B19-devotions

Isaiah 27:1-13

Devotions for Thursday 12th June

This is the last of the great apocalyptic visions of Isaiah which have occupied chapters 24 to 27. In these prophetic visions we have travelled with Isaiah through the final judgement of God (ch24) and the victory won for His people (25) and in chapter 26 we read the musings of Isaiah as he pondered on everything he saw happening around him as he waited for his prophecies to come true. It can be no surprise therefore that the last of these apocalyptic visions speaks of these same themes, repeating them in different ways.

In this passage we read of the victory of God at the End Times (27:1) which heralds the dawn of a new day when God’s people, like a new vineyard, will be a delight to the Lord (27:2f.). Unlike the fruitless vineyard Isaiah bewailed earlier in his prophesies (5:1f.), this vineyard will bear good fruit as its Creator intended (27:6), and the people of God will ‘fill the whole world’ with fruit, thus fulfilling the great Covenant promise to Abraham that his ancestors would be a blessing to the whole world. God’s wrath will be no more against his own people (27:4) but the evidence of His righteousness will there for all to see, and God’s cry will be ‘let them make peace with me, let them make peace with me!’ (27:5)!

This stunning picture is of course not about the triumph of God’s people, but of the triumph of God shown through the salvation of His people, and that is the point. God’s justice comes at a cost, and the central verses of Isaiah 27 contain the very human questions which Isaiah asks about everything he has seen and prophesied. These questions reflect the big questions people ask about how and why God does what he does. Has God turned in judgement against His own people, and if so why (27:7)? Why was it necessary for the Lord to struggle with the very people he chose to be his servants in the world (27:8)? Have God’s people been purified and made clean by what God has done in judgement, and has their sin been removed (27:8,9)? Like us, Isaiah has no firm answers to such questions except to observe the cost of God’s work borne by a people ‘without discernment’ (27:11). The land has been laid waste to the point where cities are abandoned to the desert, cattle graze at will and women gather sticks from the remains of cultivated trees for brushwood fires (27:10,11). The Promised Land lies desolate, even though a vineyard of God’s new creation has begun to be fruitful (27:2-6)! Of one thing, Isaiah was sure, and this was that God would summon His people from around the whole world to unify them in worship (27:12,13), and he expresses this with great conviction and power.

How does all this relate to us? To a certain extent, the fruitful vineyard is indeed a picture of the Church of God, and the appeal of verse 5 may even be considered as evangelistic. However, Isaiah saw a time coming when God would send His new King as a child (7:14, 9:1-5, 11:1,2) to establish a New Kingdom, but he did not prophesy about the imperfect times in which we live now, between the coming of the Messiah and the final establishment of God’s perfect Kingdom (the End Times). We know the power of God’s salvation now through Christ and have the evidence of His power in the Holy Spirit, but the glory of the New Testament times has not yet been completed. So just as all apocalyptic literature does, it speaks to us in part about our own circumstances, but points us on towards a greater vision. Certainly we still long for the day when all evil will be defeated and all ‘Leviathans’ slain (27:1) and all God’s people, both New and Old Testament, be unified in praise of Almighty God (27:12,13)!

1 On that day the Lord will decide the fate of Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, with his fierce, great and strong sword; and he will kill the dragon in the sea.

2 On that day

there will be a delightful vineyard,

sing about it!

3 I, the Lord, am her keeper;

I water her every moment.

I guard her night and day

Lest harm comes to her;

4 Wrath? I have none!

Who has set thorns and briers

so that I marched in battle against her?

I will burn them up together!

5 Or else let them cling to me for protection,

let them make peace with me,

let them make peace with me.

6 In days to come, Jacob will take root,

he will blossom, and Israel will sprout,

and fill the whole world with fruit.

7 Has He struck him down

as He struck down those who struck him?

Has he been killed

like the killing of those who were slaughtered?

8 Or by driving him away into exile

have you struggled against him?

Have you removed his hard spirit

on the day of the east wind?

9 So will the guilt of Jacob

be expiated by this?

and will this be the full fruit

of removing his sin?

For He has made all the altar stones

to crush like stones of chalk,

no sacred poles or incense altars

will remain upright.

10 For the fortified city will be isolated,

a deserted dwelling place

abandoned to the desert;

Calves will graze there,

they will lie down,

they will strip its branches.

11 Its boughs will wither and break;

women will come and make a fire of them.

For this is a people with no discernment;

so will their Maker will show them no mercy?

and will He who formed them show no favour?

12 On that day the Lord will thresh grain from the river Euphrates to the brooks of Egypt, and you will be gathered one by one, O people of Israel. 13 And on that day a great trumpet will be blown, and those who were lost in the land of Assyria and those who were driven out to the land of Egypt will come and worship the Lord on the holy mountain at Jerusalem.

To read more about this passage of scripture: go to the Bible study page

To read the questions and discipleship challenges for this text: go to the discipleship page

We thank You gracious Lord, for the amazing truths we discover by reading Your Word. May all Your people value it and learn to use it in the way it was always intended to be used; as a spiritual reference point and guide to the purposes and will of Almighty God. Let us not be carried away with our own ideas about God and the world, but inspired by the truth which has already been revealed through Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN

The ways of the Lord are compassionate and His love is incomparable

He focuses the minds of those who cannot face their debt;

He helps a man or woman face impossible work decisions;

He re-ignites a wounded marriage by nurturing true love;

He liberates those entrapped by life who have no sense of purpose;

He heals the heart of parent and child, broken by separation;

He re-envisions those who need some hope to face the future;

He eases the pain of the aged and infirm when gripped by chronic illness.

He purifies the spirit of those who know the hell of abuse.

He knows the pain of life’s toughest paths, for He has faced the Cross.

Weekly Theme: The Family

Pray for any members of your extended family who may be having a difficult time just now, and give thanks to God for His love and care for all the members of your family.

On-going prayers

Give thanks to God for the joy of close friendship in Christ
Pray against the abuse of power wherever it is found
Pray for the country of Zimbabwe

Going Deeper: (what you will find on the Bible study page)

This passage of scripture contains some very obscure Hebrew and you will find that most of the translations of the Bible you can buy today disagree quite substantially in their translation. This is one occasion where it may be helpful for you to read some of the specific notes I have made on the text of the passage, before going on to look at some of the other details in the text.

For the full Bible study, click link above,

or for a brief review, scroll page down.