(January
1, 2000)
God's
Way, Not Ours: Isaiah 1, by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1999, 150
pages).
This
book contains nine sermons on the first chapter of Isaiah, originally delivered
by Martyn Lloyd-Jones (MLJ) in 1963. While keeping the larger themes of
Isaiah's message to the people of his own day in view, MLJ primarily focuses on
the one great message of the entire Bible, and he sees in Isa
1 a summary of that message. He begins with a sermon entitled God Has Spoken:
The vision of Isaiah the son of
Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days
Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. Hear, O heavens, and
give ear, O earth: for
the Lord hath spoken, I have
nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me
(Isa
1:1-2).
MLJ
notes that the book contains "a collection of prophecies delivered at
different times, but they form one complete whole" (page 1). Isaiah wrote
to people who lived in Judah and Jerusalem under these kings at various times,
but who were in trouble, and who faced even worse trouble as destruction by the
Babylonians loomed large. So Isaiah deals with the nature of the problem, the
root cause, and in so doing delivers a message that is just as applicable to
us.
This prophet, in this
introduction, gives us a clear outline of his entire message. He shows the
cause of the troubles, the false
ways in which people were trying to deal with them and get out of
them, and then announces the
true and only way of deliverance…His message to the sinful
Israelites at this particular
juncture in history is therefore the message of God to the whole of the
human race in its trouble and
distress (pages 1,3).
And
of course the problem for them, as well as for us, is the same: it is sin. The
world as it is now is not the same as it was created, for sin entered in. God
calls the heavens and the earth to witness, and He says: "I have nourished
and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me" (verse 2). MLJ
says:
We have here…a masterly analysis
of sin…here is the essence of all our ills…sin is not so much a
matter of what we do as of our
relationship to God…sin in its essence is the very thing that the
prophet talks of here: it is
rebellion, revolt against God, and we must put that first (page 16).
God
created and nourished for Himself a people, or as St Augustine said: "Thou
hast made us for Thyself
and
our hearts are restless until they find rest in Thee" (page 17).
And
what does sin do? It makes people stop thinking, it leads to ignorance, the topic of the second sermon.
The ox knoweth
his owner, and the ass his master's crib: but Israel doth not know, my people
doth
not consider (verse 3).
Even
the dumbest of animals look to their masters for sustenance, and follow their
instinct. But mankind fights against their "instinct of eternity"
(page 27). Knowing within that they were not made just for this world, they
argue and reason against their instinct.
The
third sermon finds "a people laden with iniquity" who have
"forsaken the Lord" and who are "gone away backward" (verse
4).
The
fourth and fifth sermons bring the focus to the consequences of sin---to the
depth of the problem and the desolation
that sin brings.
Why should ye be stricken
anymore?…the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint…Your
country is desolate, your cities
are burned with fire (verses 5-8).
In
all this, Isaiah paints a very realistic and very necessary picture of sin;
necessary, because repentance must come first.
It is only as we understand sin,
and see ourselves as sinners, that we have any hope whatsoever
of being delivered. The Bible
puts repentance before faith. We must go down before we can go
up…So it is no use standing up
and saying, 'Come to Jesus'. 'Why should we come to Jesus?'
they say. And it is our business
to show them why…The Bible says 'Repent and believe the
gospel' (pages 16, 19-20).
The Bible insists upon our
coming face to face with the cause of our ills, and only then does it tell
us about the remedy—the gospel,
the way of salvation—which alone can deal with and cure those
ills (page 53).
And
this was the problem with the people of Israel. They didn't realize anything
was wrong. Instead, they were listening to the false prophets who were saying
"Peace, peace; when there is no peace" (Jere
6:14).
So
Isaiah went on probing and revealing the depths of sin. From the nature of sin
in verse 2, to the consequences of sin in verses 5 and onwards, with verses 7-8
picturing the political, economic and social results in Israel.
Then
in the sixth sermon comes the crucial ninth verse and the turning point in
Isaiah's message:
Except the Lord of hosts
had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom,
and we should have been as
Gomorrah (verse 9) (emphasis reviewer's).
In
this verse, we are given a glimpse of hope. Isaiah had been presenting the
character, nature and results of sin. But now comes a word of grace.
What a wonderful word is this
word 'except'. It introduces the whole of the gospel…in this one
verse we have a perfect synopsis
of the Christian message, which is something that the Bible is
very fond of doing. It likes to
give a message in a summary form like this, so that we can
remember it…There (in John 3:16)
is the gospel in a nutshell. And it is exactly the same
here…(and) I will summarize the
statement of the gospel in this verse under three
headings (page 86)
:
·
Sin merits and deserves the punishment of total destruction (pages 86-87)
·
Men and women are totally incapable of doing anything at all about
their own salvation (page 92)
·
Our salvation is entirely of God (page 97)
The God whom we have scorned and offended, the God
we have blasphemed, the God we have
disobeyed and criticized, is the very One who
himself delivers us. The One who has the power to
consign us to perdition, this Lord of hosts, uses
that selfsame power in our salvation and for our
deliverance (page 98).
Then
sermon seven is on the following verse with its call to repentance, as Israel
is addressed in terms epitomizing evil:
Hear the word of the Lord, ye
rulers of Sodom; give ear unto the law of our God, ye people of
Gomorrah (verse 10).
But
the salvation that God offers must be on His terms, not ours, the subject of
sermon eight. And so verses 10-15 deliver a purely negative word, dashing
Israel's hopes if they were relying on themselves:
To what purpose is the multitude
of your sacrifices unto me? (verse 11).
External
religious observances without the involvement of the heart earn no credit with
God. Even when Israel followed right observances, they did it wrongly. And they
further added observances which were not ordained by God.
Your new moons and your
appointed feasts my soul hateth (verse 14).
So
they not only did wrong things, but also right things in the wrong way, with
the wrong attitude.
But
in spite of all of this, grace still beckons. God still calls those who would
repent and worship Him rightly. And so the title of the final sermon is God's
Final Word:
Wash you, make you clean; put
away the evil…learn to do well (verses 16-17)
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 (verse 18).
MLJ
says that the whole message of the Bible is summed up in that one word,
"Come", in verse 18.
Is it not astonishing that the
great, almighty, and eternal God, existing from eternity to eternity,
self-sufficient in himself,
triune, the God who made humanity and all things, should appeal to us,
that he should call upon us and
ask us to listen? Is it not one of the most wonderful facts in this
whole universe, that God should
bother with us at all? …Here is the amazing thing, that God
should still say, 'Come' (page
136).
This means that the almighty,
eternal God, against whom we have sinned and rebelled, stoops
down to our level, and says in
effect, 'Come let us have a discussion' (page 137).
In his sovereign act of
salvation, God does not dragoon people, he persuades them. Let us not
misunderstand the great doctrine
that tells us that we are saved by grace alone. We are not
knocked on the head; we are not
bludgeoned. Here is a wonderful display of the final
reasonableness of God …(and of)
God's infinite condescension (page 138).
This is a perfect statement of
the essence of the Christian gospel of salvation (page 138).
But
we are not only forgiven,we are also justified. And
how does God do that?
How is the scarlet turned into
the whiteness of wool? And the answer is the alchemy of
Gethsemane, the blood of Jesus
Christ and the sweat; and then the cross, the shame and the
suffering, the ignominy, the
mocking of the crowd, the crown of thorns, everything that
happened on that cross on
Calvary's hill (page 148).
This
book contains a rich and full exposition of this marvelous first chapter of
Isaiah, and of God's way of salvation as it was depicted in the Old Testament.