Reading: “A remnant will return”: Isaiah 10.21 (NIV)
Hidden in the Talmud, an age
old collection of Jewish writings, there is a passage which tells a fascinating detail about the
According to the Talmud, the
the
sun rising in the east shone straight through through the outer gates,
through
the great open bronze doors of the
As the people gathered to
worship…..there was the dazzling play of light on the holiest place in the
As the thousands gathered to
worship on that morning in the autumn of 747 BC - Was Isaiah there among them ?
Or was he on his own, days later ?
Desolate, fearful
? Wondering about the future ?
Isaiah, you see, was an
aristocrat, one of the nobility,
a
refined, sensitive man, of enormous intelligence,
working
at the court of the king.
But now, Isaiah’s world had
been turned upside
for
the king, king Uzziah had died, suddenly………
Here was Isaiah, in the
fearful
of the future, for himself, and for his people.
When, Isaiah tells us, suddenly,
I saw the glory of the Lord…
he had
an experience of the living God in that moment that changed his life,
a
call from the living God to speak, to prophecy
to
become the greatest of all the prophets of his age.
This morning, we have before
us some deep and rich verses from the Word of the Lord as it came to this man Isaiah,
If we wish to grasp the words
written there, however,
we
need to read more widely, we need to hear the Word of the Lord as it came to
the prophets……… in order to better understand what Isaiah is saying……
In the past, says the writer
to the Hebrews, God spoke to our
forefathers through the prophets at many times, and in various ways
how
true that is when we turn the pages of the prophets, some of Isaiah’s
contemporaries, from the 8th. century in
We discover that in their
message, they speak in different ways of
what
they have been given to share in the Word of the Lord. The prophets bring
different emphases in their message………….
Take Amos, for example, or the
prophet Hosea, ………. and you hear very different words,
from their different circumstances
There is something powerfully
attractive in the prophet Amos,
and
in the message that he brings.
One of a group of shepherds,
from the desert round Tekoa, Amos brings the keen, plain, clear, direct life of
the desert with him, in his message.
He comes right in from the
edge of things, in the best tradition of the prophets, like Elijah, or Elisha,
with a message for the elite in
This was a time of great
prosperity in
There was conspicuous
consumption of wealth by the top few percent of the population, while the
poorest lay in the streets……..
This is where Amos comes with
his message…..
about
the sheer materialism of
“they sell the needy for a pair of sandals, they trample on the heads of
the poor as upon the dust of the ground and deny justice to the oppressed…..”
O
But there is more than
this: now comes the hammer blow from
this shepherd: that as the rich in
while
there were dark clouds on the horizon which they never noticed.
A storm was coming which would
blow more strongly than anything they had ever known….. it
would destroy the country, its cities, all the luxury goods,
“the swift will not escape, the strong will
not muster their strength,
and the warrior will not save his life
the houses adorned with ivory will be destroyed and the mansions will be
demolished”
The Lord says, His judgment is
upon you ! for your
wickedness…..
Where
And yet, while Amos’ message is
that the country will be destroyed,
as
his prophecy closes, the Word of the Lord strikes another note, a gentle note, of
a remnant that will come back, after the hurricane, the ones and twos, the
families who will come back…
For, declares Amos….the Lord
says: I will bring back my exiled people
What is that note ? that gentle note from the
shepherd of Tekoa ?
this:
that in the midst of judgment on the
people,
the Lord’s promise to Abraham would hold good:
He would not abandon this people
that He would make of them a great nation
Amos…..
And so we turn to Hosea. And
if something in Amos appeals to us, so, we find another side of life, of life
in God in the prophet Hosea.
Amos strikes us by his native
strength, his power and vision as a man of the outdoors, a dweller in desert
places……….
Hosea appeals to us perhaps
because he is an ordinary human being….with heartbreaking experience and
problems, a man
burdened by human sorrows…..
Hosea, you see, is a gentle, loving, faithful husband, who is devastated when his wife Gomer the mother of their children, has an affair, or rather, not just one relationship, but several…..she is, in fact, a prostitute.
Yet in the midst of the desperate
emotional, spiritual pressure of this, he finds in God the strength, to continue loving
her… caring for her…… …..
the
Lord says: Go show your love to your wife
again…….
and
in and through this experience, this prophet, this man of God,
this
holy man, suddenly realises with shattering insight, that this is what
God is like……. The Lord who
has loved
In his own experience Hosea
comes to understand the Lord’s love for his people. Israel, as a people has turned away, sought relationships
with strangers, and strange gods, and strange countries…..
Hosea’s message is of the
living God who loves
The more I called
But How can I give you up Ephraim ?My heart is
changed within me
all my compassion is aroused………
what
is the note, the note struck in Hosea ?
the
same note that rings in the prophecy of Amos:
in
the midst of judgment,
the
Lord’s promise to Abraham holds………
He will not abandon his people
that
He will make of them a great nation
It is when we turn to Isaiah,
that we hear the fullness of the Word of the Lord…
Isaiah, the aristocrat, who,
while serving at the court in
from his position high up in
the government, the prophet can see the materialism of the court, the moral
emptiness… he knows that when the people and their leaders trust in the Lord,
they become as a rock, unshakeable, immovable… but the country’s leaders, the
king, are hollow men…. who think not spiritually, or in prayer, or minded of
the living God….. but instead patch together alliances
with this or that foreign power, according to the changes in international
politics…
and
behind it all, Isaiah can see that disaster looms…..
But the realities, the
spiritual realities are these:
if
the people are destroyed in an invasion, an act of judgment by the living God what
of the promises the Lord made that this would be His people,
and
He would be their God ?
And if the people and their
leaders are allowed to continue in this way –
what
of the holiness of God ? what of the purity and
holiness that He demands ?
It is then, that the Word of
the Lord in its fullness comes to Isaiah –
a
word that grasps him so deeply, that grasps the very depths of the prophet’s
soul that he names his son after the Word he has been given, he names his son
with the Word he has been given…
and
the son’s name ?
Shear-Jashub
!
being
translated from the Hebrew
a remnant will return…….
in
this word, received by Isaiah, from the living God..
there
is now the light of the Gospel……
a
remnant will return……
from
out of the storm
in
the midst of the destruction,
there
will be
a new
point of departure, the beginning of new hope.
and
it is the declaration of the Bible that
in
ways we could never have expected, this
is indeed what has taken place,
not
simply in the bringing back of God’s people to
but
this:
that
out of the faithlessness of
a
remnant, consisting of One single utterly faithful, utterly true, perfectly
holy, completely righteous man,
as He
promised:
A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse,
from his roots a Branch will bear fruit…… the nations will rally to Him….
and
that man, the Only true One,
is Jesus.
Two things then:
We close with our eyes fixed
upon Jesus,
the
Only true One,
and
with a message for the future for ourselves……
As a Church, the times and the
years to come may bring with them,
the
challenge, the threat of changes utterly beyond our control,
but,
as Isaiah declares:
As the terebinth and the oak leave stumps when they are cut down, says
Isaiah,
so God’s people will be the stump that remains………
the
message of Scripture for us is that
in
Jesus Christ the times ahead
can
be for us the re-shaping power of God……
a sifting,
a testing, a purifying, renewal of His
Church
AMEN