Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 2-208 (Expository Sermon)

A STUMP IN THE WASTELAND Isaiah 5:1-6:13

by Rod Benson

If Christ is enthroned in your heart, and if heaven is your homeland, and if you possess some understanding of the significance of the cross in history and in your personal experience, then the book of Isaiah can be read as a word of comfort, assurance and joy.

But for Isaiah’s first audience – those who first heard him speak the prophecy – his message was as unpalatable as it was unusual.

Chapter 4 casts a vision of a preferred future for the people of God, in the city of God, enveloped in the glory of God. Chapter 5 returns to the barren present.

A SERMON IN SONG

In 5:1-7 Isaiah presents a sermon in song to his startled audience, similar to the parable told to King David by the prophet Nathan (2 Sam 12). Isaiah’s song is also a parable: “the one I love” is the Lord, and the “vineyard” is Judah.

The song begins well, and no doubt attracts the audience’s attention. But in verses 3-4 the mask begins to slip: God speaks, asking the nation, “What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it? When I looked for good grapes, why did it yield only bad?”

There is no answer. The people are mute. The song is about them. The song continues: the Lord announces judgment on his unproductive vineyard (5:5-6).

Isaiah confirms that Israel and Judah are the vineyard, and they will be destroyed because of their injustice and unrighteousness (5:7).

Some time ago I saw on a bumper sticker at Miranda, in Sydney: “If you were on trial for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” Or would you go free? In what ways are you and I pursuing holiness, righteousness and justice in our world, in our city?

In 5:8-30 Isaiah pronounces six “woes” on the sin-sick people of God. “This is why God is against you,” he cries. They are greedy land-grabbers (5:8), debauched drunks (5:11), arrogant sceptics (5:18), self-justifying relativists (5:20), conceited know-alls (5:21), and self-satisfied perverters of justice (5:22). It’s not a complimentary description of social life in Isaiah’s time!

What will God do about this? He will remove the people and decimate the land’s productivity (5:9-10). He will send his people into exile and let the grave swallow them (5:13-14). He will judge them as fire consumes straw, “for they have rejected the law of the Lord Almighty and spurned the word of the Holy One of Israel” (5:24).

In 5:26-28 Isaiah reminds his people that their God is sovereign over history and surprising in judgment. Their national borders do not determine his authority and power. The whole earth belongs to him, and he can use foreign armies as well as indigenous prophets to achieve his purposes.

Isaiah uses two images of helplessness in 5:29-30 to describe his people: they are like prey standing before hungry lions with no possibility of rescue; and like sailors in a terrible storm with no possibility of shelter. The animal roar becomes the roar of the storm, and death and darkness await.

You can see why Isaiah found it difficult to keep his audience. No one likes this kind of preaching directed at them. No one enjoys having their conscience awakened, and having their public and private sins listed, and hearing that God is about to judge them. There is not a single ray of hope in chapter five.

But Isaiah is the Lord’s prophet. He is God’s spokesperson. He has an important message from heaven that people need to hear. In chapter six he describes how he came to have that occupation.

A GLIMPSE OF GOD

Probably unsought, Isaiah receives a grand vision of God, enthroned in glory, in the year of Uzziah’s death (Isa 6:1-4). Uzziah enjoyed a long and prosperous reign (2 Kgs 15:1-7; 2 Chr 26), troubled near the end by the rise in Assyria of Tiglath-Pileser III, who entertained giant imperialist aspirations that included the conquest of Judah.

Perhaps Isaiah recognised the real divine power behind Uzziah’s throne, just as the earthly king was dying. In any case, as the earth is gripped by an earthquake in the presence of God, Isaiah is gripped by the reality of the glory and holiness of God.

Immediately he recognises his unfitness to appear before God because he is a sinner. He shares none of his people’s pride and arrogance and scepticism.

“Woe to me!” he cries. “I am ruined. For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty” (v 5).

Isaiah has no uncertainty about what he sees, and no uncertainty about what he is. He confesses how utterly different he is from God – a God of glory who is holy, righteous and just. Isaiah is personally defiled by sins (no matter how superficial or small), and he lives in a community defiled by sin.

Then grace intervenes, mediated by an angel (vv 6-7). Isaiah’s guilt evaporates in the searing heat of heavenly fire; his sin is atoned for by a burning coal from the altar of God.

He is cleansed not by his own efforts, or words, or obedience, but by the pure and holy grace of God, imparted because God is a God of pure and holy love who reaches out to sinners like Isaiah, and us, with his love and grace.

From that moment on Isaiah carried with him a profound sense of grace. The vision he saw cleared his mind, encouraged his spirit, and shaped his destiny.

I have no doubt that such a vision, and such an encounter with God, can be your experience today. So reach out and seek God, confess your sins, repent and believe, and God will cleanse and use you as he did Isaiah.

God had a particular purpose in mind when he delivered Isaiah from guilt and cleansed him from his sins. Probably he has a particular purpose in mind for every person on whom he sets his grace, and who responds to him by faith.

For Isaiah the purpose was mission, and now the Lord commissions him for service (vv 8-9b). This could not have happened before Isaiah made his confession, or before he was cleansed. Confession and forgiveness must always precede service and effectiveness for God.

What purpose do you think God may have had in saving you? Is there anything holding you back from pursuing that purpose?

A COMMISSION FOR A MISSION

It is safe to say that the mission that God had for Isaiah was a challenge (vv 9b-10). The task would be great and difficult, and misunderstood by some.

Despite clarity of expression and simplicity of thought, it seems that Isaiah’s audience (or at least some of them) would not understand. Instead, they would resist him and reject his message – even though it came from God (cf Mt 13:14-15; Rom 11:7-10, 25).

Isaiah is understandably perplexed. He asks, “For how long, O Lord?” (v 11a). And the Lord replies (vv 11b-13a).

And yet there is hope, and light, and a way forward: “But as the terebinth and oak leave stumps when they are cut down, so the holy seed will be the stump in the land” (v 13b).

A stump lies in the wasteland. Just as a slender green shoot often emerges from the blackened stump of a eucalypt after the tree is consumed by the ravaging flames of an Australian bush fire, so too a stump lies preserved and ready to regrow after the divinely-authorised ravages of history against Israel.

And the stump preserves a holy seed. I see this as a promise of Messiah – a promise that Jesus will come to redeem, and atone for, and sanctify his people. Here is a slender but certain hope emerging from the ashes.

God will yet triumph. Salvation will indeed come to decimated Israel. Hope will grow and flourish amid the ruins. Life will emerge out of death. Glory will eclipse the darkness and shine on the world from Jerusalem.

The image of an stump containing a holy seed also holds hope for a faithful “remnant” of people like Isaiah, and many who follow after him, who love God, find salvation in him, and are eager to serve him in mission.

Isaiah’s message from God will harden hearts (vv 9-10), and lead to devastation of the land and its people (vv 11-12).

But a slender hope remains (v 13). Always there is grace. Always there is hope. Always there is a way forward through suffering to peace, through the desert to the oasis, through the darkness to the dawn of something new.

Isaiah passed through three steps when he encountered this God of glory and grace: confession, cleansing and commissioning. I like to think that God wanted the nation of Israel to follow those same three steps. And I believe God wants you and me to do the same.

Is there sin you need to confess to God? Do you have a deep desire for God to cleanse you from sin and guilt? Are you waiting for God to call you to do something extraordinary, something eternally significant, with your life?

On the basis of what Jesus Christ has done for you, come, wash, and obey this God of grace and glory!

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E098 Copyright (c) 2002 Rod Benson. Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible: New International Version (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1980).

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