But more than that: the fact that the wrath of God was laid upon His own Son as a substitutionary propitiatory sacrifice for us. He was born of a virgin, Isaiah 7 He was called Immanuel, Isaiah 9 and of course His death in Isaiah 53 is one of the greatest portraits of crucifixion before it even existed.
Of course, you will be familiar with the fact that several other of Isaiah's prophecies were fulfilled in the first advent of the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, when He came to Bethlehem. Several of Isaiah's prophecies were fulfilled in his own day, there's no doubt about that.
We could take a whole series, let alone a meditation on a Sunday morning like this, on the peace of God. He actually will bring the Babylonians, He will use the Babylonians as His servants, His instruments to discipline and to judge the people of God. In these chapters Isaiah foresees the day when God will bring judgment upon them because of their idolatrous unfaithfulness. He also condemns them with great force because of their idolatry, following other gods and following other nations. He mainly speaks to Judah, and he condemns them for their ritual formalistic religion, an outward form of godliness but denying the power. Israel were the North, and Judah were the Southern kingdom, and he's preaching to a nation who had once been united under the reign of David and Solomon, but now had been divided in their sin. We read in the book of Ezekiel how the very Shekinah glory of God, the outward visible manifestation of the cloud of God's presence, had actually disappeared to signify God's displeasure towards His own people.Īs Isaiah is prophesying in this book, he is prophesying to a divided kingdom. Even God's people themselves, as they dishonoured the covenant that God made with them, we can think of many times when through their own actions they harmed themselves, even to the extent of on one occasion losing the very Ark of the Covenant through their disobedience and unfaithfulness. Right throughout their history Israel and Judah were conquered by enemies from without and even, it would have to be said, at a closer reading of the Old Testament, from enemies from within - those who were traitors to God's law and to God's people.
There were the Assyrians and the Persians, and particularly those that Isaiah speaks of, the Babylonians or the Chaldeans as they are sometimes called. You'll have heard of the old Philistines, proverbially used today of people who are our enemies and thorns in the flesh. Now even if you have a meagre understanding of the Scriptures, you'll probably have heard of some of Israel's enemies in times past. They will sing a song of perfect peace, as your margin puts it: 'Peace, peace', when God will have protected them from all enemies and every danger. Now, in Isaiah 26, we find that prophetically the prophet Isaiah speaks of a day when Jerusalem will sing. The song could be called 'The Song of a City', it is the song of the city of Jerusalem, a city and the city of a nation that has been ravaged throughout its entire history, plagued by constant enemies. The first couple of verses of this chapter read like a line from a song, that is because they are lines from a song. I believe all believers of all ages can see in these verses, in a spiritual sense, the blessing that the Lord has for all His children even in this particular age.
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