“The Cruel Day of the Lord”
[Isaiah 13:1-22]
September 16, 2018, Second Reformed
Church
As we turn to chapter 13 of Isaiah,
we begin a collection of oracles against the nations. This is a collection of oracles – or prophecies
– whose fulfillment span hundreds of years – this is God’s judgment against the
nations that have fought against Israel and Judah.
In the first twelve chapters, we
primarily saw the Assyrians come against and conquer Israel – the Northern
Kingdom – and – especially during the past two weeks – as we have considered
the coming of the Messiah – the Savior – from the tribe of Judah – we have made
mention of the Babylonian conquest of Judah – the Southern Kingdom – and, also,
the restoration of the Creation when Jesus returns to judge the world.
The Assyrians conquered Israel in
722 BC – early in Isaiah’s ministry.
The Babylonians conquered Judah in
597 BC – about a hundred years after Isaiah’s death.
As we consider these oracles, we
need to remember that we are holding some truths in tension: First, God allowed these nations to
punish/discipline Israel and Judah for Him.
Second, God did not make these nations attack Israel and Judah. Third, these nations wanted to attack Israel
and Judah, so they are responsible for their sin.
So, God allowed the nations to
discipline/punish Israel and Judah for the good reason of having them repent
and return to God. Whereas, the nations
sought to do evil to Israel and Judah, because they wanted to kill and take
other people’s land and wealth – so they are responsible for their sin. OK?
This is called, “the doctrine of
concurrence,” which says that God and humans can seek to accomplish the same
act at the same time, but for different reasons – even, God for good reasons
and humans for evil and sinful reasons.
At the time that Isaiah wrote, the
big, bad, evil nation on the scene was Assyria.
The Babylonians existed, but they were a minor nation during Isaiah’s
life – nothing to worry about. So, this
oracle against Babylon – even if Isaiah gives it at the end of his life – would
have been surprising to his listeners – Babylon was not a world power at the time
– yet God speaks His rage against them as though they are – because God knows
they will be a world power.
In this oracle, we see, first, God
terrifies the unbeliever.
And some of us might be thinking,
“Oh, no. This isn’t going to be
‘hellfire and brimstone,’ is it? I don’t
like that – and, frankly, I don’t believe in it.”
We tend to be like Edith Bunker who
once said that she was in favor of capital punishment as long as it wasn’t too
severe.
The other side of the coin of the
God Who loves us and chose us and saves us through His Son and makes us His eternally
is that sin must be punished – God’s justice must be satisfied.
“The oracle concerning Babylon which
Isaiah the son of Amoz saw.
“On a bare hill raise a signal; cry
aloud to them; wave the hand for them to enter the gates of the nobles. I
myself have commanded my consecrated ones, and have summoned my mighty men to
execute my anger, my proudly exulting ones.”
God says to raise His standard – to
put the flag up that signals the nation is going to war. Put it up high so it is obvious that the
people should gather together to get ready to fight. And God says that His mighty ones are ready
to execute His anger against the Babylonians.
We discover that the mighty ones that God has prepared to bring judgment
against the Babylonians are the Medo-Persians who conquered the Babylonian
Empire in 539 BC.
God tells the Babylonians to listen:
“The sound of a tumult is on the mountains
as of a great multitude! The sound of an uproar of kingdoms, of nations
gathering together! The LORD of hosts is mustering a host for battle. They come
from a distant land, from the end of the heavens, the LORD and the weapons of
his indignation, to destroy the whole
land.”
“Listen, Babylon! They are coming. Can’t you hear other nations being defeated
in the distance? Can’t you hear the army
of the Persians growing and becoming bigger and more vicious? The Lord is gathering them together to be His
weapon to crush you and kill you and destroy the whole land. Do you hear them?”
This doesn’t sound right, does it? Why is God doing this? Who does He think He is to whisper death and
destruction in the ears of a people?
Isn’t this unfair? Isn’t this
sadistic? Who gave God the right to do
this?
God created everything that is, so God has
a right to do whatever He wants with His creation. God says that the wages of sin is death –
receiving justice from God in the form of His Wrath for each sin that a person
commits is just.
We remember that Jesus lived and died and
received upon His person the full weight of God’s Wrath – Hell – for every sin
of every person who will ever believe.
What about those who never believe?
Their debt must be paid too.
Isn’t it right to tell people that their debt will have to be paid?
We like to tell people that Jesus died for
the sins of everyone who will ever believe.
We like to tell them that God so loved the world that He gave His Only
Begotten Son. But if they never hear
that the horses and soldiers are coming to slaughter with justice, why should
they respond with anything but saying, “Oh, that’s nice”?
If unbelievers don’t know the “bad
news,” they won’t care about the good news.
If your house is not on fire and
your neighbor rushes over to tell you that the fire trucks were coming, you
would probably be confused, you would probably say they are unneeded – there’s
no fire here.
But what if your neighbor had seen a
fire starting that you didn’t see – what if your neighbor calls the fire trucks
and then runs over to tell you that your house is on fire? You would be afraid and welcome the good news
of the fire trucks.
God reveals the judgment that has
been passed against them:
“Wail, for the day of the LORD is near; as
destruction from the Almighty it will come! Therefore all hands will be feeble, and every
human heart will melt. They will be dismayed: pangs and agony will seize them; they
will be in anguish like a woman in labor. They will look aghast at one another;
their faces will be aflame.”
But the Babylonians will not repent – they
will not be thankful to hear the bad news – and we know that some people – no
matter how much we pray and tell them the Gospel – some people will never
believe – but when they are confronted with the truth of what justice means for
them, they will writhe in distress.
John gives us a similar vision:
“When he opened the sixth seal, I looked,
and behold, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as
sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to
the earth as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale. The sky
vanished like a scroll that is being rolled up, and every mountain and island
was removed from its place. Then the kings of the earth and the great ones and
the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid
themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the
mountains and rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated
on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath
has come, and who can stand?’” (John 6:12-17, ESV).
Those who never believe – they don’t
repent – they ask the Creation to kill them and hide them and keep them from
suffering justice.
And we need to ask, “Is it right for
believers to rejoice at the death of a wicked person?”
The answer is “no.” We should rejoice that a person’s wickedness
has been stopped, but we should never rejoice that any given person is
dead. From our perspective and from our call
– we are to bring the Gospel and call people to repentance until they breathe
their last breath. We don’t know who
will believe in that last breath – only God does. We ought to be in prayer for every person’s
salvation until he or she dies – at which point, there is no other chance.
Second, God will receive payment for every
sin that is committed.
“Behold, the day of the LORD comes, cruel,
with wrath and fierce anger, to make the land a desolation and to destroy its
sinners from it.”
We need to understand two things about the
expression “the day of the Lord”: First,
there are many days of the Lord – the day of the Lord does not always mean that
day the Jesus returns. As we see in this
text, the day of the Lord – at least – means the day that God allows the
Medo-Persians to conquer the Babylonians.
Second, there are two sides to the final day of the Lord: for believers, the day of the Lord is a time
of immense rejoicing! But for
unbelievers, when Jesus comes with the clouds with all His holy angels, it will
be the worst disaster they have ever experienced up to that point, because the
fear they had will come true – Jesus is come to receive payment from all those
who never believed in Him.
And so we have the imagery of the Creation
in upheaval as God brings His Wrath against the Babylonians and slaughters them
down to minor numbers.
“For the stars of the heavens and their
constellations will not give their light; the sun will be dark at its rising, and
the moon will not shed its light. I will punish the world for its evil, and the
wicked for their iniquity; I will put an end to the pomp of the arrogant, and
lay low the pompous pride of the ruthless. I will make people more rare than
fine gold, and mankind than the gold of Ophir. Therefore I will make the
heavens tremble, and the earth will be shaken out of its place, at the wrath of
the LORD of hosts in the day of his fierce anger.
“And like a hunted gazelle, or like sheep
with none to gather them, each will turn to his own people, and each will flee
to his own land. Whoever is found will be thrust through, and whoever is caught
will fall by the sword. Their infants will be dashed in pieces before their
eyes; their houses will be plundered and their wives ravished.”
The Psalmist wrote a song about the
Babylonian exile:
“By the waters of Babylon, there we sat
down and wept, when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our
lyres. For there our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors, mirth,
saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’
“How shall we sing the LORD's song in
a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its
skill! Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if
I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy!
“Remember, O LORD, against the
Edomites the day of Jerusalem, how they said, ‘Lay it bare, lay it bare, down
to its foundations!’ O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed, blessed
shall he be who repays you with what you have done to us! Blessed shall he be
who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!” (Psalm 137:1-9, ESV).
As we hear God speaking through
Isaiah and through the Psalmist, I would guess that none of us would like to
see infants have their heads bashed in or women abused. We certainly should not pray for such
things. But we need to understand that the
Babylonians deserved Hell for their sin, and God delivered this lesser punishment
– in time – so that any who would believe would do so.
Remember, we recently said that the reason
that Jesus comes twice is to allow time for all the people that God has chosen
to be His – the remnant – to believe and repent of their sins.
No one ever receives what he deserves for
the sin he has committed in this life – the fullness of God’s justice only
comes in the carrying out of the judgment on the last day.
And there we find the good news – justice
will be served on the last day. All
those who never believe will eternally receive the fullness of God’s Wrath, but
those of us who have believed – those of us for whom Jesus has already paid the
debt and been served justice on our behalf – reconciling us to God – we will be
welcomed into the Kingdom.
But, for the Babylonians – as for
any who do not believe in the Savior – there is no mercy – just a strict
accounting against them – and those who brought God’s Wrath against Babylon
could not be bought, and they would not be slowed, because they enjoyed the
slaughter – for them, it was about the joy of killing people:
“Behold, I am stirring up the Medes against
them, who have no regard for silver and do not delight in gold. Their bows will
slaughter the young men; they will have no mercy on the fruit of the womb; their
eyes will not pity children. And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the splendor
and pomp of the Chaldeans, will be like Sodom and Gomorrah when God overthrew
them. It will never be inhabited or lived in for all generations; no Arab will
pitch his tent there; no shepherds will make their flocks lie down there. But
wild animals will lie down there, and their houses will be full of howling
creatures; there ostriches will dwell, and there wild goats will dance. Hyenas
will cry in its towers, and jackals in the pleasant palaces; its time is close
at hand and its days will not be prolonged.”
Babylon – the great empire – would be
destroyed – most of the people would be killed, and no one would ever live
there again, except for the animals of the land [by 25 BC https://www.ucg.org/beyond-today/a-prophecy-about-babylon-confirms-the-accuracy-of-the-bible].
We read about the beginning of this
conquest in Daniel chapter 5:
King Belshazzar, the son of King
Nebuchadnezzar, is having a feast with his friends, and they were using the
holy silver and gold from the Temple in Jerusalem to eat and drink from. Suddenly, a hand appears and writes, “Mene,
Mene, Tekel, Parsin” on the wall.
Daniel is called for and says, “And you
his son, Belshazzar, have not humbled your heart, though you knew all this, but
you have lifted up yourself against the Lord of heaven. And the vessels of his
house have been brought in before you, and you and your lords, your wives, and
your concubines have drunk wine from them. And you have praised the gods of
silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood, and stone, which do not see or hear or
know, but the God in whose hand is your breath, and whose are all your ways,
you have not honored.
“Then from his presence the hand was sent,
and this writing was inscribed. And this is the writing that was inscribed:
MENE, MENE, TEKEL, and PARSIN. This is the interpretation of the matter: MENE,
God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; TEKEL, you
have been weighed in the balances and found wanting; PERES, your kingdom is
divided and given to the Medes and Persians.”
“Then Belshazzar gave the command, and
Daniel was clothed with purple, a chain of gold was put around his neck, and a
proclamation was made about him, that he should be the third ruler in the
kingdom.
“That very night Belshazzar the Chaldean
king was killed. And Darius the Mede received the kingdom, being about
sixty-two years old” (Daniel 5:22-31, ESV).
God terrifies unbelievers because they
know they are in rebellion against Him.
God does not wink at sin – He will receive
payment in full for every sin committed, because He is the just and holy God.
So, if we love our neighbor, we must tell
them the “bad news” as well as the good news and pray that God will cause them
to believe.
And we ought to rejoice that we have been
reconciled to God through Jesus, so, when the final day of the Lord comes, it
will not be a cruel day – for us, but the most glorious of all days.
Let us pray:
Almighty God, it is hard for us to talk
about Your Wrath. Help us to understand
how horrible sin is and why it enrages You.
Help us to tell others that the debt for their sin must be paid one way
or another. Draw people to You and
salvation through Your Son. And increase
our joy in what You have done that we will have joy when the clouds break and
Your Son returns. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
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