"Come, Everyone Who is Thirsty!"
Isaiah 55:1-13
True Grace, Costly Grace
This text concludes Isaiah of the Exile, 40-55, in a playful, powerful way. A water-seller’s cry! But no sale, no cost. Wine, milk, bread provided free! The people have so missed real life that they labor to eat the dust and tree bark of their self-made powers. If they could listen to another story, God’s story, everything would be gourmet! Their broken life could become really alive.
Behind this lies a complex story of brokenness and exile. God’s promise of renewal seen through God’s self-giving love embodied in the Suffering Servant. God is king renewing through a servant.
If people are going to really hear this, they must listen carefully, to grasp a new kind of Grace! We’re sure there must be a catch: God is wanting to snatch life away, fill us with guilt. True, we are guilty, but God’s aim is to share the living water, rich food of his own life with his creatures.
Israel’s Covenant and Story Extended to All People
Isaiah stresses that the God Israel knows is the only God. All other gods are human constructions. But the only God must be the God of all the world, all nations and peoples, even Persians, etc.
God’s promises extend out from Israel/David to all. A strange dance of new knowledge will come. Israel will impact peoples they don’t know and those strangers will run to a God of such grace.
A Greatness so Vast, We Struggle to See It
"He Has Carried Our Sorrows"
A Vision Planted in the Heart of God’s Story
This text in Isaiah is one of the most important in history. But it is filled with mysteries. The Ethiopian in Acts 8 shows the challenge. Great scholars like W. Brueggemann point to its difficulty. As Christians with help of Acts we hear it as a direct prediction/description of Jesus.
A text nearly 600 yrs old when Jesus lives. People puzzled. Who are the people in the poem?
God, “Arm of Yahweh,” the “many,” “nations,” “kings.” “The Servant” – is that Israel as in
Is 49:3? Or a person turning Israel back to God as in 49:5? Then “we!” Who are “we”? Israel? Those who have seen the Servant but misperceived him and now have realized a greater reality about him? Us today, now reading this text? We recognize ourselves in the “sheep gone astray”!
The Servant is in the midst of this swirl. As we see him, he is with the sinful many, bearing their sorrows and sins. He embodies God’s will and delight; he is the “Arm of Yahweh.” He is the one whom people see but do not see, hear but do not hear. Till he astonishes us by transforming us! He is God’s people but also the appalling/exalted sign for all nations. Israel and humanity. The vision uses both future verbs and past tense verbs. Is it describing past or predicting future?
"Your God Reigns!"
Isaiah 52:1-12
The Kingdom of God and a Captive People
When Isaiah of the Exile writes in about 545 b.c. nothing has yet really happened to change Israel’s situation. Yes, Cyrus the Persian is advancing, but Babylon’s empire still reigns. Even when Isaiah’s prophecies are fulfilled and Persia allows some of the exiles to return to Jerusalem, it’s not as an independent kingdom but only as a small sub-province within the Persian empire.
God pushed Israel to deal with the paradox of human power. As a kingdom, Israel had failed. Even David was not great on policies, but on knowing God as God. Corruption, injustice, idolatry became so ingrained that God abandoned Jerusalem. Now God awakens Jerusalem to beauty and captivity. Isaiah announces a new Exodus: Knowing God. God reigns as king. God intervenes.
God is king over all nations! Yes, but Israel wanted that to mean Israel is a powerful, independent empire of its own. How can God be king if He and his people don’t rule over surrounding powers.
The Lord’s Servant and Light for the World
Isaiah 42:1-10, 49:1-6, 50:4-9
Isaiah, Exile, and a New Vision for Israel and the World
We’re focusing on Isa 40-55, but in scripture it is part of a large book spanning centuries. Israel as independent kingdom protected by God. Jeremiah, that’s past, God’s judgment by Babylon. Now a people in exile, looking forward to Cyrus of Persia, God’s chosen agent for this moment.
Who are we? What is happening, coming? Son of David bearing God’s Spirit (Is 11:1-2, 61:1-2). Son of Man = saints of the Most High receive kingdom but suffer defeat (Dan 7:13-14, 18-22)
Servant of Yahweh in Isa becomes a central focus for revelation, reflection, anticipation of the new. The Servant is Israel as a whole (Is 41), object of God’s pleasure, receives God’s Spirit. How? No longer a warring nation but healing, caring servant, uncrushed, bringing justice to nations. How?
Vision of God: Creator of earth and all people. Servant is God’s agent for covenant, new creation: Light to the nations. Healing blindness, prisoners in darkness. This is God’s glory, true God, not idols. New Event brings a New Song from ends of the earth. All peoples are called to the One God.
The Servant Sings to the World: Is 49:1-6; 50:4-9