All right, well, we are carrying on in the book of Isaiah and Isaiah is a great book.
It's one of the great prophets and it's a hard book at times and we've got a big section to think about tonight
chapters 13 to 20 as I mentioned
And the reason we can do that in the normal time a lot is because chapter 13 really does epitomize
the whole of chapters 13 to 20 if you read any commentators on the book of Isaiah one of the things they'll say is that this is an
Entire section a unit from chapter 13 through halfway through chapter 20
And if you have one of our church Bibles or your own Bible you can flip and see
Even in the titles which are not original we've added those but in the titles of the sections
You'll see language
Like the judgment of Babylon chapter 13 verse 1 the oracle concerning Babylon and if you flip over you can see these little
Sub titles like the oracle concerning Assyria the oracle concerning Philistia and Moab and
Kush and Egypt and Damascus and
a number of nations that are considered and then chapter 21 picks up with Babylon again
You see that so fallen fallen as Babylon chapter 21 so in chapter 13 an oracle against Babylon and
Then these little subordinate oracles against Kush and Egypt and Philistia and Damascus and then Babylon again
And so it's bookended this section from Babylon to Babylon with all sorts of little judgments that happen in
between this and all of it is
One section because it's got an idea behind it all it's got a main theme and the main theme you
Might have seen in verse 6
It says whale for the day of the Lord is near okay
So this whole section is talking about this idea that we see across the Bible the day of the Lord
And it shows up again in verse 9 behold the day of the Lord comes and if you look at all the little oracles
After this one you're gonna see a little phrase that says in that day in that day in that day against Egypt in that day
Kush and that day Damascus and all of these little phrases are referencing this big idea the day of the Lord
That's what God has brought here and is bringing now
We've got to be very limited tonight
This is a very difficult passage to think about and talk about and the day of the Lord is a major concept throughout the Bible
Old Testament and New Testament and we can only talk about one aspect of it this evening
And that's the aspect of judgment that the day of the Lord brings so let's think about that together. What is the day of the Lord?
What problem does it create for us and then what hope does it bring to us?
Okay, so first what's the day of the Lord very briefly?
We here in Isaiah 13 and in the whole book are in the seventh century BC the 600s the mid 600s and
At the time Assyria is the great power of the land
They're the world dominators at the time. They're the colonial Empire and
if you were to pick up a newspaper in the middle of Jerusalem right here when Isaiah is writing Isaiah 13
It would have said on the front page of the Jerusalem times
Assyria has been the great power, but Babylon is rising
So everybody knew and was starting to find out that there's also another kingdom
One that's much older than Assyria
Babylon and that Babylon is the rising power of the north and
And eventually Babylon is going to destroy Assyria and eventually Babylon is going to be the ones that destroy Jerusalem in the
580s
Towards the end of this book and this is what Jeremiah is prophesying about it's what the book of limitations
laments what the Babylonians will ultimately do to Jerusalem in the 580s a
Syria is the is the great power the great problem for Jerusalem in Israel at the moment
But when you come to this section where the day of the Lord the day of judgment is being meted out against all these nations
It's not a Syria that gets the first billing. It's Babylon
Babylon is the beginning chapter 13 and as I said the ending chapter 21
It's the book ends and there's a real reason for that
You know, there's a primacy to Babylon across the Bible if you've read much of the Bible
You'll have noticed this that Babylon keeps coming back
Even well beyond Babylon actually existing Babylon becomes the great symbol
So if you read the book of Revelation the prophet John
He says over and over again the apostle that Babylon is the great problem that Jesus is coming to deal with in the end of
All of history and that's because of an Old Testament idea that Babylon is the symbolic
Power that stands for all evil
So Babylon is a real place. It's a real city. It's a real Empire. It starts all the way back in Genesis 11 at the Tower of Babel
But it also stands for more than just a place in the Old Testament
And so Babylon is not to be thought of here merely as a world geography as a sorry as a local geography
but more like a world concept and
The book of Revelation tells us about it. John tells us that Babylon is anywhere
that the playground of personal and corporate vice has been maximized
You know, it's it's where lust greed gluttony and violence have become nothing more than everybody's vending machine and
It's where human evil has been maximized to the degree that depravity has been unleashed
Into a society where a society is completely corrupted
That's where you have Babylon anytime that happens. You've got Babylon
It's when evil desires are maximized throughout history and we know that's what
Isaiah is talking about here because if you look carefully at verses 1 to 16, you'll realize he's not talking about a specific nation
Babylon he's talking about the world in verses 1 to 16
You can look down and see that verse 7
He says the day of the Lord is coming upon every human heart verse 7 verse 9
It's coming to destroy sinners from the land and that word land there is the word word word for world or the earth
It's the kind of word that you see in Genesis 1 God created the land the whole world
He's destroying the sinners from the whole world in verse 9. You see it again in verse 11. I will punish the world for its evil
verse
10 as well it says it over and over again
That Babylon here is a symbol that stands for this cosmic
Universal image of the day of the Lord the day of judgment the day that God will come and judge all evil from all the lands from all the lands of
The world and so the big idea of the day of the Lord the first big idea is very simple
but it's very difficult and
It's that God is assembling
destruction in
order to knock the hell purge the hell out of earth itself
That's what God plans to do is doing has done in the day of the Lord and on the one hand
Tonight you've got to be you know, you're a modern person. You've got to be willing to say I
Want God to dismiss dismiss all hell all evil from the world I
Want God to come into the world and and get rid of all the evil and purge all the evil and at the same time when you come to
A passage like this and you read what that looks like
You read a text like verse 9 which says when the day of the Lord comes it comes with wrath and fierce anger
You see on the other hand, I don't want the day of the Lord and I don't know what to do with the passage like this
I don't know what to do with the concept of the day of the Lord
It feels difficult it feels cruel as the language puts it here in the text and this is all over the prophet
Zeffania 1 14 says the great day of the Lord is near and it's hastening fast Amos 5 18
Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord. It is darkness not light
And so one scholar puts it like this the day of the Lord is when God intrudes into space and time to
reconstitute right order through punishing wicked wickedness
Okay, what do we do?
Secondly the problem that it creates for us
Modern people we come to this and you know no matter how mature you are as a Christian no matter how great of a Bible reader
You are we still come to a passage like this and there's one big problem
I think that comes up as you read it you read text like verse 9 verse 16
And the question that comes up for us and really for any human being is
Is God good?
Can I read a passage like this? Can I read about the day of the Lord and say that the Lord is good?
And I want to say tonight that we don't we don't ever need to hide from the from the Bible
You know we don't ever need to skip over things
We need to be able to come and look at exactly what it says and try to understand it as God's given it to us
And so in verse 16 we have one of those
Text one of those that most of the time if you're preaching a passage you try your best to not have to talk about
But I think we should and it's verse 16
It says their infants will be dashed in pieces before their eyes their houses will be plundered and their wives ravished
You see a text like that and you say is God good or is God unnecessarily brutal?
What's happening here? How am I to understand a passage like this?
Especially as a modern person
In a day where all sorts of people are challenging belief in the Bible based on verses like this richard Dawkins
The famous militant atheist of our time. He says that the Bible is a text
Remarkable for the bloodthirsty massacres it records and the xenophobic relish with which it does so
Now I think that
if you take a closer look
If you take a closer look there's something substantially different happening
That Dawkins doesn't understand to say the least
And let me suggest to you that to understand passages like this. You've got to be able to read it in the light of the whole Bible
You got to be able to read it in the light of all that God's doing from Genesis to Revelation to really understand
How to how to take it how to see it how to read it and so we're going to do something a little different tonight and
Sometimes sometimes you come to passages in the Bible where you have to do a little more
teaching than preaching
So we're still going to do some preaching too in a moment, but you've got to do that sometimes
You've got to get through through hard things sometimes by by thinking of it in a different way
So let me give you in the second point just four four things. I think that we need
Bible-wide to understand in order to treat a passage like this
And maybe this will be helpful to you as you read across prophecies like the prophet Isaiah
Okay, so the first thing is this when you look at God's judgment in
Joshua
the conquest of Canaan
Kings and chronicles
Under the hand of David and his sons when you come to the prophets and you see the wars that are being prophesied the day of the Lord
One of the things that's so important is to see that you've got to read these books in their entirety to understand the point
And when you read these books in their entirety to understand the point the big idea is always the same
And it's that God is overwhelmingly patient
Overwhelmingly patient with the most horrific evils
Across the Old Testament
Every single book about judgment is a book where it says God has been so
Overwhelmingly patient with humanity
Even when it has committed the most horrific evils for century after century after century and that's exactly what we've got here
Babylon
Is the symbol of hell on earth
That's what Babylon means in the bible. What's the pinnacle of that sin of that hell unleashed on earth throughout the Old Testament?
And the Old Testament makes it makes it clear. It's not easy to talk about even here tonight
But if you read a book like Joshua Deuteronomy Leviticus Kings chronicles Isaiah Jeremiah
They all say the same thing that in each of the lands that we're talking about especially in the Joshua conquest
That Babylon got so unleashed upon the land that eventually the pinnacle of all evil happened people started worshiping
Evil spirits through human sacrifice
And that's regularly noted across the Old Testament
And if you read carefully what you find out is that almost every single unleashing of judgment is in a time
When evil hell had been unleashed to that degree in the world
And so even the conquest of Canaan God says over and over again the iniquity of the evil
And the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. He says to Moses it's not yet time for judgment of Canaan because their iniquity is not yet full
What does he mean by that?
He means by that that he gave the Canaanites 400 years
To repent of the most horrific things things that I can't speak about
From the pulpit he gave them 400 years immense patience. He poured forth
Over and over again upon the peoples of the ancient Near East telling them showing them saying I'm patient with you
Just repent just come back just return
Just put away your evils and you will not face what you deserve
You will not get the justice that you deserve in the midst of the land
This is so built in in fact to to Leviticus that in Leviticus 18
God says that if you bring this type of evil into the land
He's talking to Israel to the people he said if you go into the land and you bring the kind of evil
Into that place that the Canaanites brought into it. It says the land will vomit you out
And he's saying that God made the world to be a place of goodness and joy
And justice and peace and shalom
And when people group after people group after people group commit such horrific violence in the place
It says the land can't even tolerate it
The land has to spit you out the land has to bring up justice against against you
And so it's so important to understand that we're not here talking about idyllic utopias
That God brings to justice. We're talking about
horrific injustice
That God brings to justice
And that's the message of the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah in Isaiah chapter 7 says to Jerusalem
Jerusalem
Why are you continually trying the patience of the Lord?
Don't you know that he keeps he keeps letting you off?
He keeps showing mercy to you. He keeps giving you chance after chance. And so here's what we learn
One author who read a very helpful book about this topic. He puts it like this. He says the question should not be
God if you're good, why are you inflicting judgment on these cities?
And the real question is this God if you're good, why are you letting this go on so long?
You know that that's actually the question of the Psalms. How long go Lord?
That's the question of the book of Revelation. It's the prayer come Lord Jesus. When are you going to purge injustice from the land?
If you're so good, then when Lord when are you gonna?
When are you gonna kick the hell out of this land out of this earth? When are you gonna do it?
Why do you allow evil of God? When are you gonna put it away? You see God is patient
And he's more patient than any of the judges of the earth any human being any king that's ever existed
He is slow to anger and abounding instead fast love
Now the second thing is this
When you look at ancient Near Eastern studies about this issue
So people spend their entire career looking at places like Isaiah 13
And then comparing it to the ancient Near Eastern text that we have text
Outside the Bible from the time of the Old Testament one thing always comes through
You know, there's all sorts of war stories from the ancient areas that we have you can read about them
You can find them for free on the internet all you want and read them
Things that were written at the exact same time period as the book of Isaiah and they all do the same thing
They're written from the perspective of a single nation a king an army and they all say the same thing. They say
You know, we went into the land
And all of our deities helped us to completely defeat this other people group
And our king is the best king
And our king is the wisest that has ever been
You know, sounds like some of our politicians today a little bit
You know, we we're the best and we're the richest
And there's been no nation that's ever been blessed like our nation
And you read these ancient Near Eastern war text and they always say that they always say the same thing
Look, this is how you know that we're dealing with something very real
When you read the book of Isaiah
You find out that the good guys are actually the bad guys
That Israel and Jerusalem are also the object of the day of the Lord
That Israel and Jerusalem are no better than any of the nations
And that these stories of judgment are ultimately stories about Israel's failure and Jerusalem's failure and their evil
And that's why in the New Testament in the gospels when Jesus Christ creates the term that we now call hell, Gehenna
What is he referring to? He's referring to a space outside of Jerusalem
This space Gehenna, it was a land, a territory outside of Jerusalem
You could see it from the Temple Mount and it was a place called the Valley of Hinnom
We read about it in the prophets and at the Valley of Hinnom
The Israelites had at the time of the Old Testament
Sunk to the same exact level of evil that I spoke of earlier
You know Jesus actually looks out at a place and says that's hell. You want to know what hell is?
You want to know what Babylon is? It's what they did
It's when a hell like that gets unleashed into the world
And Jerusalem had done it too
And so when Dawkins says, you know, these wars in the Old Testament, there's xenophobia
Well, oh boy, he didn't read well because actually the whole point of the Old Testament is that
Israel and Jerusalem are the object of God's judgment because they're the same as everybody else
You know, he shows mercy. He's so patient with the world
And he brings justice in the midst of injustice equally
He has no partiality and that tells us that we've got to remember the Deuteronomy 7 principle
You know, the Deuteronomy 7 principle, it's one of the great passages of the Old Testament
It's a principle that stands for everyone for all time. It's when God says
I'm about to send you into the land of Canaan, but when you get there Israel, remember
If you ask the question, why us? Why did God put us in this great land?
You need to remember one thing. I did not do it because you were great
I did not do it because you were morally upright
I did not do it because you were a Christian
I did not do it because you were morally upright. I did not do it because you were powerful
What does he say? Deuteronomy 7-9. I did it because I love you
That's it
And any single moment in all of human history that we're not being judged
It's because God is patient and because God loves us
And anything other than that would not keep us from the fires of justice
The fires that we deserved
I love what Alexander Solzhenitsyn said about us about humanity. Alexander Solzhenitsyn
wrote the gulag archipelago the account of the horrors of the Russian gulags of the mid 20th early 20th century
And Alexander was a Solzhenitsyn was a prisoner of those gulags and he came out and he wrote the multi-volume series on that
That's a really important read a great read
But you might have heard the famous quote. He says he understood humanity
He says the lines separating good and evil passes not through states not through nations
not through
classes not between political parties
But right through every human heart and through all human hearts the lines separating good and evil it runs through every single human heart
It's not an issue of states and classes and societies and people groups and races. It's all of us that Babylon
Runs through every single human heart gk. Chesterton more popularly. You've heard this probably it's cliche at this point
But Chesterton was asked to write an essay
in the early 20th century
From one of the london papers an essay contest
They asked all the great thinkers at the time
Including Chesterton. They said write a short essay on what is wrong with the world and what did Chesterton write back?
He said dear sirs
I am
Yours truly gk. Chesterton
You see he understood
He understood that Babylon runs through every one of our hearts
And that means that whenever we read a passage like this, we have to say oh lord. Why are you so patient with me?
Why do you why do you allow me to draw a breath? Why do you love me?
this much
now thirdly a four um
It's been regularly pointed out and this is where we get into a little bit more of the detail
It's been regularly pointed out by the theologians
Of history and by the commentators that when you look at God's judgment on the day of the lord across the bible
One of the things you notice when he says things like I will put an end to the pomp of the arrogant as he does here
In chapter 13. I will lay them low the question is how?
How does God judge? How does he execute his justice in the world?
And you've got to be very careful with how you think about this and the main way
If you look carefully the main way that God brings judgment into the land in the old testament and the new testament even
Is it's regularly depicted as God simply letting human beings be
themselves
You see the way that judgments actually depicted in this passage is more like God letting go
of humanity
The sense is that God at all times
Is upholding society in his goodness and grace
You know that if he would let us become what we really are
If he would let us do what we really want to do
That would be babelon
And at all times God is not he he we call this common grace. He's holding us back. You know, we're totally depraved
But we're not as bad as we could be
And the judgment in the old testament is regularly depicted as God allowing us to become what we really are in our sin
And back to verse 16 remember that very difficult verse we read
The infants will be dashed in pieces
The house is plundered wives ravished. What is it talking about?
It's not talking about the agency of God. It's saying that when the meads come when the persians come when the assyrians come when the
Babylonians come
Humans are going to do this against humans. He's saying
If I unleash my grace from you for just a moment, this is what humanity does to humanity
You see he lets the chaos of sin unfold
And that's why when you get to the new testament, this is exactly the way Paul describes the wrath of God
Across the entirety of the old testament. What does Paul say in Romans 1 18 through 32?
He says the wrath of God has been revealed to all the nations and then how does he describe it?
It says he God gave the nations over to themselves
He let them do what they wanted to do. He let them be themselves. He let them live in the depth of their sin
He unleashed Babylon by actually simply stepping back from his gracious holding of them
And so the judgment means that God is never the author of sin
God is never the author of sin
We are
Judgment is simply giving to humanity exactly what it wants
And c.s. Lewis was really sharp on this. He helped us think about this. He talked about how hell really is humanity's choice
And the unleashing of judgment in this passage the unleashing of hell into the world is simply giving humanity its choice
To to live like this to act like this now you may be tempted we all are tempted to say but oh boy
We're modern people. We know that we've progressed, you know, we've gotten beyond this
We've gotten beyond things like this and let me just say this is not a numbers game and need not be but I just want to know
that
in world war two the low estimates
for civilian deaths at the hands of soldiers and bombs
civilian non-combatant deaths
On the low side was 45 million people
There were more deaths on a few single days of world war two of civilians
The in then the entirety of war deaths in the old testament combined
We're modern people but we're the same and there are today 50 million people
In human slavery situations 50 million across the world being trafficked and horrific moments
Our
He had us right
The line of good and evil runs through every human heart. We we are prone to Babylon
And that means that we've got to understand that any moment that society is being upheld that it's just doing okay at least
Is a moment where God is pouring forth his grace on us
He's patient
He's love and he's gracious to let us carry on now fourth and finally
Fourth and finally last say that means that I just want to point out
Let me give you one thing before I say that I missed this quote and I want to give it to you
Miroslav Wolf Miroslav Wolf
Gives us something very helpful in his book exclusion and embrace. Let me close my third with this
This is what he says. Just just think about this. He says this in a world of violence
In a world of violence
It would be unworthy of God
To withhold the sword of judgment
If God were not angry at injustice and deception
And did not vow to make the final end to violence in the day of the lord
Would God be worthy of our worship?
Even more he carries on let me give you one more. He says in a world of violence
We are faced with an inescapable alternative either God's violence
Either God's justice or human violence
unto justice
Most people who insist well God God can't be bring justice God can't bring judgment into the world
I can't believe in a God who judges a city who judges a nation who judges anyone
They think of nothing at the same time of entrusting final judgment into human hands
Of entrusting justice and judgment into human rulers
And it seems responsible to say something like well surely God can't be a God of judgment
But that God should judge the world seems crude while they're totally okay with human beings doing the exact same thing
We can bring justice even by violence. That's okay if it's brought about by humans
But God cannot be entrusted to that and so without God violence will always thrive
Now lastly that leads us to say is is God let me let me close this point by saying is God full of wrath and anger
You know it says the wrath of God here in chapter 13 on several occasions
And let me do one more broad thing and that's say that the theologians of history the bible scholars of history have all agreed
Throughout 2,000 years of reading the bible as one book. They've said the same thing and they've said that
The wrath of God is not something that comes to us in the way that you think it does
Number one it's it's God unleashing who we are as humans, but number two is God full of wrath
In other words is wrath one of the characteristics of God an attribute of God
And for 2,000 years Christians have said no
No, God is not wrath
God is not anger
You see when you get to the New Testament you you realize this Paul says in Acts
He says men of Athens understand that the true God is not of like passions
As you and I that's a word for emotion
And it means that God is never to be thought of as someone like us who gets angry
You know sometimes you're okay, and then you get angry
God never does that he doesn't get angry. He doesn't get full of wrath. You see God is holy
And God is love. He never gets angry. He's just
God never gets loving. You see God see how this works? You say well, I'm not sure about that with anger, but think about love
You say look God never starts to love you
God never started to love you. He never began loving you. He always is
God is love. He doesn't begin to love. God never gets angry. He is just
He is holy. God is not full of wrath
He is holy love
And so when the Bible talks about God's wrath, what's it talking about?
Paul says the wrath of God. What's the wrath of God? The wrath of God is the effect of justice
The wrath of God is what we experience
It's society going all the way to the bottom
It's just it's the judgment we feel we experience it's justice poured out into the world. God is not wrathful
Wrath is an effect of God's justice that we experience in the world and the theologians have said this for century after century after century
God is love. God is good and because he is good. He is just and so the message of isaac even here in isaac 13
Is God is love. God is holy. God is patient
And God will purge the evil from the land in the day of the Lord
Now we're going to talk about the power of God
Patient and God will purge the evil from the land in the day of the Lord now last thing as we close point three
And it's just one brief note
The hope it gives us let me close by saying that the day of the Lord gives us hope
And it that could be talked about in multiple ways one of the ways we've already mentioned
Oh boy, are you a human being tonight? Do you look out at the world and say lord?
When will you bring justice?
You know when will you put away the 50 million the 50 million people that are currently enslaved and modern slavery in some form?
When are you gonna when are you gonna do away with that?
And as a christian, you know your heart gets softened and you melt under the under the beauty of the gospel
And you start to feel the pain of other people
And and it makes you actually say boy if you're good lord, I just want you to come
Come lord Jesus, Mary and alpha the final prayer of the bible
But let me focus instead on this other way that the day of the Lord brings us hope
And that's to say that the day of the Lord came in little snippets in the old testament
The day of the Lord is coming
At the end of history in the book of revelation
But in the middle of history
The day of the Lord already came
And you can see that in Isaiah 13
Isaiah 13 verse 10
It says the stars of the heavens
And their constellations will not give their light
On the day of the Lord the sun
The day of the Lord the sun will be dark
At its rising
Now in the gospel of mark chapter 15 verse 33
it says
That there was a day there was a day
And on that day from the sixth to the ninth hour
The stars did not give out their light the sun was dark at its rising
That the lights went out
You see the day of the Lord has already come
The day of the Lord is coming but it's already come and it came the day that the lights went out
And the day that the lights went out was the day when the Lord Jesus Christ hung on the cross and was utterly forsaken by his father
And you see God says in the day of the Lord I will pour out justice on the land
I will purge evil from the land
And then he said oh boy nobody has ever gotten the justice that we deserved
Nobody has ever gotten the justice they deserve but only one only one has gotten the justice we deserved the true day of the Lord
And it came the day the lights went out upon the body and the soul of Jesus Christ himself
He experienced the ultimate justice of God the day of the Lord was poured out upon him and it was so
So that you could stand on the day of the Lord
You know the day of the Lord came in the middle of history so that at the end of history you could stand and the day of the Lord would be beauty
not judgment
And in Jesus Christ God has done it. He has brought it. He has brought justice
He has poured it out upon this man's body
The judgment of Jesus Christ says
I love you
I'm patient with you and I want to give you grace
And that's exactly the message of the prophet
He's done it in Jesus
And now we can say come Lord Jesus
Miranatha
Let's pray father. We give thanks that
Even in the midst of really difficult passages like this you speak
So speak oh lord as we come to you and receive the fruit of your holy word show us
That you are good help us to believe it. We know it's true, but let us speak
God help us to believe it. We know it's true, but Lord we are the problem
We struggle with that sometimes and so we ask Lord that in the midst of reading about a passage of justice and judgment
You would help us to see
That there are no skeletons in your closet. They're only in our closet
It helped us then to turn to Jesus Christ the man who was judged for us judged in our place
The one upon whom you poured the day of the Lord for us so that we might stand in the day of judgment
So give us faith today in him and we pray this in Jesus name Amen