My name is Dana Condon, and I come from New York City.
Well, there is a long story involved, but the last time I was here, I still lived on Long Island in a wonderful suburb. Then, between the time I was here last and now, 9/11 took place. Something happened in my heart as I saw the yellow death cloud come over our suburb, thirty-five miles away from New York City. It made me realize that there is damage done.
So, long story short, after about a year, I felt the Lord say, “Take your wife and move to the city.” We had a beautiful home, and we sold it and moved into this cramped little apartment. That was six years ago, and we are still hanging around in there.
During that time, the Lord has begun to raise up some people and gather them together according to His will. You met three of them who came here in January, if you had the chance to meet Ming, Ray, and Eunice. They are three dear saints from our crazy place in New York.
It was three Saturdays ago, I believe, that the blogosphere had an earthquake. David Wilkerson prophesied about an imminent destruction of inner cities—fires, looting, and all kinds of things in the urban area of New York City and the whole megalopolis up there. He pronounced this out of the burden of his heart.
Within hours, the blogosphere was full of criticisms, exegetical analysis of his prophecy, and all kinds of things. But for us who live in the city, we had to fall on our knees, because it is just that close.
I do not know about the prophecy of my brother David Wilkerson, but I do vouch for the man. He is a man of integrity and honor. He does that not for worldly gain, but because he believes the Lord told him to say it.
I believe in letting the prophecy run its course. Sometimes prophecy comes to pass, and sometimes prophecy causes people to repent, and it does not come to pass. But the whole deal is that you are supposed to say what God tells you, and he did. I am thankful for that.
So we gathered for prayer among our little group there in Manhattan. We began to pray. It is interesting: one of the prayers suddenly gave us a picture of the possibility of this crazy prophecy about imminent disaster in the cities, riots, and burnings.
One of the folks prayed, “Lord, we pray that You would preserve the life of President Obama from assassination.”
That was all he had to say for us to realize what would happen in New York City right now if Obama were assassinated. There would be rioting in the streets, destruction, and mayhem by a people who have found a messiah. It gave us a flash of the real danger we live in these days.
Now, I say all of that because I am not going to speak on David Wilkerson’s prophecy. I want to share on Isaiah.
For over two years, we studied the book of Isaiah. We went precept upon precept and line upon line through those old sixty-six chapters. Half the saints died and are no more, but those who remain received much out of it.
I cannot speak for them, but I will say for myself that it meant so much to see this man who is called the fourth evangelist, Isaiah. To go through his prophecies step by step gave me a closer view than I had ever had in my life.
I want to spend four sessions talking about the life of Isaiah himself—actually more than the prophecies he spoke, though you will see that I put it all together.
My first warning is this: folks over here, if I am blocking the screen, you should move. The whole thing is going to be up here on the screen, and if you cannot see it, you are not going to understand what is going on. You will not catch the jokes, and you will not see the pictures.
I started using overhead presentations because I saw that young people listened and grabbed onto things. Sometimes, in a picture, they saw something that remained. I have been using that method, and as I have thought about the year since I did that study, some things have settled in my heart. Those are the things I want to share with you: the life of Isaiah in four parts.
Let us have a prayer, and then we will get right to it. I hope you can keep up with me. I speak New Yorkese. If you need a translator, I can bring my wife up. She comes to North Carolina and can slow it down to where you can understand most of it.
Our Father, we come to You in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are so thankful that in this day You are raising up a generation and a corporate assembly with prophetic burden.
We pray, Lord, that in these days You will continue to confirm in our hearts Your desire that we be those who understand the times in which we live and apply our hearts unto wisdom. But, Lord, we come to You knowing that without the help of Your Holy Spirit, we cannot get to first base.
Lord, do help us. We pray that through the pictures and the words there could be a resonance in our spirit as Your Spirit speaks, and there could be a response, a commitment, a new consecration to be all that You want us to be.
Lord, You tell us not to despise prophesying, and yet so much of that which is phony around us today would cause us to throw out the baby with the bathwater. But we pray that You would raise up true prophets in this generation—those who understand and can speak a word.
Even as our brother Dave spoke a few weeks ago, let it be through all the criticisms and all the persecutions. Help us to stand for the truth in these last days. Lord, unto this end, we commit ourselves to You, thanking You for this precious time together as brothers and sisters. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.
Of course, you know Isaiah. Just to give you a little background, I know that most of you have studied the book and memorized half of it, but it is a long book, so I am going to give a little overview at the beginning.
As we see this wonderful man, Isaiah, whose actual name is Yeshayahu, meaning “the Lord saves,” we see a wonderful gospel through his multiple visions. A prophet sees things on various levels.
At the first level, because he knows the Word of God and knows the proper way, he sees in the present situation the need for repentance. But as he began to prophesy, because he saw the Lord high and lifted up upon the throne, he began to see more.
He came to see in the near future of tribulation and discipline that it was the Lord on the throne who was bringing these tribulations and disciplines. Then, as his prophecy became clearer before the Lord, he began to see things of the final days and judgment.
Most of the end of the book of Revelation consists of vignettes taken from Isaiah—all that material about the end of time, the new heavens, the new earth, and such things. They all have their background in Isaiah.
It is wonderful to see the eternal purpose of God as a prophet looks across mountain peaks and sees sometimes the present, sometimes the near future, and sometimes the distant future. That is the nature of prophecy itself.
There are scores of verses in Isaiah that we know:
Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone.
He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities.
All we like sheep have gone astray.
The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord.
Behold, a virgin shall conceive.
There shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse.
When you look in the New Testament, Isaiah has over fifty direct quotations, and the allusions are double that number. The only book that has more quotations is the Psalms.
There are four major recurring themes in Isaiah:
The remnant is a major theme. Then there is the theme of the Servant of the Lord, which, of course, you know about—and we may even sing about it if I can get a guitar tomorrow afternoon.
There is also the recurring name of God, the Holy One of Israel. He is called the Holy One throughout the first thirty-nine chapters of the book. But from Isaiah 40 onward, Isaiah begins speaking of God as the Kinsman-Redeemer. That tremendous theme runs through the last half of the book.
The book of Isaiah itself is like a Bible. It has sixty-six chapters, and the Bible has sixty-six books. Chapters 1 through 39 are like the Old Testament, where you see the Holy One upon His throne.
The last twenty-seven chapters are like the New Testament, where you see the Holy One upon the altar, where we see Jesus coming as the Servant of God and the suffering Servant.
When I was in seminary studying these things, my Old Testament professors could not resist separating Isaiah. They said, “Chapters 1 through 39 are one guy. Chapters 40 through 66 are Deutero-Isaiah.”
Just like Isaiah himself was sawn in two by King Manasseh, ever since then liberal scholars have been trying to saw Isaiah in two. Basically, it is because they do not believe in miraculous prophecy.
They do not believe that Isaiah could possibly have heard from the Lord that a man named Cyrus would come and restore Judah to the promised land from exile—two hundred years before it happened. They say, “It cannot happen. It must have been another guy.” Well, they might try to saw it, but it is one book.
The most remarkable element in Isaiah is that he saw Christ seven hundred years before His birth. He saw Christ.
John 12:41 says:
These things said Isaiah, because he saw His glory; and he spake of Him.
That is not talking merely about God’s glory. If you read the context, you will see that Isaiah saw Christ and spoke of Him. What a tremendous vision this man was given. In his faithful prophecy, these things have been given unto us.
We want to look at Isaiah as he lived before the Lord as a man. Today there is a need for a prophetic generation. What does that mean?
It means those who have a real vision of the Lord upon His throne. No matter what is going on on the earth, the Lord is upon the throne. That is the fixed vision of prophetic sight.
It means those who are grounded in the Word and tremble at His Word. If somebody does not know the Word of God, I do not care who they are, they will be limited in their prophetic insight. Isaiah was full of the Word of God.
It means those who hear the heart of God—not merely knowledge of God—and those willing to bear reproach for admonishing their generation.
It is not popular to be a prophet. Just like David Wilkerson, people could not stand it. Everybody criticized him for the prophecy. That is what happens if you admonish your generation. People do not want to hear today the truth about what God is going to do.
A hundred years later, they say, “What a great prophet he was.” Today, they want to kill the prophet. It is still true today. People do not like somebody messing with today, you know?
We will look at Isaiah in four phases of his ministry:
Tonight we are looking at Isaiah’s vision: the great undoing.
Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone;
because I am a man of unclean lips,
and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips:
for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.—Isaiah 6:5
Let us take a little look at young Isaiah and get some idea of his background. He was the son of Amoz. Jewish tradition holds that Amoz was the brother of King Amaziah. So Isaiah was of the tribe of Judah and, most likely, of the royal family.
He was not a priest in the temple, but he grew up with great advantage and was well educated. If you look in 2 Chronicles 26:22 and following, you will see that in his youthful days he was one of the court recorders. He is alluded to as the one who recorded the history during the time of Uzziah.
He had a wife and two sons, and he was a prophet for approximately sixty-two years during the reigns of four kings. This is stated in the opening verses of Isaiah itself.
Tradition says he was sawn in two during the reign of Manasseh, the fifth king during his lifetime. Hebrews 11:37 refers to one who was sawn in two for faithfulness, and many believe that was Isaiah.
Deep in the mystery of God’s election, the Lord gave Isaiah a seeking heart from an early age. Why is it that some people begin to seek the Lord from an early age? I was a late starter. I was eighteen to twenty when I began my journey. But so many start young.
God captured Isaiah’s heart as a young man. We see in the soul of Isaiah a heart full of love for God.
Naturally, he was very intelligent. They call him the Shakespeare of the prophets. When we were studying Hebrew under a rabbi on Long Island, he would just swoon over Isaiah’s Hebrew. It is so beautiful.
In the New Testament, who is the best writer in terms of grammar and all that? Luke. Luke’s writing far excels the other writings. It is not that Luke was more of a genius; it was simply his natural intelligence. He was a beautiful writer.
Isaiah was a beautiful writer. He could write poetry. He could write satire. He was a tremendous prophet and a tremendously gifted person. He was politically shrewd, having grown up in the royal household.
When Isaiah describes satirically what is going on in the various countries, he is not describing something fanciful. He is describing what is actually happening as somebody who knew the situation in the various empires.
His emotions could boil over with indignation and satire regarding hypocrisy, but he was also tenderhearted and comforting toward the poor and the remnant. He was a very full-hearted fellow.
He was also full in spirit. His prophecies and his life as a prophet were always under the purview of God Himself. He had a zealous spirit for the Lord and a great burden for the people of God.
His intelligence and prophetic gifts were kept under the restraint of the fear of the Lord. When you read Isaiah, you are not simply taken away with his intelligence. You are brought into the presence of God as you read his words.
His personal allegiance to any king—especially Uzziah, who was likely related to him—was always secondary to speaking the truth of the Lord’s broken heart, even to the kings of his day.
Isaiah had a spirit that could see the truth hiding beneath outward appearances. Others looked at appearances; Isaiah could see beneath them because he had a discerning spirit.
Young Isaiah began to prophesy around 750 BC during the reign of Uzziah. A prophetic burden boiled over out of his love for the Lord, his study of the Law, and his sense of what was in man.
As a young man, he began to prophesy. It is amazing to read the early prophecies. What started him out as a prophet? We do not know for sure, but tradition gives us some possible answers.
In 750 BC, scientists tell us there was a great earthquake, perhaps 8.2 on the Richter scale. It devastated cities along the Jordan-African Rift. Archaeologists acknowledge that Hazor, one of the cities along the rift, was completely destroyed around 750 BC.
Interestingly, the earthquake became a point of reference for several prophets. Zechariah mentions it two hundred years later in Zechariah 14:5:
And ye shall flee by the valley of the mountains;
for the valley of the mountains shall reach unto Azel:
yea, ye shall flee, like as ye fled from before the earthquake
in the days of Uzziah king of Judah;
and the Lord my God shall come, and all the holy ones with Thee.
Amos 1:1 says that Amos was called into prophetic ministry two years before the great earthquake. Amos was, in some ways, a contemporary of Isaiah. Isaiah was young, and this disaster may have shocked him awake.
Isaiah 29:6 contains imagery that perhaps reflects this event:
She shall be visited of the Lord of hosts with thunder,
and with earthquake, and great noise,
with whirlwind and tempest,
and the flame of a devouring fire.
Isaiah’s first prophecy may also have come out of the tragic shock surrounding Uzziah’s leprosy. Uzziah was a good king, and Isaiah was a court recorder who loved the king.
But Uzziah went into the holy place with a censer, thinking he could be a priest and offer things to God. Immediately, he became leprous.
According to Josephus, who was writing for the Romans as a Jew, the earthquake came at the precise moment Uzziah raised the censer in the temple. Jewish tradition also links the earthquake with this blasphemous act.
Consider a young man who had a heart for God, who was studying the Word, and then suddenly this earthquake came. Along with it came a spiritual earthquake in the life of the king. Something awoke in Isaiah. He realized there was danger—something was happening in their midst.
The latter days of Uzziah were a background to Isaiah’s ministry. Uzziah gained the world and lost his soul. He was a good king. Judah prospered during his reign. He built cities and served the Lord for years—until pride took incense into the holy place.
When he was stricken with leprosy, he went into self-exile for the rest of his days and lived apart by himself. His son Jotham took over, basically, as king.
Perhaps Isaiah saw in Uzziah a parable of Judah’s leprosy and uncleanness. Sometimes you think the people of God are pretty righteous, and then the earthquake comes and you see the real situation.
When we come to Isaiah’s first words in Isaiah 1, there are actually three prophecies in the first five chapters. I believe these were spoken before he saw the vision of the Lord high and lifted up in Isaiah 6. Others disagree, and we cannot prove it either way.
But I do not think it is a mistake that the Bible waits until Isaiah 6 to show us that vision. Isaiah had already been faithfully prophesying according to what he knew and had seen before that time.
Listen to these words from Isaiah 1:5-6, as he indicts Judah for immorality and falling away. They sound like the language of leprosy:
Why will ye be still stricken, that ye revolt more and more?
The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.
From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it;
but wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores:
they have not been closed, neither bound up,
neither mollified with oil.
Isaiah spoke this tremendous prophecy in his young days, having seen that Judah, the holy people of God, was full of wounds. The northern tribes of Israel were fading away from God, and Judah itself was in a terrible spiritual condition.
We know these other verses from this first prophecy:
Except the Lord of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant,
we should have been as Sodom,
and we should have been like unto Gomorrah.—Isaiah 1:9
He was saying, “We deserve to be destroyed like Sodom and Gomorrah.” The people in Judah said, “What, are you crazy? What are you saying? We are God’s people.” He said, “Yes, well, we are like Sodom and Gomorrah.” It was a very strong prophecy.
He also proclaimed:
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.
If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land.—Isaiah 1:18-19
So began the first of three prophecies given in the latter years of King Uzziah. The basic message of Isaiah 1 was this: the Lord is holy, and He hates hypocritical feasting, religious ceremonies, and shallowness.
This is where Isaiah says that the Lord hates their feasts. You are talking to the holy people in Jerusalem. They make it their job to eat lamb every Sabbath and do all the religious stuff. Yet Isaiah is telling them that God hates it.
Isaiah 2 through 4 contains a tremendous prophecy in which he sees the day of the Lord coming to judge Judah for her pride. Then Isaiah 5 gives us that beautiful song of the Beloved’s vineyard—the jealous song in which the Father says, “I created a vineyard, raised it up, took care of it, and all it did was produce wild grapes.”
We just went through five chapters. I hope you took it in.
The point is this: young Isaiah was full of fire, zeal, and light. He was like a revival preacher. Have you ever heard a good revival preacher? Boy, they are fired up: “Righteousness! Repent! The Lord will revive!”
That was his message in all three of his prophecies, and these were true words from God. In your prosperity, serve the Lord. You have been so blessed by God. But an ass knows his master, and you do not know that the Lord has blessed you. What is the matter with you?
He pressed repentance even upon the rulers and ministers of Judah—the servants, Levites, and priests. He said, “You need to repent.” The priests said, “Who is talking to the holy priests? Who has got the garments?”
But here is the deal: nobody repented. No revival. He lost his voice preaching, “Revival! Repent! Revival! Repent!” Nobody repented; there was no revival.
That is where we find Isaiah when we come to the year King Uzziah died. Young Isaiah’s life was about to be profoundly changed.
“The year that King Uzziah died” has real import. Somehow God is indicating that there was a change in Isaiah’s life. Uzziah’s death marked some kind of spiritual crisis in Isaiah’s life.
Something in youthful, idealistic Isaiah died when Uzziah died—or at least was deeply shaken. Maybe Isaiah realized how deep his own trust had been in kings, country, and outward things.
Sometimes we have to come to that place, do we not? We put our trust in government. We put our trust in our nation. We put our trust in all that kind of stuff. Something perhaps in Isaiah was trusting in Uzziah, in the righteousness of the kingdom, and in such things. All of that had to die before he could become God’s prophet.
Was he seized with a sudden sense of insecurity about his future? His relative had died. Who was going to lead now? What would happen to Judah? What would happen to him?
Whatever the crisis was, it drove him to the house of the Holy One. Praise God for that. When we come to those kinds of doubts and questions, may they drive us to the house of God.
He may have come to that lonely and discouraging place where your best efforts of ministry produce no fruit. Why is it that everybody who really serves God has to go through that?
You spend all this time memorizing verses and memorizing the three points in the poem. You preach your best and your darnedest. When the whole thing is over, nobody is impressed. Nobody is moved. Nobody is touched.
Dear young Isaiah had such a heart for God. He loved the Word of God. He was righteously indignant at all that he saw. Once his eyes were opened by the earthquake, he began shouting and telling them to repent. Everybody just looked at him and said, “What is the matter with that young guy? He should get a job.”
On that fateful day Isaiah went down to the temple. He could enter the inner court as a man and observe what was going on in the house of God. He was watching, asking, “God, what is going to happen? What is going on in my future?”
Suddenly, the place was filled with smoke. The temple was filled with smoke. Out of the smoke, he saw a throne high and lifted up, with the Lord sitting upon the throne.
Then there were these creatures going around saying, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty; heaven and earth are full of Your glory.” The place lit up with glory.
What a tremendous vision he had. What an undoing. I suppose the other people were just doing their jobs, but Isaiah saw this, and he was completely undone.
This vision in Isaiah 6, where he saw the Lord high and lifted up—think about what happened here. The veil of heaven was opened. He saw into heaven, brothers and sisters; he did not merely see into the temple.
He saw the reality behind the shadows represented by the temple. Beyond the mercy seat, he actually saw the throne. The mercy seat represented God’s throne, but Isaiah saw beyond the shadow to the reality.
Beyond the gold cherubim, he saw actual seraphim. Which would you rather have: golden religious things, or the reality of heavenly beings saying, “Holy, holy, holy”?
Beyond the Shekinah presence, he saw the glory of the King upon His throne. Tremendous glory—full of glory.
Here we see the central mystery of Isaiah’s whole life. For you and me, perhaps this is “la, la, la.” But let me tell you something: for a Jew, this means, “Oh, oh, oh, oh.”
He saw the invisible God.
I do not know whether you heard what I said. He saw an invisible God—the God every holy Jew knew could never be seen. He saw Him. This was his undoing.
Notice that in Isaiah 6:1, he says, “I saw the Lord high and lifted up.” The word translated “Lord” is Adonai, which could mean a man. He saw something like a man, something like the Son of Man. He saw the Lord sitting on the throne.
He did not see a big light bulb sitting on the throne. He saw a person sitting on the throne. “I saw the Lord, Adonai, high and lifted up.”
Yet the mystery in Isaiah 6:5 is that he calls Him “the King, the Lord of hosts.” There, “Lord” is the divine name—the Lord Himself. Isaiah says, in effect, “I saw the man. I saw God. I saw the God-man.”
Wait a minute. How can you say that? How can God be a man? What am I seeing? This is impossible. This is my undoing. How can God be on the throne? How can I see Him? I am not allowed to see that. Yet there He is. I see Him.
He had seen the Lord, the great I AM, upon the throne. What a revelation.
All sense of time and earth was lost in the eternal now. When you are caught into the presence of God, you lose all sense of time. Isaiah was shaken by the glory, majesty, and holiness, and he said, “Woe is me.”
I do not expect any of us could even talk if we saw what he saw. This is not allowed for man to see.
“I have seen the King, the Lord of hosts, and my lips are unclean.” Imagine: you have been a prophet for five years. You have been prophesying from the Word, from righteous desire, and from truth. Yet when you see God, you are completely undone and realize your prophecies were unclean.
You only saw the outside. Now that you have seen the Lord, there is a whole other magnitude of reality that has to be dealt with.
But this is when God, in His grace, sent down one of those seraphim to touch Isaiah’s lips with a coal of fire. He was cleansed.
Here we see an essential principle of service: the Lord must sanctify the servant as well as the gift of prophecy in order for Him to use such a servant.
Isaiah is a testimony of one whose whole life would be shaped by vision. Many people serve God, but when a person is shaped by a vision of something they have seen, it makes them an altogether special servant.
Within the vision came the calling. Only from an angle of intimacy can we understand Isaiah’s call, because God said, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?”
The Father was speaking to the Son—the One upon the throne. “Whom shall We send? Who will go for Us?”
Isaiah was not directly asked, “Will you go?” He was hearing the divine conversation. He was permitted to listen to the deliberations of purpose in the Trinity, as I would put it.
Overwhelmed by the mercy of the Lord, Isaiah freely offered himself to be sent:
Here am I; send me.
—Isaiah 6:8
I love this understanding of God’s calling. Brothers, sometimes because Paul was arrested on the road to Damascus, we reckon that everybody who is called of God gets pinned to the ground and told, “You are going to die tonight unless you accept My call.”
But in Isaiah’s case, we see somebody led into the divine conversation. Here is God’s purpose: “Who shall We send? Who will go for Us?” They are talking among themselves, and Isaiah’s heart comes into communion with that request. He says, “Here am I. Send me.”
As soon as Isaiah accepted the call, he found out about the cross, because the cross came in the call itself.
Isaiah 6:9-10 says:
Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not;
and see ye indeed, but perceive not.
Make the heart of this people fat,
and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes;
lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears,
and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed.
God said, “Here is your job: go to people who will not listen and speak to them. Share visions with people who refuse to see.” What kind of job is that?
Speak knowing that the word will only harden the people and hasten their judgment. Do you like to do that? Tell people the truth, knowing that by rejecting it they bring judgment upon themselves.
There is a cross in there somewhere. But speak.
There is a consolation in Isaiah 6:13:
Yet there shall be a tenth in it,
and it shall return, and shall be eaten:
as a terebinth, and as an oak,
whose stock remaineth, when they are felled;
so the holy seed is the stock thereof.
Basically, God was saying, “I will gather around you a remnant, a tenth, who will be faithful, who will stand in the Word, who will listen to it, who will see it, and who will fear it.”
When the prophetic word goes forth, most people will not hear it. Most people will not see it. Most hearts will remain unaffected. But there will be a tenth who will fear, kneel, pray, repent, and say, “God, have mercy upon us.”
This was Isaiah’s call. All real prophetic ministry must bear the cross. Prophetic ministry is doomed to failure.
If God gives us a prophetic ministry, if He gives our assembly a prophetic ministry, it is doomed to failure. Your hindsight will be rejected as revisionism. However you interpret past history, people will say, “Ah, you are just revising history. That is not the way it really was.”
I am amazed at the way people are revising history today. I am so old that I was actually living through some of it, and they are telling me things happened that never happened. Something is wrong here.
Your present insight as a prophet will be mocked as judgmental. “Oh, come on, Isaiah. You really think God is going to do that to His dear children? Where is grace, Isaiah? Where is all this judgment coming from?”
Your foresight into future judgments will be rebuffed as scare tactics. “You are just trying to scare people into heaven.” So I hope God sends many prophets from this place, but I am telling you, it is an unpopular calling.
Prophets always reveal the broken heart of God. Why did God raise up prophets? Why were they needed? Israel had priests, sacrifices, and kings. Why did they need prophets? Why did prophets come late, as it were, in Israel’s history?
It was because people fell away, and God’s heart was being missed in all their religiousness. The prophet had to come and speak according to the broken heart of God when people did not want to hear that heart or its message.
When you listen to Isaiah, there is so much judgment in it. Frankly, it scares people, turns them off, confuses them, and bewilders them. But here are some things to think about.
The prophetic message always measures days of judgment with eternal mercies. If you see the difference between days of judgment and eternal mercies, you see the balance in the prophets.
Their foresight always promises very present help to those who are faithful. David Wilkerson immediately sent out a second prophecy to his own saints in New York, saying, “If you love the Lord and humble yourself, the Lord will take care of you even through a difficult time.”
There is always that measure of comfort for those who receive God’s mercy and wait for the Lord to be faithful.
Jesus had this same unpopularity because He spoke the truth. I love this quote by Sir Robert Anderson concerning Jesus:
Teachers and disciples today take a far different view of the prophets than that of our Lord Jesus Christ. To Him, tempted, teaching, suffering, dying, risen, “It is written” was a formula of infinite import. The certainty of the prophetic word lay at the heart of His teaching. It is not too much to say that it belonged to the pulse, to the vital breath, of His message to others—and, what is mysteriously yet more, to His certainty about Himself.
What he is saying in fluffy words is this: Jesus could not have made it to the cross if He did not believe the prophetic Word. He saw His destiny as He read Isaiah 53, and it took Him all the way to Calvary.
This is how much He was willing to stand upon the truth of the Word of God—even unto death. Do we stand with that same prophetic faith?
After the vision, it appears that Isaiah left public ministry for more than ten years and only occasionally appeared for more than twenty years, especially in times of crisis, as we will see.
First of all, Isaiah was completely undone by the vision. He had to reconcile something. He saw the reality of God’s throne, God’s kingdom, God’s Lord and Messiah, and he had to reconcile it with the shadows on earth—the temple, the kingdom of Judah, and the kings of Judah.
Until you see God’s divine purpose, you are satisfied with what is down here. Now there had to be a reconciliation. Isaiah had to understand what God wanted him to do based on that heavenly vision.
He had seen himself—the faithful preacher—exposed in his own corruption and unworthiness. This took him aside into the desert for a season as he considered these things.
Here is a basic principle: God seems to undo those whom He wants to use more greatly. A prophet of purpose, like Isaiah, must be broken at deeper levels.
If that true prophet of purpose is to be valuable to the Lord, he has to be captive—an exclusive lover. So the Lord was doing this work in Isaiah.
Isaiah spent these years in the secret place, laying hold of the depths of his vision of an enthroned Lord ruling over all.
Can you imagine seeing with heavenly vision the Lord’s throne ruling over the United States, the Middle East, Islam, and the Far East? Seeing His throne ruling over it all would make such a difference in our lives.
This is exactly what Isaiah was trying to lay hold of: how the enthroned Lord was dealing with things below.
Out of this formative vision, Isaiah began to see what Bible teachers call the Immanuel prophecies. In Isaiah 7 through 12, the word Immanuel suddenly comes to the surface.
It was a revelation of Immanuel as a byproduct of seeing the Lord upon the throne. Through most of the reigns of Jotham and Ahaz, the two kings who followed Uzziah, Isaiah rarely spoke publicly. Usually, he only spoke in times of crisis, when the Lord gave him a word for the king.
But during that time he found a small remnant in Zion who feared the Lord, and he began sharing his Immanuel discoveries with them. What wonderful days in the secret place: Isaiah, not in the public eye, but with this little remnant.
He would come to them and say, “I discovered something more about Immanuel.” They would say, “Oh, tell us, tell us.” It was like the end of Malachi, where those who feared the Lord gathered to speak about the things of God.
In these years, Isaiah lived in the reality of his two sons’ names. You all know Maher-shalal-hash-baz, which means “swift is the booty, speedy is the prey.” You have to live in a time where judgment is imminent.
His other son, Shear-jashub, means “a remnant shall return.” Isaiah lived between imminent judgment and ultimate recovery. What a time to live.
Listen: if you are living between imminent judgment and ultimate recovery, you change your financial scheme. You change your vocational obsession. There are changes in one’s life.
Isaiah had these two sons reminding him all the time. He wakes up in the morning and thinks everything looks good because he sees Shear-jashub first. Then in comes Maher-shalal-hash-baz.
The Lord used national crisis to bring Isaiah into fuller revelation of Immanuel. King Ahaz’s weakness and compromise opened the door for the enemy to attack Judah itself.
Ahaz—what a wicked king. He set up Baal and Ashtoreth, fertility gods, all across the land. They held orgies in temples devoted to these fertility gods. Terrible.
He took his own son, who turned out to be Hezekiah, through the fire of Molech. Molech was represented by a huge idol with flames and burning hands. Children were placed upon its hands and burned, carrying the marks of Molech.
So dark was Ahaz’s idolatry that he took his own sons through it. That means he believed in it.
You all know what he did around Jerusalem and in the holy temple. He built an altar patterned after one he saw in Damascus, associated with Tiglath-pileser, the leader of the Assyrians.
He moved the bronze altar aside to make room for it. Moving aside the bronze altar? He did it.
He removed the laver from its stand, broke it off its supporting bulls, and closed the door to the temple—though he made a side entrance for Tiglath-pileser whenever he wanted to visit. This is what Ahaz did to the holy temple in Jerusalem.
The Assyrian Empire was emerging, led by Tiglath-pileser—or, as I call him, “Tickle Me Pleaser,” just so you might remember the name. He was going through the whole Middle East in that day, conquering everything in his path.
As the story of Isaiah 7 opens, Jerusalem is under attack. It is not Tiglath-pileser attacking at that moment. It is Rezin, king of Damascus in Syria, and Pekah, king in Samaria.
Rezin and Pekah came against King Ahaz. Isaiah 7:1-2 says:
And it came to pass in the days of Ahaz the son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, king of Judah, that Rezin the king of Syria, and Pekah the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, went up toward Jerusalem to war against it, but could not prevail against it.
And it was told the house of David, saying, Syria is confederate with Ephraim. And his heart was moved, and the heart of his people, as the trees of the forest are moved with the wind.
Ahaz was worse off than Don Knotts. Not that you young people even know who that character is, but there you go. It looked just like Ahaz, I promise.
At that very moment, while Syria and Northern Israel were knocking on Jerusalem’s door, the Lord gave Isaiah a sign for Ahaz.
Isaiah came and said, “Tell the king I have a sign for him.” Ahaz had already made an alliance with Tiglath-pileser. He knew he was in trouble, and he was sure Isaiah would bring more trouble. Prophets are guaranteed to bring you trouble.
But Isaiah did not come with a prophecy of trouble. He came with a prophecy saying, “King Ahaz, do you believe in the Lord? Do you believe that the Lord wants to give you a sign that He loves His people?”
Then came this amazing word from Isaiah to Ahaz:
Therefore the Lord Himself shall give you a sign:
behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son,
and shall call His name Immanuel.—Isaiah 7:14
Before that child stopped taking milk, Northern Israel would be no more, and Damascus and Syria would be destroyed. Do you believe?
Ahaz said, “No, no, no. I will not tempt the Lord God by asking for a sign.” Of course, he did not believe.
But this revelation in Isaiah’s heart was tremendous because it led to further revelations. Over the next fifteen years, two more prophecies came.
The first prophecy was that the virgin would conceive and bear a son. His name would be Immanuel.
The second prophecy is in Isaiah 9. It opens by saying that even as Northern Israel would be the first to fall into captivity, Northern Israel would also be the first place where Immanuel would come to bring light in the midst of darkness—in Galilee, Zebulun, and Naphtali.
A child would be born:
For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon His shoulder:
and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.Of the increase of His government and of peace there shall be no end,
upon the throne of David, and upon His kingdom.—Isaiah 9:6-7
Isaiah saw that Immanuel—God with us—would come as a King with the government upon His shoulders. He would bring peace. The remnant said, “This is wonderful. God is coming. God is with us.”
They began to understand Immanuel in a twofold way: first, as the Man who would come; and second, as a spiritual reality—God is with us.
The third prophecy is in Isaiah 11 and 12. It speaks of the Branch sprouting from the stem of Jesse:
And there shall come forth a shoot out of the stock of Jesse,
and a branch out of his roots shall bear fruit.And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him,
the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might,
the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.—Isaiah 11:1-2
He would have a spiritual ministry with spiritual wisdom. Then Isaiah 11:6 says:
And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together;
and a little child shall lead them.
Suddenly the millennium comes into view. Isaiah 12 continues:
Behold, God is my salvation;
I will trust, and will not be afraid:
for the Lord is my strength and song;
and He is become my salvation.Therefore with joy shall ye draw water
out of the wells of salvation.—Isaiah 12:2-3
He speaks of a great remnant that will be saved by the rule of Immanuel. Wonderful, wonderful things.
In Isaiah 7 through 12, we have three successive prophecies regarding Immanuel:
During those fifteen years, as Syria and Northern Israel kept trying to conquer Judah, Isaiah and the remnant saw for the first time the connection between the throne and earth’s Immanuel.
Because the Lord is on the throne, Immanuel would be present upon the earth: God with us. The enthroned Lord would be revealed through this sign—Immanuel, both a God-person and a God-reality.
How much do you think it would help the saints, in difficult times, if they knew the presence of God with us?
Isaiah was beginning to catch on to something that would revolutionize his prophecies. He was beginning to see that Judah’s history was essentially being determined in the unseen spiritual realm.
This is absolutely transforming to a person’s life: when we see that what we do see is being determined by what we do not see. This is how Isaiah began to learn to watch, intercede, and bear the testimony of God.
Isaiah and the remnant could trust in Immanuel right up to the neck. In Isaiah 8, the Lord prophesied that because Judah would not believe, the Assyrians would come down to attack.
The Assyrians would destroy Syria and take Northern Israel captive. Then they would come down even to Jerusalem. Isaiah 8:8 says:
And he shall sweep onward into Judah;
he shall overflow and pass through;
he shall reach even to the neck;
and the stretching out of his wings shall fill the breadth of thy land, O Immanuel.
The Euphrates is used as a metaphor for the advance of Assyria. The flood would rise right up to the neck. But even then, Immanuel—God with us—would cover the whole situation.
The Assyrians came, and the Assyrians went home. The waters went back down because of Immanuel.
When you say “Immanuel” to a Hebrew, they ask, “Are you saying a person’s name, or are you saying ‘God with us’?” We hear Immanuel and think immediately of a name. They heard, “The waters are up to the neck, but we claim it: God with us.” Then the waters go back down.
Isaiah 8:10 says:
Take counsel together, and it shall be brought to nought;
speak the word, and it shall not stand:
for God is with us.
The enemy can make any plan that he wants, but it will not succeed if people believe that God is with us.
When the Assyrians came down, they swallowed up the other cities of Judah like they were nothing and came right down to Jerusalem. They took Lachish. The Assyrians were more brutal as an empire than the Babylonians ever were.
The Assyrians were absolutely godless. They killed you without looking. The Babylonians were idolatrous, but they had to be careful not to offend their gods. I am not recommending Babylonians, although I actually grew up in Babylon, up in New York. Strange case.
So who do you want to be like? King Ahaz, shaking in your boots? Or Isaiah, praying and hiding under God with us?
If you read the rest of Isaiah 8, you will see what they did during those troublous times. Isaiah and the remnant found a hiding place in the Rock.
While the others were shaking in their boots, Ahaz was on the wall saying, “Oh, what is going to happen? What is going to happen?” Isaiah and the remnant were hiding in the Rock, standing on the truth.
Here we see Isaiah moving from being a revival prophet in the early days—“Repent, repent”—based upon his reverence for the Holy One.
But he was becoming an encouraging prophet who gave the remnant the vision of the Lord by which to run.
You remember Habakkuk, who was told to stand upon the walls until he received a vision that would enable the saints to run—not merely run, but run up into the high places with hind’s feet.
People in the last days and in times of trouble need such a vision in order to live and run.
Isaiah did not immediately produce repentance, although later he would affect the whole nation. But he began with the remnant. He stoked up the remnant, and the remnant learned how to stand in this: “God is with us.”
Even when the waters are up to the neck, God is with us. That remnant is what caused the Assyrians to go back. Can you believe that? A small remnant standing for God with us can send back the onslaught of Assyria.
How great is such prayer?
Within these three Immanuel prophecies, we have foretold the mystery of the divine incarnation of God’s Son seven hundred years before it came about.
More importantly, regarding Isaiah himself, it pleased God, before sending him out upon the national stage as a prophet of Israel, to firmly fix his vision upon the throne above and establish a life among a remnant of faithful brethren.
I see Isaiah even in his old age. Who is he still praying with? Maher-shalal-hash-baz and Shear-jashub, up on the wall of Zion. Isaiah is eighty-two years old, and his sons are in their sixties, praying with him upon the walls.
His prophetic burden was maturing into its next stages: Immanuel’s watchman, intercessor, and herald.
There is a lesson in this. It takes twenty years or more for a child of God to begin to learn what sonship is all about.
One time, our dear brother Stephen Kaung, Ernie Heil, and I were gathered with six different groups on Long Island. We asked brother Stephen to come and speak to all the groups.
A brother who had been a Christian for two years and felt called into a teaching ministry picked Stephen up from the airport. As he drove, he said, “Brother Stephen, I feel God is giving me a gift and burden to minister the Word of God. What does it take to minister the Word of God? What do you recommend?”
Stephen thought for about ten seconds. As he usually did, he thought quietly. Then he said, “Well, basically, it takes twenty years.”
That was his answer. The brother had hoped Stephen would give him a reading list, some tips on homiletics, or ideas about speaking. But Stephen said, “It takes twenty years, brother. You want to be a teacher? There you are.”
Many Christian young people fail to follow the Spirit into this fuller stage because of impatience, because there is a cost, and because there is an undoing.
Sometimes I feel I meet young people who have actually seen something of the magnificence of the Lord, but they do not take hold of it. They do not lay hold of what they have seen. They sit back passively, and it passes by.
I always try to stress that there is a twofold thing. The Lord apprehends us with vision, but we must apprehend the Lord according to His vision. There is cooperation.
Young people can be too passive about this. They see glorious things, but they do not lay hold of them. Isaiah laid hold.
Of course, there is a need for more undoing than we first thought, right? I do not know how many times the Lord has retreaded your tires, but He keeps opening my understanding to major revision work He has to do in my life.
A servant of God’s purpose must be captured by a vision of the grand object of the Father’s love: namely, Immanuel.
There is a stage where we realize that the grand object of the Father’s love is not us, but His Son. It is a very diminishing kind of thing, especially when we know, “Jesus loves me, this I know.”
We know Jesus loves us. The Bible calls us the beloved of God. God’s love is infinite; He has plenty of love to spread around. But if we actually want to know the grand object of His love, it is there on the throne.
Cast our eyes on that throne, and we will find Him ravishing us with love.
But sometimes our love is like the young virgin in the Song of Solomon. The Lord comes and says, “Come, come, My beloved.” She says, “Well, I am lying here, and I am having my toes manicured. It is so warm inside my little house.” Then she gets up, and He is gone. Now she has to learn to chase after Him for a while.
We tend to think, “I am so glad I got saved because I have always been the center of God’s universe. Now God can finally get some things done through me.” What a revelation to realize that you are actually somewhere off to the side in the plan.
But if you gather together with the saints, He makes you a much greater part of the plan. What is your choice?
Usually there is a hidden season where ministry is shut up, as the Old Testament King James Version calls it. You are shut up to the vision. You are ministering a lot, but it is all vertical.
You are not preaching to other people or doing a lot of external things. We are talking about hidden years in Isaiah’s life. He began a journey as a prophet, and the Lord just slayed him. He fell down on the ground, and you did not really hear from him for twenty-five years.
Later, in a time of crisis, he came into active ministry. How old was he? He was forty-five, going on fifty—over the hill, all you young people realize that.
All of Isaiah’s strong young years were apparently wasted on a vision that brought him, by the end of his life, into the greatest revelation in the Old Testament.
In some measure, we as a group, as God’s people, and as individuals need some kind of undoing, do you not think?
Grace and love are our ever-present supply; nobody will argue about that. But when it comes to our history—the failures, divisions, self-centered ministries, bad decisions, fleshly predominance, and all that kind of stuff—we realize that we need to be undone.
I cannot remain separate from the rest of the church. Isaiah could not remain separate from Judah. He had to carry a heart for all the people, and it brought him into deep intercession.
Until our own undoing, we point the prophetic finger at others and press them to repent and get right. But the more vision we have, and the more we are undone by heavenly reality, the more we include ourselves in that cry for mercy.
We do not have to look far to see the enemy. It would be us.
A broken and contrite heart alone can minister comfort once wrath has gone forth. In our nation and among God’s people, God is raising up such a prophetic generation.
Our Father, we thank You for the testimony of the life of Isaiah. Especially, we thank You for the mercy of God that allowed him to see a vision that is unseeable—a God who is unseeable, seen.
A God who is God and human; a God who is the Lord and Adonai; a God who is the Lord on His throne above and Immanuel here on earth.
Oh God, would You lead us into the mystery of all of that, and especially into the undoing of it, that we might once again be calibrated upon a more proper plane of understanding?
The things happening upon this earth and in our country, even in this day, are the result of things in the unseen—spiritual forces conquering and being bound, winning and losing.
How You desire us to see Your heavenly reign over all. O Lord, we start and ask that we might know.
As we are here tonight, some people, I am sure, are going through great trouble, circumstances, and difficulty. Oh Lord, help us to lay hold of Immanuel and know that God is with us even here.
Lord, as we go through tragedy, bereavement, terrible problems with our families, finances, and all, oh Lord, help us to see Immanuel among us.
We thank You so much, Lord, that we have seen in our lives in the past that sometimes the enemy comes up to the neck, but we declare Immanuel and watch the floods recede.
Grant us to live in that hiding place until the awful clouds have passed—trusting, relying on Immanuel, our God, the Lord Jesus Christ.
We thank You, Lord, that You are teaching us through the gospel in the Old Testament. Show us more of the living God as we study our dear brother Isaiah.
Lord, we commit these things to You in Jesus’ name. Amen.