My spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed's seed, saith the LORD, from henceforth and for ever. (Isa.59:21)

This morning, we will play an active role in the fulfillment a prophecy of God through Isaiah. To help us experience this fulfillment of prophecy as richly as possible, we will begin this morning by considering who Isaiah was, and when and where he lived.

When I close my eyes and try to picture some of the people from scripture — what I imagine they looked like, where they lived, what they did, etc. — it is pretty easy. For instance, it is the simplest thing for me to imagine Daniel in the lions' den. I have a pretty firm idea what David, vanquisher of Goliath, adulterous lover of Bathsheba, King of Israel, and composer of many Psalms must have been like. My imagination's portrayal of John the Baptist is particularly vivid; he looks exactly like Charlton Heston, for some reason.

Preparing to come before you this morning, I learned that I had no such mental picture of Isaiah. I found it difficult to imagine him or remember much about him. I conducted a quick poll of friends and family to find out whether I was the only one who was so ignorant of this prophet. Sadly, this condition was widespread. Since much of Handel's Messiah is various passages from Isaiah set to music, I have more of Isaiah's words memorized than I have from any other single author or source of scripture.

Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God (Isa.40:1)
 
Behold! A virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel: God with us (Isa.7:14)
 
O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion, get thee up into the high mountain! Arise, shine, for thy light is come (Isa.40:9)
 
For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given…and the government shall be upon his shoulders … (Isa.9:6)
 
I could go on in this vein for about an hour.

It was, frankly, embarrassing that I knew so little about him. Until I really did some work, I did not know Isaiah; I knew a mish-mash of various Hebrew prophets I have started referring to as Jerem-Isaia-Hosea-Malachi. Not only is this unfair to Isaiah, it slights all the other prophets with whom I had him confused. Ignorance is a sorry state to maintain, so I worked to dispel it.

We are now five weeks from the beginning of Advent.

(I will just pause for a moment and let everyone think about how much Christmas shopping is yet to be done … … )

We will hear a lot from Isaiah in the next few months. In the interest of truly hearing and understanding what he has to say to us, not only today, and for the next several weeks, but for the rest of our lives, we are going to make sure this morning we know a lot more about him and his times.

I promise we will not have an exam, but I certainly hope you find this interesting. Here come some dates and some names…

God's Chosen People were led out of Egyptian bondage by Moses a little after 1300 BC and settled in Palestine a little before 1200 BC. Their first king, Saul, was crowned in about 1020 BC, a little after the Trojan War. King David was crowned in about 1000 BC, while the Phoenicians' were developing their alphabet and the Chinese were inventing gunpowder. First, David and then his son, Solomon, ruled over all God's chosen people. In the days of David and Solomon, the Kingdom of Israel was one large, united land. Unfortunately, David's grandson, Rehoboam, was a poor enough leader in a difficult enough set of circumstances that the kingdom split in two. The northern part of the kingdom — all the tribes except David's tribe, Judah, and Benjamin — retained the name Israel for their kingdom, and Israel's capital city was Samaria. Rehoboam, son of Solomon, was left with only the southern part of the kingdom, which came to be known as the kingdom of Judah. The capital city of the southern kingdom, Judah, was Jerusalem. This split occurred in about 922 BC.

Elijah and his successor, Elisha were northern kingdom prophets, mostly, and prophesied for the benefit of and against the actions of Israel's wicked king Ahab. It is handy to think of them as being at their peak at about 850 BC. These prophets loom so large in the Old Testament that it helps us place Isaiah to remember that Elijah and Elisha worked the other kingdom, Israel, and about 80 years before Isaiah.

The name Isaiah¹ means "Yahweh is salvation". Isaiah was born about 765 BC, making him roughly ten years old when the Greeks held their first Olympic games in 776 BC, and a contemporary of Homer, the author of the Illiad and the Odyssey. Isaiah would thus have been born about 250 years after King David. As far as we know, Isaiah spent his entire life in Jerusalem, capital city of the southern kingdom, Judah. We know of two of his children because they are mentioned in the Bible. The first mentioned was named Shear-jashub² (Isa.7:3), which means "a remnant shall return." Another son is mentioned later, Maher-shalal-hash-baz³ (Isa.8:1) which means "the spoil speeds and the prey hastens." Isaiah's wife is not explicitly mentioned by name but is curiously referred to as "the Prophetess" (Isa.8:3) She may have been a prophet, but some theologians and historians believe that when Isaiah calls her "the Prophetess" he basically means "Mrs. Prophet," or "the Missus."

Isaiah's first prophetic vision that has a date attached was the year 740 BC, the year King Uzziah of Judah died. So Isaiah's career as a prophet was underway by his mid-20's in the year 740 BC. Some people think, from analyzing his descriptions of the temple in his visions, that he may have been a temple priest as well as a prophet. Perhaps so. Perhaps he saw the temple in visions, and never actually went in as a priest. We cannot really know.

To a large extent, to understand the history of God's Chosen People it is essential to study the kings and their actions. At the beginning of the kingdom of Israel, this is pretty easy. The first three kings were King Saul, King David, and King Solomon. Solomon's son Rehoboam caused the tragic split of Israel into two kingdoms in 922 BC. After that, we have two kingdoms, Judah and Israel, each with its own king. The difficulty of keeping track of the history of God's Chosen People doubled in 922 BC.

When my daughter, Molly, was in third grade, she did a classroom exercise in which they wrote out the kings of Judah and Israel in order, in blue ink if they were good and faithful kings, and in red ink if they were, on balance, bad and faithless. To do this exercise real justice we would really need a bunch of crayons, ranging from bright red crayon for very bad, unrepentant kings like Manasseh and Ahab, and a deep blue crayon for very faithful kings like Hezekiah, with shades of purple for most of the others. Most kings of Israel and Judah (indeed, most people) would best be represented by some shade of purple.

Doubtless, you will be relieved to hear that I now intend to skip to narrow our focus to the kings in Isaiah's time and place, only. Isaiah lived and prophesied a long time, and was thus prophet to several kings of Judah. Isaiah's first king, Uzziah, also called Azariah, started his reign well. He ruled for 52 years, the longest of any king of Judah. His reign started in 793 BC. Isaiah was born when Uzziah was about twenty-five years into his reign. Isaiah would have been about twenty-five when Uzziah died. Judah prospered under Uzziah, conquering the Philistines and nearby Arab nations. Though Uzziah is noted for having tolerated pagan worship within Judea, Uzziah ruled well and was successful (2 Kings 15:1-7; 2 Chronicles 26:1-21 (particularly vv. 16-21)). His pride got the better of him later in his reign. He attempted to usurp the place of the priests in offering incense to the LORD. God smote him with leprosy, and the priests drove him from the temple. Because of his leprosy, he was no longer able to rule on his own, so his son, Jotham began to reign with him from that time. We should remember Uzziah/Azariah as a mostly blue, mostly good, king of Judah.

Jotham is regarded as a good king, on balance, warring successfully against the Ammonites and taking tribute from them. However, he tolerated pagan worship in the high places, which were pagan groves on hilltops, so this good king's reign cannot be described as completely faithful. Like his father, Uzziah, he was an effective king who tolerated some pagan worship. Like his father, we should consider him a mostly blue (good) king of Judah.

Jotham's son, Ahaz, took the legacy handed him by his grandfather Uzziah and his father Jotham, reasonably good and faithful kings of Judah, and nearly managed to ruin Judah altogether. At the beginning of Ahaz's reign, Assyria's power was rising. Israel and Damascus offered Judah the opportunity to form an alliance against the rising power of Assyria. Isaiah took his son "A remnant shall return" and told Ahaz not to worry and that Damascus would be destroyed within 65 years. The alliance was not necessary and faith in God alone was needed. God, through Isaiah, invited Ahaz to ask of the LORD a sign. Ahaz refused to ask anything of the LORD. Isaiah then delivered a prophecy of Messianic deliverance, "Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel." Ahaz did not listen. He ignored the prophecy, spurned God's offer to ask of Him a sign, and also refused to make alliance with Israel and Damascus. Then Israel and Damascus decided to take over Judah and put a king they liked better on the throne of Judah. Ahaz responded to this threat by turning to Assyria for protection against Israel and Damascus, spurning both prophecy and alliance. In a nutshell, Ahaz chose to make Judah a vassal state to Assyria instead of trusting in God or working with his ancestral cousins in the northern kingdom, Israel, and their allies. Over the next few years, Assyria destroyed the northern kingdom, Israel, and took over Damascus, as well. Judah was now Assyria's plaything. Ahaz responded to this by sacrificing to the gods of Damascus, cutting in pieces the vessels of the house of God, and shutting the doors of the house of the LORD. Where Uzziah and Jotham merely failed to eradicate pagan Canaanite worship, Ahaz made new altars and high places to pagan Canaanite gods. In short, Ahaz was one of the most ruinous, spiritually bankrupt kings in the history of Judah. His faithless political maneuvering made Judah a vassal state of Assyria and contributed to the destruction of Israel and Damascus, to the north. Ahaz sacrificed one or more of his sons to pagan Canaanite gods. There is no crayon in the box red enough for king Ahaz of Judah. When Ahaz finally died, his son Hezekiah ascended to the throne of Judah.

Hezekiah, presumably Ahaz's eldest , unsacrificed son, tried to be a faithful and worthy king of Judah. He took down altars to pagan gods, and struck down their idols. Surrounded by Assyria and her allies, Hezekiah rebuilt the temple at Jerusalem, refortified the city, and built a tunnel to connect the city to a water supply so she could resist a siege. Assyria responded by conquering all of Judah but Jerusalem, and besieging Jerusalem with 200,000 soldiers. Where his father, Ahaz spurned the unsolicited prophecy of Isaiah in a crisis, Hezekiah actually sent for Isaiah for a consultation. Isaiah prophesied, "Behold, I will send a blast upon him (Sennacherib, King of Assyria), and he shall hear a rumor, and return to his own land; and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land" (Isa.37:7). The next morning, 185,000 of Sennacherib's Assyrian troops besieging Jerusalem were dead (Isa.37:36). Sennacherib abandoned the siege, returning home, and was murdered by two of his sons while worshipping his pagan god very soon thereafter. (Isa.37:38) Some years later, Hezekiah received ambassadors from Babylon, rather stupidly taking them on a tour of the palace treasury, revealing to them his riches and power. Isaiah prophesied that this would result in Babylon coming to carry off Judah's riches and Hezekiah's sons. Hezekiah took this news rather glibly, since it would not occur until after his own reign was complete. Hezekiah was so much an improvement over his father Ahaz that he seems faithful and wise in the extreme. Some of his blunders loom rather large. He was by no means the sharpest crayon in the box, but we can assign him a rating of royal blue.

Hezekiah's son, Manasseh, took over as king of Judah at age 12, and was more like his grandfather, Ahaz, than his father, Hezekiah. He practiced witchcraft and erected altars to false gods in the temple. He sacrificed his sons to false gods (2 Chr.33:2-7). His behavior angered God, and God allowed the king of Assyria to capture Manasseh and drag him off to Babylon with a hook in his nose and shackled feet. In Babylonian bondage, Manasseh prayed and repented, and was returned to Jerusalem as king of Judah, the Assyrian vassal state, by the Assyrian king's prudence and God's merciful forgiveness. Manasseh then turned back from his pagan ways and became something of a religious reformer like his father, Hezekiah. Unsurprisingly, Manasseh and Isaiah were very much at odds. Hebrew tradition (rabbinical writings, not the Bible) holds that Manasseh chased Isaiah to kill him. Isaiah took refuge in a hollow tree. Manasseh ordered the tree cut in half, knowing or hoping this would also cut Isaiah in half. On balance, Manasseh rates a red crayon. Cutting one of our most faithful and enduring prophets in half is very bad. Sacrificing one's sons to pagan gods is very red, indeed.

To sum up Isaiah's relationship with the kings of his day, we need to remember that Isaiah began prophesying as Uzziah lay dying, prophesied to Uzziah's son Jotham, Jotham's horrid and faithless son, Ahaz, the faithful, well-intentioned bungler Hezekiah, and then was cut in half by Hezekiah's son, Manasseh.

Isaiah was the main prophet of God as the northern kingdom, Israel, ceased to exist, destroyed by Assyria, and Judah became a vassal state of Assyria, then was carried off into Babylonian bondage. He lived about seventy-five years, actively prophesying for about fifty years, and in the darkest, most turbulent days of his place and time. In our consideration of Isaiah's interaction with the kings of Judah, I have not even mentioned one astounding part of Isaiah's witness. In the year 711 BC, during Hezekiah's reign, the coastal city-state Ashdod revolted against Assyrian rule, trying to get together an anti-Assyrian alliance. God warned Judah against joining this alliance by commanding Isaiah to preach naked and barefoot for three years to witness that those who aided Ashdod against Assyria, primarily Egypt and Ethiopia, would have their people dragged off naked and barefoot as Assyrian slaves (Isa.20:1-4). Indeed, Isaiah prophesied about most of his neighbor nations. Many chapters of Isaiah are prophecies concerning other nations and cities. Some of Isaiah's prophecies are delivered to specific kings of Judah. Many of the prophecies of Isaiah do not include information about exactly when, where, or to whom the prophecies were originally delivered.

Now we know what can be known of Isaiah — a little personal information available, how he fit into the history of Judah and the world at large, his interaction with the kings of Judah, etc. — we are ready to hear again the portion of Isaiah before us this morning. This bit of Isaiah is one of those we cannot assign strictly to a setting:

Yea, truth faileth; and he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey: and the LORD saw it, and it displeased him that there was no judgment. And he saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor: therefore his arm brought salvation unto him; and his righteousness, it sustained him. For he put on righteousness as a breastplate, and an helmet of salvation upon his head; and he put on the garments of vengeance for clothing, and was clad with zeal as a cloak. According to their deeds, accordingly he will repay, fury to his adversaries, recompence to his enemies; to the islands,⁴ he will repay recompence. So shall they fear the name of the LORD from the west, and his glory from the rising of the sun. When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the LORD shall lift up a standard against him. And the Redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob, saith the LORD. As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the LORD; My spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed's seed, saith the LORD, from henceforth and for ever.(Isa.59:15-21)

Isaiah's times were quite difficult. By the end of his life, the northern kingdom, Israel was completely destroyed by Assyria, and Judah had been conquered by Babylon. King Manasseh had been dragged off into captivity, then sent back to rule over Judah as a vassal state. In the midst of this strife, we hear in this prophecy that God is frustrated with His people's poor, faithless leadership, and the evil that results when government is absent or does not serve God. God will tire of the situation and act to destroy the enemies of God's Chosen People. All the world will know and fear the Lord's name, and God will shield His people from any flood of enemies. Finally, God will send a Redeemer to those who turn back from their evil ways and serve the LORD. The scripture passage ends with a promise that Isaiah's prophecies will never be forgotten.

This prophecy is fulfilled. We know that our Redeemer has come in the person of Jesus Christ. We know Jesus actively laid claim to being the fulfillment of the Messianic prophecies in Isaiah, because we remember the passage in Luke, which we will hear again in a few months, in which Jesus read yet another passage from Isaiah before a hometown crowd at Nazareth's synagogue, unabashedly and irrefutably proclaiming that the prophecy of Isaiah was fulfilled in himself..(Luke 4:13-21; Isa.61:1-3)

To quote our Redeemer, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears. (Luke 4:21)

The very act of studying and remembering Isaiah and what God said through him fulfills prophecy. Thus saith the LORD through Isaiah in our scripture passage this morning.

My spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed's seed, saith the LORD, from henceforth and for ever.

Footnotes

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4	Islands under the king of Babylon, who imagined themselves remote enough to be secure from his judgment.