Bereansearching Bible Studies

Introduction

The world today faces turmoil—not only physically and morally but, most critically, spiritually. The Bible illustrates what happens when nations turn away from worshiping and from obeying the true God, becoming morally bankrupt as a result. Alarmingly, a majority of formerly Christian churches have also strayed, embracing apostasy following the ways of man rather than the ways of God. Repenting and returning to God’s Word would bring blessings, while continued rebellion invites God’s wrath and, ultimately, eternal destruction in Hell. The Book of Isaiah offers historical lessons for ancient Israel and spiritual insights for our world today, especially in the Western world, once a hub of Christian evangelism.

Key Lessons from Isaiah

Isaiah provides some important lessons, which applied to National Israel in Isaiah’s day, from a physical and temporal perspective, but, more significantly, Isaiah also provide very insightful spiritual lessons applicable to our world in our day.

So let us just review and ponder a few selected verses from the first three chapters of Isaiah, and then think carefully about:

1. What they are saying in the historical and prophetic sense to National Israel, and
2. What they are saying that is also prophetically applicable to everyone in the world in our day…particularly the Western world as it is now (because for centuries, it had been a center of Christian evangelism).

Let’s examine selected verses from Isaiah 1–3 to understand their historical context for Israel and their relevance for us today.

1. God Invites Us to Reason

God says, “Let Us Reason Together“

Isaiah 1:18-20, “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land: But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken [it].”

Isaiah 1:21&23, “How is the faithful city become an harlot!  it was full of judgment; righteousness lodged in it; but now murderers.“”Thy princes [are] rebellious, and companions of thieves: every one loveth gifts, and followeth after rewards: they judge not the fatherless, neither doth the cause of the widow come unto them.“

Meaning:
Historically, Israel turned from God, embracing corruption and injustice. Today, these verses warn all societies and individuals to repent. God offers forgiveness and restoration to those who obey, but promises wrathful judgment for those who persist in rebellion.

2. A Day of Reckoning Awaits

Isaiah 2:11&12, “The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the LORD alone shall be exalted in that day. For the day of the LORD of hosts [shall be] upon every [one that is] proud and lofty, and upon every [one that is] lifted up; and he shall be brought low:“

Meaning:
God will judge pride and arrogance. For ancient Israel, this foretold Divine punishment. For us, it signals the coming Judgment Day (and its Prequel “the Great Tribulation”), urging humility and reverence for God. (See also: Judgment Day is Coming Soon! and Is Hell Real?

3. God Will Remove Honorable and Prudent Leaders and Replace Them With Vile Ones

God states that, among the punishments for a nation’s disobedience, He would remove the honorable and competent leaders who previously ruled that nation…”Isaiah 3:2&3, The mighty man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet, and the prudent, and the ancient,The captain of fifty, and the honourable man, and the counsellor, and the cunning artificer, and the eloquent orator.“

We should bear in mind that Isaiah can be interpreted on two levels. One level addresses daily issues of life in the physical temporal affairs of men, both in the civil world, but (in the case of National Israel: kings, princes, and judges) also the ecclesiastical world dealing with Israel’s spiritual leadership (priests and prophets). The other level deals with prophesy that also applies to the civil affairs of mankind, but most importantly from God’s vantage point, the spiritual health of His Corporate Church (that has within it a subset of true believers).

God said that He would replace honorable and prudent rulers with immature, corrupt, and oppressive rulers:

1. Isaiah 3:4&5, “And I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them. And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour: the child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against the honourable.“
2. Isaiah 3:12 “[As for] my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause [thee] to err, and destroy the way of thy paths“.
3. The people’s open sin, like Sodom’s, will testify against them. Isaiah 3:9, “The shew of their countenance doth witness against them; and they declare their sin as Sodom, they hide [it] not. Woe unto their soul! for they have rewarded evil unto themselves.“

Meaning:
Israel’s weak and corrupt leadership bred disobedience. Israel was a theocracy, but it served as a figure of the New Testament era nation of believers. God’s call to repentance is not unto societies or nations, but to individuals. It is that the church of Jesus Christ today is now beset with corrupt governance, which has led the populace into apostasy. Similarly, today’s societies lack good governance as a consequence of both the church and nations turning away from God.

But what about the corporate church of Christ in our day? There are currently denominations that have their top ecclesiastical positions held by women. We see women pastors, elders, and deacons and in other positions of authority within the church. Similarly we have women in top leadership positions in civil authority. Rebellion by those that claim to be the people of God unequivocally infects the society. Only the children of God actually see and understand this. The rest are duped by the devil into believing that because a country calls itself Christian, it has the blessing and favor of God. One could argue that our nation, in spite of thinking that we are the most Christian, is actually the main proponent of the most vulgar and pervasive of sins. Just look how this country champions homosexuality under the banner of “Pride” and has led the charge in the transgender movement. “…they declare their sin as Sodom, they hide [it] not.“

Moreover, today the focus of so-called Christian church leadership is upon various false gospels (e.g., works gospels) and erroneous doctrines now being followed within Christendom that are more modeled after the world, to appeal to the world, rather than being standard bearers of the Bible’s teachings (e.g., regarding the marriage institution and homosexuality). Hosea 4:6, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children.”

We must remember that God does not alter His nature or His ways, our God is an unchanging God, ensuring that these principles still apply: Hebrews 13:8, “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.” Therefore, the warnings of God through the Prophet Isaiah are just as relevant today as they were in Isaiah’s day. The key difference being that in Isaiah’s day it portended the destruction of National Israel (apart from a saved remnant), but now in our day, it portends the destruction of the world (apart from those who are the saved remnant, being God’s elect in Christ) and the coming Judgment Day.

4. Supporting Scriptures

• Psalm 12:8, “The wicked walk on every side, when the vilest men are exalted.”
• Ecclesiastes 8:11-13, “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil. Though a sinner do evil an hundred times, and his [days] be prolonged, yet surely I know that it shall be well with them that fear God, which fear before him: But it shall not be well with the wicked, neither shall he prolong [his] days, [which are] as a shadow; because he feareth not before God.”
• Proverbs 14:34, “Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.”
• Proverbs 24:24, “He that saith unto the wicked, Thou [art] righteous; him shall the people curse, nations shall abhor him:“
• Proverbs 28:28, “When the wicked rise, men hide themselves: but when they perish, the righteous increase.“
• Proverbs 29:12, “If a ruler hearken to lies, all his servants [are] wicked.“

For more insights, see Biblical Proverbial Wisdom and Truth (w/Axioms & Maxims) Applicable to Our World Today. Biblical guidance is provided by God to the believer on how to maintain an eternal perspective of the current wickedness, drawing heavily from Psalm 37 and Psalm 73.

Conclusion

The Christian’s focus should be on continuing to share the Gospel of Salvation made available by The Person and Work of The Lord Jesus Christ. Regardless of how that Gospel may be received by the hearer, we can rest in the knowledge that God’s Word will not return to Him void as we are told in Isaiah 55:11, “So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper [in the thing] whereto I sent it.” More on this can be found in the study of the study on the Parable of the Sower.

We must also warn of the coming Judgment Day for the unrepentant, as Hell is real!

Finally, as this world nears its final days and heads towards oblivion and that final Judgment Day, Jesus lovingly tells His sheep, the true believing Christians, the following:

1. That the devil will be loosed from spirit prison for a “little season” (the “Great Tribulation”) according to Revelation 20:3, Revelation 20:7-10, and 2 Thessalonians 2:5-12), and, as a result,
2. Mark 13:19 “For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the beginning of the creation which God created  unto this time, neither shall be.“ and
3. Luke 21:28, “And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.“

POSTSCRIPT: Judgment Day is in View

Before proceeding with this postscript, this teacher wants to alert the reader to the fact that whenever God uses the phrase, “In that day“, that phrase almost always (if not always) points to Judgment Day! While the phrase can also be interpreted in many instances as having a temporal application, the fact of the matter is that those temporal warnings are just prefigurements of the final Judgment Day to come. That having been said, let us move on…

There is another aspect to the warnings of the opening chapters of Isaiah. We read in Isaiah 2:19-21, “And they shall go into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves of the earth, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth. In that day a man shall cast his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which they made [each one] for himself to worship, to the moles and to the bats; To go into the clefts of the rocks, and into the tops of the ragged rocks, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth.”

Is not this entirely consistent with the very last words of the Lord Jesus Christ on the way to the cross, foretelling the future, where Jesus said in Luke 23:30, “Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us.”

Similarly we read in Revelation 6:12-17, “¶And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?“

Note how the last two verses above (Revelation 6:16&17) are in complete and absolute harmony with what we saw above in Isaiah 2:19-21, “And they shall go into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves of the earth, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth. In that day a man shall cast his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which they made [each one] for himself to worship, to the moles and to the bats; To go into the clefts of the rocks, and into the tops of the ragged rocks, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth.” Similar wording is also found in Hosea 10:8, “The high places also of Aven, the sin of Israel, shall be destroyed: the thorn and the thistle shall come up on their altars; and they shall say to the mountains, Cover us; and to the hills, Fall on us.”

For more on why there is no doubt that these verses are clear and unambiguous warnings to the world in our day regarding the soon to come Judgment Day and for the unsaved only Hell to pay, please see “The Heavens Shall Be Rolled Together as a Scroll“.

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