Isaiah 2 - 4
These three
chapters comprise the only unit in Isaiah with its own introduction (v.1). They
begin and end with faithful people on
2:1-5 Isaiah said
Nations
streaming to
We
are against the law as a means of justification, but joyfully embrace the law
as it shows us what true holiness is. Reformed theology recognizes three uses
of the law:
·
To define righteousness, and thus
condemn sin as sin.
·
To show the sinner his helpless
condition, and thus his need of Christ.
·
To be the rule of a life pleasing to God,
essential for fellowship with Him.
What we have in 2:1-5 is shocking – obedient
Gentiles! This is unheard of!
They come in sincerity. They encourage each
other (v.3); they want to learn God’s will, whatever it is, so that they can do
it (v.3). This is not a nominal confession of the Lord; it is fervent
wholehearted obedience. As the Lord
issues His word and decisions for their lives, they learn and obey. Unlike
So how does the prophet appeal to his own
people with these facts? He calls on
them to walk in the light of the Lord (v.5), because they are supposed to know
Him, and he urges them to live the way their pagan neighbors some day will. The nations will stream to the Lord.
When will this be? We are simply told it will be in the last
days. When the Bible is vague, we should
be vague. When the Bible is specific, we
should be as well. Here it is
vague. Sometimes it will say, “in that day”. When it
does, we search for a context. Sometimes
it simply means, “in that future time I am speaking about”. God has rarely revealed a specific time in
predicted events (Acts 1:7). So the best way to read Isaiah 2:1-5, is to
meditate on what it does say and to leave to other passages to supply more.
Some day the Gentile saints are going to come marching in! (I say it has
already begun!)
2:6-22
Next Isaiah switched to
Israelites devoted to the practices of the heathen (vv. 6 & 8). We just saw that the heathen would one day be
devoted to the Lord of Israel. Yet poor
God is not
passive; He does react to sin. Sometimes
Scripture pictures that sinners will be punished with fire, or made to
experience God’s wrath or pain at His hand.
Isaiah shows another side of the judgment of God. Man
will be humbled while God will be exalted.
This is the background of all of vv. 9-22. When it says ‘man’ in v. 22, remember in this
context it is man in contrast with God – man unable to resist God, man who
lacks the life God has. Man has but a breath in his nostrils. Man brought low is contrasted with God
exalted high, splendid in His majesty.
God gained glory by destroying the army of
Some features of this
passage:
1)
2) We read of a certain day without being told
when that day will be (vv.11,12,17,20). What we need
to know is that God has such a day in mind; its time is known to Him.
3) Hiding in rocks (v.10 & 19) is the
picture of morbid fear. This same hiding
in rocks and caves is found in Revelation 6:15-17. There we read that the time had come, the
great day of God’s wrath.
4) The imagery of the proud, high and lofty
being “brought low” (v.9) is used figuratively as if God were going to slice
the tops off ships, mountains, and trees (vv. 12-17). Isaiah speaks in a number of places of the
pride of man and his vaunted wisdom. (A classic statement is Isaiah 29:14,
quoted in 1 Corinthians 1:19.) We are influenced by
great men. They may have great power over us. If they counsel against the word
of God, they will be humbled. God will defend His glory and not allow what is
His alone to be held by any competitor.
5) This humbling exposes the falseness of idols
(v.20). Once men cherished and worshipped them and the spirit powers the idols
represented. When shown to be unable to help, men will throw them away in
disgust even if made of gold. Only the Lord will be exalted in that day
(v.17).
6) Shaking
the earth is one more image of God’s judgment, used also in Hebrews
12:26-29, quoting Haggai 2:6,7.
7) Faith is believing the
truth of a promise, but the same act is one of trusting the promise maker. What
we believe is important, but it cannot be separated from the one we trust.
Isaiah’s “stop trusting in man” (v.22), fits his message to trust in the
Lord. The first major section of the
Book of Isaiah ends with Isaiah 12. There the believer sings this psalm,
“Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid.” Everything we read in 2:6-22 is the opposite
of those words.
Summary: Isaiah 2:6-22 gives a brief review
of idolatry (3 vv), and a long presentation of the final judgment of God (14
vv). Chapter 3 gives prophesies of the more immediate judgment of God, speaking
of what was happening then or about to, as in 1:5-9.
Judgment current and ultimate The final
judgment is at the coming of Christ. The dead will be made to stand before God.
Meanwhile, God’s wrath remains on the unbeliever (John 3:36). The believer in
the Lord Jesus is not under condemnation, nor the wrath or curse of God (Romans
8:1; Galatians 3:13). Instead we face fatherly
chastening for sin, His discipline for our growth in grace, which only shows
that He has not rejected us but treats us as His children (Hebrews 12:4-14).
3:1 – 4:1 Much of chapter 3 details the privation and
chaos in the infrastructure of the nation.
Things are falling apart. Notable
will be their lack of men as leaders, resulting in pathetic solutions such as
being governed by children, and seven women all begging to marry the same
man. Particular attention is devoted to
the pride and indulgence of haughty women, resulting in their pitiful
humiliation (3:16-4:1).
3:1-8 “
Inside the temple was a chest or box containing
the Ten Commandments, the covenantal commitment God had made with
3:13-15 A Day in Court. We simply are not reading the Bible if we
fail to see that God is Judge. The
Judgment Day is essential to His exercise of holiness and justice, which
includes both punishment for sin and positive reward for obedience. Isaiah
opens with a complaint against His people, an indictment with a judicial tone.
Here He judges His people (v.14) specifically for their treatment of the poor.
In chapter one His opening complaint had to do with their rejection of
Him. Here in chapter 3, his accusation
relates to treatment of their neighbors. The leaders of the Lord’s people were
crushing God’s people. (The court scene
will reappear in Isaiah 43:9.26.)
3:16-4:1 A
special note on the women This judicial
charge comes immediately after words of the poor being abused. It is fair when the material is arranged this
way – and this arrangement is always deliberate – to think the rich women are
rich because they had the plunder of the poor in their houses. My count shows 23 items the women have,
especially things to wear or attach to their beautiful bodies. They think they are gorgeous, but in God’s
judgment they will end up with sores and baldness, with stench rather than the
aroma of perfume. They go from strutting
(v.16) to mourning; from decadent wealth to destitution. Stealing from the poor led to God stripping
them of all they had. The passage begins
with pride and ends in disgrace, a typical scenario in all of life. Most of this section is poetry, but the list
of jewelry and fashion items in vv. 18-23 is prose.
4:2-6
This section of Isaiah ends with this brief
paragraph, which parallels the glorious future in 2:2-4. It includes an unusual
presentation of Christ, Who is the glory of the believing remnant. For them
there is a saving transformation. Some women, whose only beauty was outward
adornment, will be cleansed and turned into holy women. This purging is to be
done by the Holy Spirit. All this adds up to genuine salvation that comes from
a union with Christ. (Because the theme of the remnant is back, a major appendix
is added to this lesson, Appendix A, The Impact of Remnant Doctrine on
Current Controversies.)
Familiar
symbols of God’s glory over the wilderness tabernacle express the Presence of
God. The canopy of v.5 is a marriage canopy. Finally
4:2 The Real Beauty Coming So much for the beauty that was ugly. Now we have a gem of genuine beauty. In that day the Branch of the LORD will be beautiful
and glorious This beauty is a contrast to the women of
chapter 3 whose beauty was external, in jewelry, clothes, and cosmetics, but
not in character. Chapters 2 and 3 give a picture of shameful idolatry and the
loss of leaders. The dreadful judgment of God was deserved (2:9-21). There was
nothing to be proud of as the nation disintegrated. It spoke and acted against
the glorious presence of God among His people in
What is the prophet predicting? It is either a
wonderful fruitfulness in the sense of agriculture, or there is a fruitfulness in the Person Who as the Branch of the LORD is
from the LORD. Yet this Person is so human that He comes from the land. The
language here is of such absolute glory it is hardly fitting to vegetation.
Why should we interpret
this text as speaking of Christ?
·
Christ is called the Branch in 11:1,
Jeremiah 23:5 & 33:15, Zechariah 3:8 & 6:12. These five texts are
Messianic. We have good reason to read 4:2 the same way.
·
“Branch” may refer to a family tree.
Trees do have branches. To identify one’s family tree is to say where a person
comes from. This Branch “of the LORD” in 4:2 is in the family tree of God. It
is another way to speak of the Messiah as God. This does not imply that a tree
preceded a branch. Christ is an eternal person. It does indicate source and
origin. He is the LORD from the LORD.
·
This Branch is the fruit of the land.
Just as man comes from the earth, the Lord from heaven (amazingly) would be “a
root out of dry ground” (53:2). The name Adam is from the Hebrew word for the
ground or earth. The “Lord of glory” (1 Corinthians 2:8) took on human flesh
like ours. The text presents a divine origin/connection/life (which is the full
nature of God) and an earthly existence. Here are the two natures of Christ.
But this is not unusual in Isaiah; the human son of the virgin woman will be
“God with us” (7:14).
·
As mentioned above, the descriptions of
beauty and glory are absolute. They fit Christ not crops. A branch has fruit
and the ground produces fruit, but this fruit is also what has come to us from
the LORD. This fits His being the One sent, so often asserted in the Gospel of
John. Christ did not appear from nowhere, either as to His human nature or as the
Son of His Father.
·
He is the pride and glory of the
believing remnant! A farmer can be justly proud of his “glorious” (!) tomatoes
or delicious cherries, but that is using glory is a relative sense. We glory in Christ
as One worthy of all praise and adoration. We give
full credit to Christ for any and all attractiveness that has come to us in Him,
as we “are
being transformed into His likeness with ever increasing glory…” (2 Corinthians 3:18). The sinful beauty paraded about in
chapter 3, contrasts with real beauty in chapter 4.
·
We should be careful about forcing
theological truth from one passage into another one, when two passages may not
have the same thing in mind. Note that the cleansing in 4:2-6 is by the Holy
Spirit. It is in terms of fruitfulness in Christ, and then will speak of our
marriage union with Him in 4:5. Thus we ought to consider Christ as the fruit
of both God and the land. He has become our
pride and glory, as the result of our union with Christ. Romans
6 makes union with Christ the basis of all holiness to be found in us.
Thus chapters 2 and 3 show the rotten fruit of life severed from God, and
chapter 4 shows the genuineness of life flowing from Christ (John 15:1-8).
Thus
4:2-4 asserts the glory of Christ as native to Christ, and because of our union
with Him the fruit of His Spirit (not native to any sinner) is now being
produced in us (Galatians 5:22,23). When this production is complete, we shall
be in His likeness (Philippians
3:21; Romans 8:29; 1 John 3:2). “Everyone who
has the hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure” (1
John 3:3). This understanding of union with Christ in 4:2 is supported by the
marriage union canopy over
4:3,4 The survivors are made holy, [1] and are recorded or
registered in God’s book as His. (See Malachi 3:16-18.) It does not say who
wrote our names in, but I suggest that only God writes in His book. Being officially
recorded has to do with our status. God’s justifying act is a change of status.
We must remember that everyone justified is also being sanctified (a change in
life) by a work of God.
Christ is both our righteousness and our holiness (1 Corinthians 1:30).
The sin of women was prominent in chapter 3; here
we have the opposite as the women of
The ultimate judgment by fire was endured by
Christ when He gave Himself as a sacrifice to turn away the wrath of God from
us, when He took it on Himself (Romans 3:25; Luke 12:49,50,
1 John 4:10). Judgment must fall on the
sinner who committed it, or on the Substitute God has provided.
4:5,6 In a new creation, the registered citizens [2]
of
Isaiah 2-4 begins with the salvation of the
heathen nations and ends with the salvation of those who are left in
Appendix A
The Impact of Remnant Doctrine on Current
Controversies
A Vital Distinction Isaiah speaks of survivors in 1:9.[3] Then in chapter 4 the Branch of the Lord is
“the pride and glory of the survivors
in
A Spiritual Dimension The remnant
theme is not a mere matter of people physically surviving a judgment. Scripture
highlights salvation when it speaks of these survivors as cleansed by the work of God’s Spirit (4:4). They are called holy. As those with eternal life, they
are recorded among the living (4:3).
Where else could such a record be but in the Book of Life? (See Revelation
20:12.) The opposite of being taken away in judgment is to survive, to remain,
and to be there among the living in
Claimed vs. Cleansed The
remnant is God’s holy people (4:3), but “holy people” or “My people” may also
refer to the entire nation, whether they believed or not. Many times the entire
nation was called God’s people. They were holy in the sense that they were the
Lord’s by covenant, whether they kept covenant with Him or not. A person cannot
break a covenant without being in it. (If there are two married men one
faithful to his wife and one not, both can be said to be married but only one
can be said to being truly married.) The personal salvation of each person in
the remnant is asserted in that they were washed and cleansed (4:4). This is
what distinguishes the remnant from the rest who were in a covenant
relationship yet had forsaken the Lord (1:4). This washing is not ritual but
reality. Salvation is not an external act of God on our skin; it is the
cleansing of the conscience (Hebrews 9:14). The washing in Isaiah 4 is not with
water, but by God’s Spirit of judgment and fire as in Matthew 3:11. Ritual does
not create this spiritual life. Instead, “…
we were all baptized by[Christ with]
one Spirit into one body – whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free – and we were
all given [by Christ] the one Spirit
to drink” (1 Corinthians 12:13). So the remnant is not a claimed people who
may or may not respond in faith and obedience; they are a cleansed people. This
is the language of transformation.
The Response of Faith In Isaiah 10
another element is explicit when the remnant’s response is in view. Before this,
when we read of the remnant receiving salvation, the focus was on what the Lord
does to change them. 10:20-22 speaks of their faith. They will truly rely on the Lord (NIV), or it may be rendered that they “will lean on the LORD, the Holy One of
A Distinction in the New Testament Also When Paul proclaimed in Romans 10:12 that all who call
on the Name of the Lord shall be saved, he still had in mind the remnant theme stated
earlier in Romans 9. He quoted part of Joel 2:32, which says, “And everyone who calls on the name of the
LORD will be saved; for on
Paul was not alone in
teaching this doctrine. The Lord Jesus also recognized that there were children
of Abraham who lacked Abraham’s faith. “I
know that you are Abraham's descendants” (John 8:37). Unlike Abraham who
believed, they were the holy people of the Lord in an external sense only,
unbelievers lacking the fruit of genuine faith, even having the devil as their
father (John 8:31-47). By faith Abraham rejoiced to see Jesus’ day, but when
that day had arrived, some of Abraham’s children who were born into great
covenant privilege, picked up stones to kill their father’s Lord. They were
Abraham’s descendents by covenant and circumcision, but not by conversion.
The Early
Division Among God’s covenant people there were
rebels (1:2). At the time Isaiah wrote, rebels were the clear majority. Not a
few, but many would fall (8:15), yet there would still be believers. The
remnant is the stump of a fallen tree. That dead tree was apostate
The Final
Separation Note the basic distinction in Revelation
22:14,15 where some are in and others outside. God had said repeatedly that He
was
The Reason there is a Remnant Why would
Yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of
their enemies, I will not reject them or abhor them so as to destroy them completely, breaking my covenant with them. I
am the LORD their God. But for their sake I will remember the covenant with
their ancestors whom I brought out of
The lost in
The Connection with Christ Isaiah 6:13 says without elaboration, “The holy seed is the stump.” Naturally seed (a collective word) may refer to a people. Here in Isaiah 6,
it does. But in Galatians 3:16, seed (in the singular) refers to Christ. The
remnant trusts in Christ (Isaiah 10). The connection with Christ comes into the
open in 11:1, “There shall come forth a
shoot from the stump of Jesse and a branch from his roots…” Isaiah taught
first about drastic judgment with only a stump surviving. Then, by the Holy
Spirit he added that Christ will emerge from that remnant stump. Christ came
from David the son of Jesse. He, a tender
plant and a root out of dry ground (53:2), is the shoot Who
was endowed with the Spirit (11:2; Mark 1:9-11). He is the Banner the Gentiles
will seek (11:10), and the One Who will gather His remnant from all directions
on earth (11:11). Christ and the remnant are joined; both come from the stump.
Any definition of the genuine
Three Controversial Implications
1)
The State of
Hebrews,
written before 70 AD, asserted two things related to this:
·
The long delay of
·
that
another
The
Apostle Paul spoke in the same way of two Jerusalems in Galatians 4:22-26. One,
the present city of
In
spite of Biblical evidence against it [See the added note below], many today
believe that the earthly nation of Israel is the seed of Isaac, heir to the
Israel’s ancient promises, and the Israel of God’s blessing. The promises of
God are enjoyed only in Christ (2 Corinthians 1:20), so to reject Christ (as
the nation of
2) The Baptism
of Believers Only Just as there was a believing
We are often reminded of the
fact that the New Testament never gives an example of the baptism of any
infant, nor does it ever command such. This seems to be a fatal flaw in our
practice. The answer is that believers today are explicitly said to be children
of Abraham, heirs of those very promises (Galatians 3:29). Then too, we lack
any word to rescind placing the covenant sign on our infant children, because
God has not instructed us that He has changed how He has chosen to administer
His covenant. For this reason, we say we are not at liberty to deny the
covenant sign to covenant children. The silence of Scripture on this is a
greater problem for those who limit baptism to a later exercise of faith than
it is for applying the covenant sign to covenant children, as was the case in
the Old Testament. The tendency to do this may be on the assumption that
baptism is first of all a response to the Lord, as in “following the Lord in
baptism”. In some sense, this is so
as in the case of adult baptism, where we DO require a confession of faith, but
baptism (like the Lord’s Supper) is first and foremost a gospel communication to us, before it is a response from us.
3) The Federal
Vision Movement The matter
of baptism has been an unsettled difference among Christians for centuries. Zionism
is more recent in evangelical circles, about a century old. (The
pivotal Balfour Declaration supporting Zionism was in 1917.) The Federal
Vision has come out in the open within conservative reformed circles since
2000. It undoubtedly percolated subsurface for a few years previously. I have
not a scarp of information of what they may have said or would say directly
about the concept of a remnant. But I will address it anyway. If they avoid the
issue, they have good reason to leave it alone.
What is clear in the Federal
Vision movement (or “conversation”) is the notion that all enter covenant with
the Lord by water baptism. By this they mean that one is united to Christ in a
living spiritual bond by means of water baptism. Yes, they have said that and
more. They do not insist that there must be faith in order to be united to
Christ, because, in their view, union with Christ is simply effected
by baptism. (This is a rejection of Heidelberg Catechism Q. & A. 32.) Under
great pressure, they admit that all the baptized have all the spiritual
benefits with the obvious exception of perseverance, because, in their view, a
person truly united to Christ may yet lose spiritual benefits by apostasy.
Furthermore, Roman Catholics are united to Christ by their Trinitarian baptism;
therefore evangelism is to call on them to repent of their sins re the mass and
Mary, etc. If they do not they will lose their union with Christ. In this way,
evangelism becomes a call for our
obedience, rather than an announcement of Christ’s. Evangelism is “if we can
just get people baptized” and then instructed. In its worst form, FV teachers
sidestep the obedience of Christ for us, and some even deny the imputed
righteousness of Christ, or accept as orthodox those who do. Though they would
object to my wording, some of them are really teaching that we will be saved by
our covenant keeping, not Christ’s in
our place. (This is frightfully close to Roman Catholic theology.)
They say that all enter
covenant by baptism, and all are in covenant in the same way. There is no
invisible church distinguished from the visible church. There is no
internal/external covenant relationship. Such distinctions are rejected. The
congregation is not addressed with the likelihood that some may not be truly
saved, because all (“head for head”) are in covenant in precisely the same way
and there is no other way. The church you see is all there is. There is no real church of true believers
distinguished from the visible community of church members professing
Christ and practicing Christian sacraments. In other words, though I have never
heard them say so, there is no remnant,
for the simple reason that the very idea of a remnant does not fit in with one
of the main elements of their system of doctrine. They deny that there are two
ways a person may be in covenant with the Lord: 1) as a covenant member
externally, or 2) in spiritual reality. Further analysis is not called for in
this appendix. That teaching is a matter now under competent review in the
URCNA. Synod spoke against this doctrine in 2007; now we wait for detailed
scrutiny. Hopefully, Federal Vision doctrine will be ground to a fine powder on
a very windy day.
What I have written will not
fit every advocate of the movement, but this is a general appraisal of it. Though they dislike the term baptismal regeneration, some even teach
(not very openly) that justification is by water baptism. My point is this: in
Isaiah especially, there is abundant evidence that there was a covenant
community of God’s holy people,
The
first diagram below shows different views of who should be baptized. It also
shows in the case of the Federal Vision where a theology can go if we fail to
see the Bible’s teaching of a remnant of true believers (infallibly known by
and visible to God alone). This believing remnant is within the visible church
which professes to belong to the Lord, a profession true for many members, but
the Lord’s church also has in it those who do not. The Lord knows those who are
His.
Who Should Be
Baptized?
Covenantal Baptism is the
outward sign of a covenant bond Believers’ Baptism: Baptism is an outward sign
limited to professors of an inward reality
Federal Vision teachers
issued a statement in 2007, after some frank rejections of their position by
reformed courts addressing their doctrine. One surprise statement they made is
this
The Visible and Invisible Church
We affirm that there is only one true Church, and that this Church can
legitimately be considered under various descriptions, including the aspects of
visible and invisible. We further affirm that the visible Church is the true
We deny that such a distinction excludes other helpful distinctions,
such as the historical church and eschatological church. The historical Church
generally corresponds to the visible Church—all those who profess the true
religion, together with their children—and the eschatological Church should be
understood as the full number of God’s chosen as they will be seen on the day
of resurrection.
This
statement is clearly backtracking, but such an admission was needed and is
welcome. If indeed these teachers mean what they say, then we should be able to
expect no further teaching that all baptized members are in covenant with God
in the same way “head for head”. If they do not or will not cease to speak this
way, then they are again denying the real distinction between a visible
professing church of baptized persons and the invisible believing church (whose
members ought to be baptized) and who are identified with certainty as true
covenant members only by God rather than a ritual with water. The Bible’s
teaching on the remnant is identical to the doctrine of a remnant in a wider
covenant community.
An Additional Note: This
appendix is about the remnant and how it impacts other questions. I suggested above
concerning The State of Israel that there is Biblical evidence that does
not fit the popular views of many evangelicals about the nation of
In Matthew 4:12-25,
In Jeremiah 31:38-40 God stated that