Isaiah 27

God will change the world. Not you or me. That is the hope that believers have to hold onto. 

In Chapter 27, the final section of the “Isaiah Apocalypse”, where the prophet outlines his vision of the end times, we see what the world looks like after the judgment of God. 

Isaiah returns to the analogy of the vineyard. In Chapter 5, God creates a vineyard (Israel in the Old Testament) that is corrupted by the world around it so he decides to tear it down and start over. His new vineyard (the Christian church in the New Testament) will be different. It will change the world instead to the world changing it: 

“I, the Lord, watch over the vineyard; I water it continually. I guard it day and night so that no one may harm it. I am not angry. If only there were briers and thorns confronting me! 

I would march agains them in battle; I would set them all on fire. Or else let them come to me for refuge; let them make peace with me, yes, let them make peace with me."

In days to come Jacob will take root, Israel will bud and blossom and fill all the world with fruit. 

— Isaiah 27:2-6 

The new vineyard will fill the world with fruit. Not because of anything that it will do. But because of what God will do for it. 

That is where Isaiah's confidence in the future comes from. There was no reason for him to have any. His people and his religion seemed doomed. 

Jesus had the same confidence. He was a no-account peasant from the middle of nowhere who was abandoned by even his closest friends at his death. The Roman Empire should have lasted a lot longer than the religion he founded. But Jesus knew something they didn’t: 

“Heaven and earth will pass away; but my words will never pass away.”  

— Matthew 24:25 

The Romans did everything they could to stamp out Christianity. They made it illegal and killed anyone they found practicing it. They murdered Jesus and they murdered Peter and Paul, too. 

Killing Jesus should have been enough. There was no one who could fill his shoes. His inner circle wasn't made up of wealthy and important people. The 12 disciples were mostly fishermen without any formal education. They were essentially guys with associates degrees who worked blue-collar jobs. It was the first thing the Jewish religious leaders picked up on. They couldn't believe people like that could speak so well:

When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus. 

— Acts 4:13  

That’s the difference between Man and God. Man changes the world from the top-down. God does it from the bottom-up. He doesn’t need people from Harvard and Yale. God can empower a community college graduate just as easily.

Peter was the first leader of the Christian church after Jesus. There was nothing particularly impressive about him. He’s a rash and impulsive character throughout the Gospels, constantly second-guessing Jesus and rarely grasping the meaning of his lessons. 

After spending three years together, Jesus gives Peter a series of tests on the eve of the crucifixion. He asks Peter to pray for him, and Peter falls asleep instead. When the Roman soldiers arrest Jesus, Peter chops off one of their ears, going against every single thing that Jesus had taught him about non-violence. He even tells Peter beforehand that he will deny him three times. Peter scoffs at the warning and then does it anyway.

He's not someone who should have been able to lead and grow a religion. Yet Jesus still trusted him with that authority. 

The whole point of being a Christian is that it doesn’t matter who you are or what you have done or even what kind of abilities that you have. God can still use you in miraculous ways beyond what you could do on your own. He actually enjoys doing it that way. 

God doesn’t want people who don't need Him to succeed because then He wouldn't get the credit for their accomplishments. No Christian does anything without God. That is the first lesson you learn when you start walking with Him. That's what this classic hymn is getting at:

I will not boast in anything; no gifts, no power, no wisdom /

But I will boast in Jesus Christ, His death and resurrection.

-- How Deep The Father's Love

No early Christian leader understood this more than Paul. He was the opposite of Peter and the disciples in every way. Paul wasn't a nobody in Jewish society. He was born into the 1% and advanced even further up the ranks on the strength of his intellectual brilliance and religious zealousness, the two things their culture valued the most:

If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless. But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.

-- Philippians 3:4-7

Paul turned his back on everything his society said was important to follow God. He was in line to become the ancient Jewish version of a Supreme Court justice. That's what he's getting at when he talks about all the reasons that he has for "confidence in the flesh" [i.e himself]. He had checked every box and was climbing all the most important ladders. Think of him like a graduate of Harvard and Harvard Law who had clerked in the Supreme Court and was now a federal judge. Then he threw it all away to become a Christian. 

He went from persecuting the early Christians to being persecuted. He went from a religious scholar to a tentmaker, traveling from town to town and selling his goods in the market like his fellow believers, none of whom had his education.

History proved him right. Paul became one of the most influential thinkers in human history. His words have lived forever. But here's the important part. Peter is one of the most influential thinkers, too. He has his own letters in the Bible that people still pour over thousands of years later. And he didn't have 1% of Paul's natural ability or education. 

The world tells you need to check all these boxes to accomplish anything in your life. You need to go to this college. You need to know these people. You need to have this kind of career. God says you don’t need to do anything other than love Him. You don't have to be "special" in any way. He will do all the work. The pressure isn't on any Christian to do anything. Ask for help and help will be given. 

That certainly applies in my life. I had nothing going on before I was a Christian. I was broke, alone, and marginally employed. The only thing that separates me from a lot of folks on Basketball Twitter is that I asked God for help in my career. It really is that simple.

That's why the best thing that can happen to you in your life is to bottom out. Because that's when you realize that you can't get out of that hole without help from God. There are a lot of people in this world who don't ever need God. They were born on third base. They have everything figured out. That's what Jesus means when he says it's hard for a rich man to make it to heaven. They are doing just fine on their own. 

But that wasn't my story. It's probably not yours, either. The world wrote me off. I am where I am today because I wrote the world off and turned to God. It's the best decision you can make with your life. The only thing that it will cost you is your pride. 

Becoming a Christian is the opposite of selling your soul to the devil. You don't get to name your price. God isn't a genie. But He can do things for you far beyond your wildest dreams. You never know what will happen when you ask.

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!"

-- Matthew 7:7-11

Here are two facts that even non-believers can agree. Christianity changed the world even though Christians aren't the most impressive people in the world. It's what Isaiah promised all those years ago. And there are even more promises still ahead of us.

Isaiah 26

God will save us. That is the message that Isaiah returns to over and over again. It could not have been easy to believe.

Even though the Book of Isaiah is one of the longest (66 chapters) in the Bible, we don’t know that much about his life. It doesn’t say what he was doing before he became a prophet, or what he wanted to be. He mentions that he has a wife and two kids, but doesn’t talk about them much.

Here’s what we can assume. Isaiah probably didn’t want to spend almost 60 years telling people things they didn’t want to hear, and publicly humiliating himself to get his message across only to be ignored.

With me, it’s not just bars and music /
I walk with God. I got the scars to prove it.  

-- Mase 

But Isaiah never lost his faith, no matter how bad things got. He waited for God to move and trusted Him with the outcome:

You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you. Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord himself, is the Rock eternal.  

— Isaiah 26:3-4 

Isaiah wasn’t speaking from a place of privilege. Things never really got better for him. He didn’t retire in comfort. He was executed at the very end of his life by a new king (Manasseh) who feared what he would say.

So how could he remain peaceful in spite of all his pain and suffering? How could he still trust in God when his faith was not rewarded?

The key was that he kept his focus on the big picture. He knew what was happening in the world was bigger than him. And that it was not the whole story:

But your dead will live, Lord; their bodies will rise — let those who dwell in the dust wake up and shout for joy — your dew is like the dew of the morning; the earth will give birth to her dead. 

— Isaiah 26:19 

You don’t have to be religious to see that nothing we do on this world will last. The sun will go supernova one day and wipe away any trace of the Earth. And we will all be forgotten long before that happens.

The question is what you will do with that knowledge. In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the animals are sentient beings who are ruled unjustly by human farmers and begin to conspire to overthrow their masters. One key step for the conspirators is getting rid of Moses, a raven who works for the humans to keep the animals in chains:

“He claimed to know of the existence of a mysterious country called Sugarcandy Mountain, to which all animals went when they died. It was situated somewhere up in the sky, a little distance beyond the clouds, Moses said. In Sugarcandy Mountain it was Sunday seven days a week, clover was in season all the year round, and lump sugar and linseed cake grew on the hedges.  

The animals hated Moses because he told tales and did no work, but some of them believed in Sugarcandy Mountain, and the pigs had to argue very hard to persuade them that there was no such place.” 

This is a fairly obvious reference to the role of religion in society, which Karl Marx called “the opiate of the masses”. The idea being that it's only when people are freed from the comforting lies of what happens to them after death that they fight to improve their lives on Earth.

But the point of the book is that the conspirators, a group of pigs who represent the Communists in Soviet Russia, are pushing their own set of lies. There will be no freedom or equality after the revolution. The animals would just be exchanging one set of masters for another.

At the end of The Communist Manifesto, Marx promises that a class-less society where the state withers away will spontaneously emerge after the worldwide communist revolution. Does that seem any less plausible than Sugarcandy Mountain?

Maybe the causality is reversed. Maybe all the pain and suffering in this world is only a brief interval before before our glorious future where we are restored to a relationship with God. Maybe weeping stays for the night but joy comes in the morning. Maybe the people who are trying to sell the idea of heaven on earth are the ones pushing the lie, distracting you from your real purpose in this world and raising your hopes on a dream that will never come.

Or maybe not. Maybe this is all there is. Maybe the only hope we have is that man can be perfected and that we can all do our small part to create a more perfect society on Earth. What do you think becomes of a person who believes that, and puts their hope in other people? Is that faith ever rewarded?

In The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus, an existential philosopher, tried to make sense of a world without God or any hope in the afterlife. He saw man as Sisyphus, a figure from Greek mythology who was doomed to push a boulder all they way to the top of the mountain, only to see it roll back down. And this same process happens over and over again for all of time.

This is what he concludes:

All Sisyphus' silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock is a thing. Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols. In the universe suddenly restored to its silence, the myriad wondering little voices of the earth rise up.  

The absurd man says yes and his efforts will henceforth be unceasing. If there is a personal fate, there is no higher destiny, or at least there is, but one which he concludes is inevitable and despicable. For the rest, he knows himself to be the master of his days.  

At that subtle moment when man glances backward over his life, Sisyphus returning toward his rock, in that slight pivoting he contemplates that series of unrelated actions which become his fate, created by him, combined under his memory's eye and soon sealed by his death. Thus, convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human, a blind man eager to see who knows that the night has no end, he is still on the go. The rock is still rolling.  

I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

For Camus, life is an absurd struggle with no happy ending. But one must find joy and hope in the struggle, in working to make the world a better place, even if it's for nothing. Essentially, happiness is found in the journey, not the destination.

I thought this was pretty dope when I was in college. But I can see how insane it is now. This is the best the world has to offer you. You are going to be a miserable wretch toiling for no reason with no chance to meaningfully change your fate ... and they expect you to be happy about it! 

Has that line of thought worked for anyone? Has walking away from God and embracing that philosophy made people happy and content? 

Isaiah knew where his hope came from. That’s why he never let the political turmoil in his lifetime bring him down. That’s why he was able to maintain perfect peace inspire of persecution. The world couldn’t touch him because he didn’t belong to it. He knew where he was going and that this was all going away one day.

Go, my people, enter your rooms and shut the doors behind you; hide yourselves for a little while until his wrath has passed by. 

-- Isaiah 26:20

Isaiah 25

The day of the Lord isn’t all bad news. God will judge the world. But He will also redeem it.

Isaiah describes the great banquet that will come after Judgment Day, a scene repeated at the end of the Book of Revelations (19:7-10):

On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine — the best of meats and the finest of wines.  

On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; He will swallow up death forever.  

The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will removes his people’s disgrace from all the earth.  

— Isaiah 25:6-8 

An important distinction has been removed. The banquet is not just for “his people”. It is for “all people”.

All of mankind would one day worship the God of the Jews. It would have seemed like an outrageous claim at the time. Isaiah’s ministry occurred during one of the darkest times in Jewish history. There was one point when all that was left was a small remnant trapped in Jerusalem by one of the most powerful militaries in human history. It was over. The Assyrians would wipe them from the face of the Earth as if they had never existed, like they did too so many of their neighbors. How would their God be worshipped by everyone on Earth when there would soon be no one left who had even heard of Him?

Then a miracle happened. God saved His people and religion by destroying the Assyrian army in one night. Isaiah claims it was an “angel of the Lord” while historians say it must have been a plague. Either way, the result was the same.

But the people of Jerusalem didn't do anything to make that happen. God did. It would be the same on Judgment Day:

In that day they will say, “Surely this is our God; we trusted in him, and he saved us. This is the Lord, we trusted in him; let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation.”  

— Isaiah 25:9 

It makes more sense in hindsight. Isaiah anticipated Christian theology in ways no one in his time saw. Just as God saved His people outside the walls of Jerusalem in 701 BC, Jesus would save all of mankind on the cross.

None of us did anything to deserve his mercy. It was the opposite. We deserved the punishment that he received:

He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.  

Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.  

But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed by our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. [emphasis added]  

We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us had turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.  

— Isaiah 53:3-6 

This passage (which describes someone called the “Suffering Servant”) was written 700 years before Jesus. And yet it reads like it could have been written 700 years after. The way that so many of his actions were predicted ahead of time is one of the most powerful arguments for why he is who he says he was.

Christianity starts with the sacrifice that he made. That is the foundation of our identity. We remember that we were saved by Jesus not because of what we did but because of who he is. Our value as human beings comes from the price that he paid for us. And we know where we are going after we die because of it.

The goal of Christian practice is to fully internalize this idea and live by its implications. Here are 7 principles of Christian life that we can take from our knowledge about the banquet in heaven:

1. Our distinctions in this world do not matter. It doesn’t matter how much (or how little) money you have made. It doesn’t matter what you do for a living. It doesn’t matter who your people are: "There is neither new Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is their male and female, for you all are one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28-29) The only distinction that matters is whether or not you will be at this banquet. 

2. Our actions do not get us there. No one gets there because they are a good person. The only way to get there is if Jesus pays for you to be there. It’s his party. We are just guests. 

3. We have to be thankful for getting in. Jesus paid the ultimate price to get us a spot at the table. So no matter what happens to you in this world, there is still plenty to be thankful for. What happens in this world ultimately does not matter: "For everything in this world — the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life — comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever." (1 John 2:17-18)  

4. We do not need to serve ourselves in our time on Earth. There is no need to strive after personal goals. We have already been given the ultimate prize. So we can turn our focus to other people. We can help them and bless them. And that has more value than trying to bless ourselves. 

5. The most important thing we can do other people is to help them get in. What good is it to gain the world but lose your soul? (Mark 8:36) If you are helping someone without telling them about the banquet, then you aren’t really helping them.

6. The people who aren’t invited will be mad. No one likes not being on the VIP list. Even if it’s their own fault for not being on it. Jesus warned his disciples about that: “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember what I told: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also.’” (John 15:18-20) 

7. The way you live your life will attract people. If your identity is built on a rock, then nothing the world can do will chip it away. The world is a dark place. Life is hard. We all need hope. We all need faith. Most people don't have either. They know everything they are doing is for nothing. Their best case scenario is that life is meaningless and that they won't exist after they die. We can offer them something better. We can live our lives secure in the knowledge of where we are going. They might test us to see if we really believe it. But eventually they will want that hope for themselves.  

Christians are like people making a long drive to a five-star banquet. The snacks we get along the way do not matter. Nor does it matter if someone else is eating better ones. There is a whole different level of food where we are going. We just have to tell people that they are invited, too. What they do with that information is up to them.