God exists.

There's many people in our day like Israel of old.

They acknowledge God exists, but they live their lives with little or no regard to him.

It's not just people that are shaking their fist at God.

It's like chapter 22,.

Verse 13 says people that are just content to eat and drink and be happy.

Let's tear down our barns and build bigger ones, but don't you know that your soul is required this night.

God personalizes the accusation of guilt in verse 15.

He speaks of a specific palace steward named Shebna.

I'll pick up at verse 15 of chapter 22.

The Lord of armies said go to Shebna, that steward who was in charge of the palace, and say to him what are you doing here?

Who authorized you to carve out a tomb for yourself here, carving your tomb on the height, cutting a resting place for yourself out of a rock?

Look you, strong man.

The Lord is about to shake you violently.

He will take hold of you, wind you up into a ball and sling you into a wide land.

There you will die.

The self-reliance.

Shebna thinks I'm quite the piece of granite.

I'll make a monument for myself.

The Lord says you think you're a piece of granite.

I'm going to crush you into a pebble and, like a slingshot, hurl you into oblivion.

Because you didn't acknowledge me, you trusted in yourself.

The guilt of people like Shebna or Judah, or Babylon or Tyre in the next chapter, it's a staggering guilt because of who they are sitting against.

They're sitting against the God of all creation, the Lord who made them.

When we jettison God's word, we're saying no to the almighty God word.

We're saying no to the almighty God.

So it gets so bad here.

It's so thick with judgment.

Look what God concludes in chapter 22, verse 14.

The Lord of armies has directly revealed to me, that's to Isaiah this iniquity will not be wiped out for your people as long as you live.

The Lord of armies has spoken.

This dark saying of iniquity is remaining.

Guilt is such a heavy weight to bear.

Darkness will fall on those who deny God.

Pain in darkness, guilt in darkness.

Now I said at the outset, the third point of the sermon, final point, is light and darkness.

I'm not hearing a lot of light, micah, that verse, your iniquity is going to remain on you forever.

That doesn't sound very light-giving.

We might have some Simeon Trust graduates here saying Micah, stay on the line.

Darkness, don't you get off the line.

Don't you bring optimism into this text.

It's a minor key.

Don't try to modulate to a major key and I might be guilty of bringing too much optimism and I'll admit that from the outset.

If you want to come up afterwards and explain the way of God more perfectly to me, I welcome that.

That would be great.

But every passage has a text.

Ultimately, our text is the entire Bible.

Paul did say, he determined to know nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified.

And it's true that the passage from last week in Isaiah 19 had a greater amount of hope than our passage for today.

But there's some glimmers of light, I think, even here.

Look first at the end of chapter 23.

So Isaiah speaks of this great city of Tyre with all of its shipping prowess.

It compares Tyre to a prostitute.

Prostitutes want money.

This merchandising place.

They were basically business prostitutes.

So it doesn't sound like much light.

But look at the last verse of the chapter, the last verse of the passage for today, isaiah 23, 18,.

But her profits and wages will be dedicated to the Lord.

They will not be stored or saved, for her profit will go to those who live in the Lord's presence to provide them with ample food and sacred clothing.

Wait a minute, that sounds good.

Dedication to the Lord's people.

They're able to help out providing sacred garments for the temple, for the priests, food perhaps.

Where did the good come from amidst all of this darkness?

Isaiah doesn't give us a full explanation right here in the passage.

Remember those horizons?

He goes back and forth in those horizons, those horizons.

He goes back and forth in those horizons.

But it sounds like what we read about in Egypt.

Egypt was an idolatrous place, just like Tyre.

Remember from last week, those that were here last week?

Egypt is going to offer sacrifices and vows to the Lord, isaiah 19.

Here's Tyre getting judged, but they're going to be providing sacred clothing and vows, in a sense, for the Lord.

It sounds like what we read about in Revelation where in one chapter in Revelation these proud profiteering merchants who are selfish and greedy have only their own success in mind.

They're judged along with the fall of Babylon the great.

But then you get to a later chapter in Revelation and the kings of the earth are bringing the glory of their wealth into the new Jerusalem.

Darkness falls on some, even as representatives, a remnant from all kinds of places walk into the light of God's glory.

Derek Kidner writes just as Egypt, the political oppressor, became the bearer of hope back in chapter 19, so Tyre, the religious corruptor, becomes the hope symbol here in chapter 23.

So the big question for us this morning is what group do we expect to find ourselves in?

Are we a part of the city of Babylon or the new Jerusalem?

Is darkness falling on us or are we walking in the light?

The first thing to do is submit to God's word.

If we're looking for light, first thing to do is submit to God's word.

If denying God begins with denying his word, rejecting his word, then the first step in coming to the Lord is receiving his word.

There's so much guilt heaped up.

He's the only one that can give us the answers.

We got to listen to him and his word.

That Simon and Garfunkel song that I mentioned, the sound of silence, it's a.

It's a haunting song.

It's not a Christian song.

Paul Simon, the writer, said it's a song about the inability of people to communicate with one another.

If you want to sound really sophisticated, you can say it's a song about technological alienation.

But let's just go with what he said inability to communicate with one another.

We find that on a horizontal level.

We find isolation.

But those problems on a horizontal level exist ultimately because there's a vertical problem.

There's isolation between us and God.

That's the bigger problem.

One of the lines of that song says the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls.

I can assure you, if you want to hear a prophetic word from God, don't go to Lexington Avenue subway station and scour the walls.

That's not where you're going to find it.

You've got to come to this book.

You've got to submit to scripture to find God speaking here.

That's where we see light, in his light.

As you get into scripture, you'll find that we as mere human beings can never through our own engineering, our own self-reliance and pride.

We can never ultimately come to light on our own.

We need God's revelation, we need his grace.

In him was life, and that life was the light of men.

We're called to receive the light of the world, god's son.

Go back to Isaiah 22 with me.

We were there earlier, so if you're, chapter 23,.

Now back to chapter 22.

Late in the chapter we meet these two court figures.

I mentioned Shebna earlier.

That's the guy from verse 15 who thought he was the piece of granite, and God puts him up like a golf ball and just drives him in the next week.

Then we find another figure, a historic figure, a court steward named Eliakim, in verse 20.

And in verse 20 and 21, god says he will clothe Eliakim with Shebna's robe and hand Shebna's authority over to Eliakim.

So it's like this guy Shebna is proud and arrogant.

He's ousted, and then Eliakim gets put in his place Verse 23,.

Ousted, and then Eliakim gets put in his place, verse 23,.

God says that he will drive him in like a firm peg to bring honor for his family.

Wonderful, all is good for Eliakim, but look at verse 25.

On that day the declaration of the Lord of armies the peg that was driven into a firm place will give way, be cut off and fall, and the load on it will be destroyed.

Indeed, the Lord has spoken.

You can't hang your hopes on mere human beings.

There's Eliakim the new guy.

Hey, we've got a new leader in the palace, everything's going to be great and we can just put our fur coats and hang and next thing, you know, it broke off and it's on the ground and all of our coats are muddy.

Because we weren't supposed to hang all of our hopes on the new palace figure.

We were supposed to trust in the Lord, god, the Almighty One.

Okay, bring us.

How does this relate to Jesus Christ?

We're speaking about submitting to God's word, not trusting in ourselves that's the way of darkness but receiving God.

How do we find Christ here?

Well, think a moment about Eliakim.

Here's this strong peg, but he's temporary and he crumbles.

Jesus was a human being in the line of David, but not a mere human like Eliakim.

He's the firm peg that, as Michael Barrett says, can hold up under any weight and load, so that we can hang it all on him.

And if you think that's a that's a little stretch, this will help you see Christ even more clearly.

Look again at verse 22.

I will place the key of the house of David on his shoulder.

What he opens, no one can close.

What he closes, no one can open.

In Isaiah's historical context, that first horizon, eliakim is going to become the right hand palace steward.

He gets the keys.

He, the people that have keys, have authority.

They can lock things and open things.

So Eliakim, on behalf of Hezekiah the king, can do all kinds of things with the keys.

But if you read your Bibles, that's not the only place we come across a passage like this.

It should sound familiar.

Right Revelation, chapter three, verse seven, write to the angel of the church in Philadelphia.

Thus says the Holy one, the true one, the one who has the key of David, who opens and no one will close.

Who closes and no one will open.

Revelation takes those words about Eliakim and applies them directly to the resurrected and exalted Lord Jesus Christ.

Revelation 3.12 goes on to say the people of Christ become pillars in God's temple.

They get a new name from a new Jerusalem.

So the Jerusalem from below, the Jerusalem of Eliakim's day, is going to give way in God's story to the Jerusalem from above, because the son of God has descended from the heavenly Jerusalem and he's come to bring light to people who dwell in the land of darkness.

Humans like you and me take hold of him, trust in him.

That's where you find light.

And I don't want to overlook one church application here.

Where else are keys mentioned?

Matthew 16, jesus gives Peter keys of the kingdom and, by extension, the church.

Matthew 18 corroborates that by talking about the church binding and loosing, the same thing the keys did back in chapter 16.

So we, as the people of Christ, we have authority to do things on behalf of King Jesus.

What an amazing privilege.

It doesn't mean we'll always do those things perfectly, but we want to announce the gospel clearly and guard the gospel carefully as people of the king.

It's not a coincidence that during the crucifixion, darkness falls on the land for three hours.

The gospel writers are making a theological point that God, in his providence, allowed darkness to fall for those three hours during that moment of the crucifixion as a sign that judgment was falling.

It's not every time there's ever darkness, but here there's a significance.

Judgment was falling as darkness fell for those three hours.

But who was judgment falling on?

It was falling on that man hanging on the cross.

It was falling on him so that it wouldn't have to fall on us.

Three hours of darkness.

Three days later it's morning.

The tomb is empty.

An angel in bright clothing announces he's not here because he's risen, as he said, so that all those who turn from their sin and trust in that Christ, they experience an eternal morning, eternal light, eternal life.

Isaiah 22 begins with a pronouncement concerning the valley of vision.

I briefly mentioned earlier that it speaks of my dear people.

It seems to be a reference there in that pronouncement to Judah, more narrowly Jerusalem, but calling Jerusalem the valley of vision.

It's a strange title.

Yes, there are mountains that surround Jerusalem, but Jerusalem itself is not really in a valley, it's on a hill.

But what happens in valleys?

Light has a hard time getting there, the darkness of the valley, of the shadow of death, and sometimes we need to be in the valley to see our need for the light.

That phrase, valley of vision, might ring a bell for some of you, there's a book of collected prayers called the Valley of Vision.

Not inspired prayers, but prayers that are laced with scripture, like even the title alluding to this verse in Isaiah, and I want to close today in prayer by reading a portion of one of those prayers, as we seek the Lord for the light that only he can provide, let's pray oh father, you have brought us to the valley of vision, where we live in the depths but see you in the heights, hemmed in by the mountains of sin, yet we behold your glory.

Help us to learn, by paradox, that the way down is the way up, that to be low is to be high, that the broken heart is the healed heart, that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit, that the repenting soul is the victorious soul, that to have nothing is to possess all that, to bear the cross is to wear the crown, that the valley is the place of vision.

Help us, oh Lord.

Help us find your light in our darkness, your life in our death, your joy in our sorrow, your grace in our sin, your glory in our valley.

We ask these things for the glory of your name, oh God of light, amen.