Northern California Preachers' Retreat, October 2003
Introduction
We live in an age of fast foods, things ready packaged according to demand, and "How to Do" books. Is it any wonder that we want to get on the web and come up with a preachable sermon and also one that leaves us time to do all the other things serving a church lays on us? Here it is Friday or Saturday, and Sunday I have to speak twice plus teach a Bible class!
Sorry, but you cannot preach effectively from the prophet Isaiah that way! If you have come to this retreat hoping that in five easy sessions you will be equipped for every good work as far as Isaiah is concerned, you are headed for disappointment. To preach effectively from a book of the Bible, or even from a chapter of a book, you have to live with that book or chapter until it says something to you that you have to tell people about. The prophet Jeremiah said of his prophesying, "If I say, `I will not mention him or speak any more in his name,' there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot" (Jer. 20:9). You have to have fire in your bones to preach effectively!
Preaching is not "I have to say something!" It is, "I have something to say!" You have to live with the book until it says something to you. You have to live with the people until you know how to say it to them. How often a sermon fails to connect with any problem the audience is wrestling with! How often we fail to convince them that they ought to be wrestling with what we are talking about! If the topic I am preaching on does not move me, it will not move the hearer.
The soldier in a foxhole was ducking as every shell came over. His buddy said to him, "There is no point in ducking. If one comes over with your name on it, it will get you anyway." His reply was, "I am not worried about those with names on them. I am worried about those marked `To whom it may concern!'" "To whom it may concern" preaching will not move hearts.
It is obvious that a person at one stage in life with its experiences will see a prophet like Isaiah differently from the way he sees him when his contacts with people, with life's problems, and with God's word have been wider. His life with the Lord influences how God's word affects him. One's outlook on child rearing is greatly different when he has reared some from what it was when he had none but knew all about how it should be done. It is also different when he is struggling with his own children from how it is when his are grown and he is seeing how others are failing with theirs.
I can assemble a list of preachable texts from Isaiah, some of which I have used, others of which sound good but are still unused by me. Likely you would react, "Those may sound good, but they are not for me!" The way to preach from Isaiah is to study the times in which he lived. Learn all you can about him as an individual. Try to understand the problems he wrestled with and what challenges and solutions he offered.
We vastly underestimate the time required to preach effectively from a biblical book. One preacher in my city some time ago said that all one needs to preach is a few scriptures and the gift of gab. Someone characterized another preacher as using a maximum of sound and a minimum of thought. An Indian described one sermon he had heard as "Big wind, loud thunder, no rain!" One can take up people's time with a few scriptures, the gift of gab, and a maximum of sound; but he cannot break hearts that way.
Fulton Sheen was a very effective radio preacher during World War II with a fifteen-minute sermon each week heard by thousands. He is reputed to have spent approximately eighteen hours each week in preparation for each of those fifteen-minute sermons. A poet said of his work that he never finished a poem. He finally just abandoned it. A sermon is something like that. The hour comes when, ready or not, one has to get up and try to preach it. I hope these lessons will help you in developing sermons from Isaiah that you can preach.
Though a survey of the background of the book of Isaiah may seem tedious to you, the times and things that the Book of Isaiah deals with are what give meaning to its words. The more you know of his times, the better you can understand the relevance of what he says. It is then that you can ask yourself, "What should it mean to me and to the people to whom I preach?" This is the escape from hanging on Isaiah ideas you have arrived at from some other source!
The book of Isaiah with its sixty-six chapters has the most chapters of any of the literary prophets but yet is twenty percent shorter than Jeremiah with its fifty-two chapters. The Book of Psalms, however, has more chapters and verses than Isaiah. The book is also the most widely known of the Old Testament prophets.
We have Hebrew text for Isaiah in the Qumran scrolls that is earlier than we have for any other Old Testament book--a text that is earlier than the time of Jesus. Isaiah (2 Kings 19:20) and Jeremiah (2 Chron. 36:21-22) are the only ones of the literary prophets who are mentioned by name in the books of Kings and Chronicles.
Isaiah and Psalms are the Old Testament books most frequently quoted in the New Testament. Yet despite these distinctive features, the book of Isaiah as a whole is not generally known in our congregations. That means that we ought to preach from it more than we do. It is a rich vein from which much gold can be mined year after year if one is willing to put forth the effort required.
One needs to see Isaiah in his place within the prophetic movement in Israel. Abraham and Moses are called prophets--that is, they are individuals through whom God spoke and who interceded for their contemporaries. Prophets were scarce in Israel, however, in the time of the Judges. We are told that the word of the Lord was rare; there was no frequent vision at the end of that period (1 Sam. 3:1).
Prophecy had a new birth in the person of Samuel. Samuel has the reputation of being the first of the prophets (Acts 3:24). This outburst of prophetic activity came at the same time that kingship came to Israel. Samuel anointed Saul and later David to be king. But there were other unnamed prophets who were active at that time.
1 Sam. 9:9 tell us that the man later called a prophet (nabi') was at that earlier time called a seer (ro'eh). Other passages use the term chozeh for "seer." We are not able to make a persuasive distinction between these two terms for "seer." The prophet is also called "a man of God," a term which is most frequently used for Elisha. The prophet is also a man of the Spirit (Hos. 9:7). The prophet is also a "watchman" (Hos. 9:8; Ezek. 3:17).
Israel had only one word for prophetic-like figures. All are called "prophets." Jeremiah was a prophet just as his opponent Hananiah was a prophet (Jer. 28:5, 10). These opposing figures are called "false prophets" in the Greek Bible, and that terminology has passed into English. These opposing men are accused of speaking out of their own mind. They are the prophets who teach lies (Isa. 9:15). They steal oracles from each other (Jer. 23:30). The Lord put his words in the mouth of the faithful prophet (Jer. 1:9), and the prophet spoke them to the people. "No prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God" (2 Pet. 1:21). The Lord told Jeremiah that if he made a distinction between his own word and God's word he could be God's mouth (Jer. 15:19).
The prophets were not popular figures. Isaiah speaks of people who say to the prophets, "Prophesy not to us what is right, speak to us smooth things, prophesy illusions" (Isa. 30:10). The people said that the prophet was a fool ('ewil) and the man of the spirit was mad (meshuggah; Hos. 9:7). The prophet that anointed Jehu and also the prophet Jeremiah are each called mad (2 Kings 9:11; Jer. 29:26). The people wanted their ears tickled. Israel had a tradition of persecuted prophets. The New Testament speaks of the blood of the prophets (Matt. 23:35-37).
After a lengthy and interesting period of non-literary prophets, which included Nathan, Elijah, Elisha, Micaiah ben Imlah, and others, about the middle of the eighth century B.C. prophets began to leave behind them collections of their oracles. Isaiah is commanded to write his oracles for the time to come as a witness forever (Isa. 30:8). We know more of the pre-literary prophets as individuals than we do of the literary prophets; but we have very few of their oracles; sometimes only one or two for a prophet. On the other hand, no one could write a biography of any literary prophet. There is not enough data given; but we do have their preserved oracles. Their books, however, are not about them.
The general opinion is that Amos is the first whose oracles have been preserved in a collection. He was from Judah but prophesied to Israel at Bethel about 760 B.C. For comparative purposes, one should recall that the traditional date of the founding of Rome is 753 B.C. Amos is followed by Hosea a bit later in the eighth century. Hosea was from Israel and prophesied to Israel. No other literary prophet except Jonah is from Israel. Amos threatens that an unnamed enemy is coming. Hosea knows that it is Assyria. These two are followed by Micah and Isaiah, the one from the lowlands to the southwest of Jerusalem, and the other in the city itself. The one is concerned with the problems of the small landholder in the area from which he came; the other is a politician at the court of the king. Before the time of the height of the career of these two, the northern kingdom had come to an end in 722 B.C.
A look at the map of the Middle East will show you that the territory of Israel is the land bridge connecting the two end points of what James Breasted named "The Fertile Crescent." One end is the Nile valley and the other the Tigris-Euphrates valleys. Powers from Mesopotamia and Egypt struggled with each other across history for dominance of the Middle East. Israel was caught in the middle.
Assyria, under Tiglath-pileser I, reached the Mediterranean in the eleventh century B.C., about the time of the period of the Judges in Israel. But problems elsewhere prohibited Assyria's further expansion in the west at that time. In the ninth century B.C., however, Shalmaneser III came west and fought a coalition of western kings at Qarqar on the Orontes River. King Ahab of Israel led a force of 2,000 chariots and 10,000 foot soldiers in the battle. The episode is not mentioned in Scripture, but is Israel's first clash with Assyria. Jehu, who overthrew the house of Ahab, came to terms with Shalmaneser and paid him tribute which tribute is recorded on the black obelisk monument now in the British Museum, though the episode is not mentioned in Scripture.
With the arising of Tiglath-pileser III in 740 B.C., the westward expansion of Assyria gained more ground. The prophet Hosea is explicit that God is using Assyria to punish Israel for her idolatry and other sins (Hos. 10:6).
The last twenty-five years of the northern kingdom politically were very unstable times. Jeroboam II in Israel was succeeded by his son Zechariah for six months. Shallum assassinated him and reigned one month. Then he was assassinated by Menahem. Menahem of Israel paid Tiglath-pileser (Pul) one thousand talents of silver "that he might help him confirm his hold on the royal power" (2 Kings 15:19). He reigned ten years and was succeeded by his son Pekahiah for two years before Pekahiah was assassinated by Pekah.
Pekah of Israel and Rezin of Damascus planned revolt against Assyria and hoped to get Ahaz of Judah to join them in a coalition. When rebuffed by Ahaz, they planned to depose him and to put their own puppet, the son of Tabeel, on the throne. Ahaz responded by hiring Tiglath-pileser to invade Damascus and northern Israel to relieve the pressure on him. The Chronicler says, "[He] afflicted him instead of strengthening him . . . [He] gave tribute to the king of Assyria; but it did not help him" (2 Chron. 28:21). This coalition brings on what has been called the Syro-Ephraimitic war of 735 B.C. Damascus was overthrown, and the eastern land of Israel as well as its northern section was made into the Assyrian provinces Dor, Megiddo, and Gilead. Israel was reduced largely to the mountain territory that belonged to Ephraim. Some prophets call the northern kingdom "Ephraim."
Within Israel, assassination followed assassination, as we have suggested. Hosea speaks of kings being cut off like foam on the water (Hos. 10:7). By the prophet, God asserts, "They have made kings but not through me" (Hos. 8:4). Scripture is explicit that God repeatedly warned Israel by his servants the prophets, but it was in vain (2 Kings 17:13-18). No repentance came. We do not have an account of specific activity of any northern prophet in Israel's last years. Hoshea was put on the throne with the support of Assyria, but after nine years he revolted hoping to get aid from Egypt. Shalmanezer V besieged Samaria three years (2 Kings 17:5), and it fell in 722. Sargon II then exiled the significant people of Samaria (2 Kings 17:22-23); and later, foreigners were imported to fill the vacuum (2 Kings 17:24).
In Judah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah reigned as kings after Uzziah. Judah became a tribute payer to Assyria in the time of Ahaz, and it never escaped that status; ultimately Assyria gave way to Babylon.
The Assyrian period is the time at which Isaiah was active. He in vain advised Ahaz against hiring Assyria in 735, the Syro-Ephraimitic war. Ahaz died in 715 B.C., and Hezekiah came to the throne. By 7l1 B.C., Philistia was seething with revolt. Hezekiah was on the verge of being drawn in. Isaiah, at the Lord's instruction, went naked and barefoot three years as a warning of the calamity facing the Egyptians and Ethiopians from the Assyrians (Isa. 20:1ff.). Isaiah must have been successful in keeping Hezekiah out. No reprisals were taken at that time.
In 701, revolt was again seething, and Sennacherib came west to put it down. Isaiah at this time was at the height of his career. Sennacherib came to Lachish and demanded a large indemnity from Hezekiah which he paid. Egypt failed to come to aid as the politicians of Judah hoped they would do. However, a calamity struck Sennacherib's army and in one night 185 thousand men died. Sennacherib withdrew. Twenty years later, Sennacherib was assassinated by his sons (2 Kings 19:27).
It is the Assyrian danger and its meaning for Judah that is the setting of the first part of the book of Isaiah. A biblical student should go to his Bible and make sure he has a fair grasp of the narrative from 2 Kings 14:23 to 2 Kings 20:21 and its parallel in 2 Chron. 26:1-32:33. It is only in this way that he can grasp the heart of a book like Isaiah. If we are deficient in our knowledge of the history of Israel and Judah, we cannot grasp what a prophet like Isaiah was talking about.
Egypt had passed its heyday long before Isaiah's time; but did not recognize that she was a has-been. She fomented revolt in the Palestinian territory. The Israelite politicians could always persuade themselves that if they could get aid from Egypt they could be independent of Assyria. But in the clutches, Egypt never delivered. The Judean politicians were of the same misconception. The commander in chief of Sennacherib called Egypt a broken reed of a staff which if one leaned on it, it would pierce his hand (Isa. 36:8). In irony he offered to furnish Hezekiah horses if Hezekiah could put riders on them, and they could see if he could overcome only one Assyrian captain, not to mention the whole army. Tirhakah of Ethiopia did make a gesture of aid while Sennacherib was threatening, but Tirhakah was driven back into Egypt (Isa. 37:9). Isaiah said, "The Egyptians are men and not God; and their horses are flesh and not spirit" (Isa. 31:3).
In addition to the international scene and the local political scene, one needs to give attention to religious conditions in Judah in Isaiah's time. These can be learned from the verdicts given its kings in the records of the books of Kings and Chronicles. But they are also to be drawn from the things condemned by Isaiah and Micah. Isaiah deals with people of great prosperity who considered the Lord to be one of their allies. They identified their prosperity as a sign of his smiling on them. Isaiah's message that God was on the side of Assyria was so foreign to their thinking that they could not grasp it.
Idolatry was a live problem. Hezekiah carried through his great reform; but he was not able to stamp out worship on the high places. The various magical arts had their vogue though condemned by the law of Moses.
It would appear that people were active in the external forms of worship, but were short on their obligations to fellowman. Like other prophets, Isaiah makes plain that God wants right more than he wants rites.
Isaiah is to be placed a half century after Amos and Hosea, both of whom prophesied to the northern kingdom. One can assume that the economic conditions they depict also prevailed in Judah. The long peaceful reigns of Jeroboam II and Uzziah had brought an increase of wealth to the rich and brought suffering and poverty to the poor. Social reformers paint the prophets in their own image as champions of minorities and the poor; but Isaiah is not a social or economic reformer.
Isaiah expresses a woe on those who join house to house and add field to field until they are made to dwell alone in the land (Isa. 5:8; cf. Mic. 2:1-2, 8-9). One is tempted to assume that the Naboth's vineyard episode (1 Kings 21:1ff.) was not completely unique. One has to remember that Isaiah knew an agricultural economy, not an industrial one. The ideal life was every person under his vine and fig tree with no one to make him afraid. One has his plot of ground, likely inherited, and when driven off the land, he could only go into slavery. The coming war will empty or destroy the fine houses (Amos 5:11; Isa. 5:9). The luxury has come at the expense of the poor. "The spoil of the poor is in your houses" (Isa. 3:14-15). They were "grinding the face of the poor."
Like Amos before him, Isaiah has three terms for the poor (he`ani; Isa. 3:14), the unfortunate (haddal; Isa. 14:30), and the desperate ('ebyon; Isa. 32:7). He may use two of these in one setting (Isa. 26:6). He adds to them the widow and the orphan (Isa. 10:2).
The luxury of the times is reflected as Isaiah gives a list of the wardrobe finery of a well-dressed woman (Isa. 3:16-26). Shall we say that she was a regular customer of Neiman-Marcus or Sacks, Fifth Avenue? Isaiah sees a coming imbalance of the sexes. With the men killed or carried off in the war, women are willing to forego the marriage rights of food and clothing which a husband is supposed to supply, if someone will only marry them (Isa. 4:1). Isaiah comes back to this theme of women in Isaiah 32:9.
Isaiah's pictures of conditions have much in common with modern suburban American life. But the preacher needs to be careful that he is not "justifying the things he has a mind to by damning those he is not inclined to." Isaiah is not condemning economic conditions for economic's sake.
A prophet primarily spoke to the people of his day and to their problems. The proper way to study the prophet is to find out what those times were and to ask what the prophet had to say to them. Only after one has done that is he is a position to ask, "What does what he said mean to me?" To fail to grasp what the prophet said to his times is only to use his words as proof texting for what one has accepted on some other basis. One is doing eisegesis instead of exegesis. What the prophet said had a meaning to the people who first heard or read it. It was more than idle speculation about what would happen hundreds and thousands of years later. To recognize the contemporary relevance of the prophet is not to deny the predictive element in prophecy.
Whatever one may think of the literary relation between chapters 1-39 and chapters 40-66 of the book of Isaiah, it is obvious to any careful reader that chapters 40-66 of Isaiah deal with a much later period of history than do chapters 1-39. In these chapters, Israel has been in the Exile; the Exile has accomplished its purpose and is now to be terminated.
In the intervening years in Judah, Hezekiah's reign came to an end at about 687 B.C. He was succeeded on the throne by his son Manasseh who came to the throne at age twelve (2 Kings 21:1). Manasseh came to terms with the Assyrians. Manasseh, despite his reign of forty years, is considered to be the worst of Judean kings. He seems to have set himself to undo all the reforms that Hezekiah had carried through. He rebuilt the high places, doing more evil than the Canaanite people the Lord had driven out before Israel. He worshiped the heavenly bodies and offered his son as a burnt offering. He filled Jerusalem with innocent blood; traditionally, he murdered Isaiah. The Epistle to the Hebrews speaks of those sawn in two (Heb. 11:37). Because of Manasseh's evils, the Lord declared the destruction of Jerusalem that later reforms could not reverse. Manasseh was carried to Babylon; he repented, but his repentance could not stop the storm. Manasseh's son, Amon, ascending the throne at the age of twenty-two (2 Kings 21:19), was just a chip off the old block of pre-repentant Manasseh (2 Kings 21:19-25).
Ashurbanipal, the last significant Assyrian king, died about 627 B.C. Only five years later, Josiah carried through his famous reform of 621 B.C. Scripture centers on its religious significance, not on its political implication. Scholars would assume that, in throwing out Assyrian religious customs, Josiah was also revolting against Assyrian domination. Nineveh fell to the combined onslaught of the Babylonians, Medes, and Scythians in 612 B.C. Ashurballet fled westward and established a rump state at Haran. Egypt changed sides and now came to the aid of dying Assyria in its struggle against Babylon. Unfortunately, Josiah lost his life at Megiddo trying to block Neco of Egypt from going to the aid of dying Assyria.
Nebuchadnezzar won a victory over Assyria at Carchemish in 605 B.C. Neco was chased back into Egypt. Dominance of the Middle East for about seventy-five years was held by Babylon.
In Judah, successive sons of Josiah reigned. First was Jehoahaz who was put on the throne by the people, but then was deposed after three months and was carried to Egypt as a prisoner by Neco. Neco put Eliakim, another of Josiah's sons on the throne and gave him the name Jehoiakim. During the brief reign of Jehoiakim dominance of Judah passed from Egypt to Babylon. According to the Book of Daniel, Daniel and his associates were taken to Babylon in 606 B.C. to be trained for governmental service. No further data about the circumstances are known. Jehoiakim soon rebelled against Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem. Jehoiakim died under unknown circumstances, and his son Jehoiachin (a grandson of Josiah) reigned for three months, but then capitulated to Nebuchadnezzar on March 15/16, 597 B.C. He, along with leaders of Judah, was exiled to Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar put another son of Josiah, Mattaniah, on the throne with the suggestive name "Zedekiah" which means "righteousness of the Lord." At this time the prophet Jeremiah was active in Jerusalem and Ezekiel was active in the Exile. Zedekiah's reign of eleven years demonstrated the unsuitableness of his name. He was neither righteous nor loyal to Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar took Jerusalem in 587 B.C., destroyed the temple, executed the sons of Zedekiah in his sight, and then blinded the king himself. Nebuchadnezzar executed the leaders of Jerusalem and exiled the people of Jerusalem from whom future leadership could come. The exiles likely were distributed in various geographical locations as had been done by the Assyrians with the people of Israel (2 Kings 17:6), and foreigners were brought into the land (2 Kings 17:24; Ezra 4:2).
Nebuchadnezzar, despairing of controlling Judah through a descendant of David, chose Gedaliah to be governor of Judah. Some refugees returned to the cities of Judah (Jer. 40:12). Worship was resumed by some on the temple site with no temple (Jer. 41:4-5). But with the murder of Gedaliah by Ishmael, apparently more people were exiled (Jer. 52:29-30). Numerous people fled to Egypt taking Jeremiah with them. One should not think of the Exile in concentration camp concepts. The people were enforced colonists who could build houses for themselves, could go into business, could marry off their children, and could send and receive messages by messenger to Jerusalem. Jehoiachin was elevated by King Evil-Merodach from prison to the king's table in 562 B.C. (2 Kings 25:27-30; Jer. 52:31-34).
Cyrus, king of Persia, came to Babylon as a peaceable conqueror in 539 B.C. The years of the Exile had run their course. Cyrus, seeing the futility of the policy of exiling carried out by the Assyrians and Babylonians, according to his cylinder now in the British Museum, decreed that subject peoples could return to their place and rebuild their ancestral temples where prayer could be made for Cyrus and his son Cambyses.
In keeping with that decree, Zerubbabel organized a return to Jerusalem of about 50,000 people in 536 B.C. The altar for sacrifice was set up on its place though there had apparently been some acts of worship carried out on the temple spot after the destruction of the temple. The foundations of the temple were laid amidst joy that brought tears to the old people who had seen the former temple but who had outlived the Exile. The aid of the people who were in the land and had never been in exile was refused; opposition of these people brought temple reconstruction to a halt.
For sixteen years no further progress was made. Then in 520 B.C., the prophets Haggai and Zechariah successfully stirred up the people to resume reconstruction. By 516 B.C. the work was completed and the temple was rededicated. The material of the books of Ezra, Haggai, and Zechariah fit in at this period.
But, more years rocked on, and in 457 B.C. Ezra organized another group to return. "Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach his statutes and ordinances in Israel" (Ezra 7:10). Reforms were carried through. Thirteen more years went by, and Nehemiah, cupbearer to the king of Persia, came in 445 B.C. to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. That was almost a century after the first return from exile under Zerubbabel. It is thought that slightly before this time Malachi did his prophesying. Nehemiah, though back in Persia for a time, remained in Jerusalem as governor at least as late as 433 B.C. The Old Testament story ends at this point.
The second part of Isaiah declares that the time of the Exile is at an end. The Lord prepares a way in the desert from Babylon to Jerusalem. He removes all obstacles. Cyrus, without knowing it, is his chosen one to bring an end to the Exile. No human force can resist the Lord's plans. The idols of the nations are powerless and can do nothing to resist him. He is the only God who exists; he can predict the future and can accomplish that which he predicted.
At the same time, the book of Isaiah reflects that the glorious conditions anticipated have not developed. God's promises are conditional, and the sins of the people stand in the way of their accomplishments. It is not weakness of the Lord or lack of fidelity on his part that stands in the way. The Lord is willing and anxious to do what he has promised.
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