Dr. Rodney Plunket

Last week we began a three part series on spiritual deepening.  We began that series with a study of a piece of Hebrew poetry written by the Old Testament (OT) prophet, Isaiah.  That poem is found in Isaiah (Isa) 26, and in it Isaiah urges the people of God to “[T]rust in the Lord forever.”  There the prophet also expresses his yearning, his hunger for God.  I believe that one of the uses God wants us to make of that passage is to hear it as a call for us to move to a deeper level of trust in our walk with God and to take on the attitude of the prophet, that attitude of yearning for God.

This morning I want us to look at another piece of Hebrew poetry also from the prophet Isaiah.  We will be looking at Isa 29:13-14––the passage read as our Scripture reading this morning.  But, before we move to that passage, I want us to go back to the opening chapter of Isaiah’s great book and read a piece of poetry there.  If you have your Bible, please turn to Isa 1:10-17 and follow along as I read.

Hear the word of the Lord,

     you rulers of Sodom!

Listen to the teaching of our God,

     you people of Gomorrah!

What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?

     says the Lord;

I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams

     and the fat of fed beasts;

I do not delight in the blood of bulls,

     or of lambs, or of goats.

When you come to appear before me,

     who asked this from your hand?

Trample my courts no more;

     bringing offerings is futile;

     incense is an abomination to me.

New moon and sabbath and calling of convocation—

     I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity.

Your new moons and your appointed festivals

     my soul hates;

they have become a burden to me,

     I am weary of bearing them.

When you stretch out your hands,

     I will hide my eyes from you;

even though you make many prayers,

     I will not listen;

your hands are full of blood.

Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;

     remove the evil of your doings

     from before my eyes;

cease to do evil,

learn to do good;

seek justice,

rescue the oppressed,

defend the orphan,

     plead for the widow.

In these eight verses, God, through the prophet, rejects a long list of religious stuff.  God rejects sacrifices even though God is the one who commands sacrifices in the earlier books of the OT.  God rejects festivals that God had appointed.  God rejects the people’s involvement in worship at the temple even though God commands temple worship in other OT books.  God even rejects prayer.  Why?  Because the people’s lives were so out of step with their religious practices.  As a result, God rejects, with no expressed reservation, all of their religious observances.  This is a radical passage, an intentionally radical passage, which insists that the people cease being “religious” if they are not going to be faithful toward God and just toward others.  In other words, if their religion does not deepen and broaden, it is worthless.

Now please look with me at Isa 29 and follow along as I read and briefly summarize Isa 29:1-12, the twelve verses that precede our Scripture reading.  In the first half of v 1 we read,

Ah, Ariel, Ariel,

     the city where David encamped!

The prophet begins by addressing “Ariel.”  This term refers either to Jerusalem or specifically to the Temple Mount, Mount Zion, which was in Jerusalem.  He accentuates the significance of the city by noting its connection to King David, the great king of days gone by.

In the second half of v 1 the prophet says,

Add year to year;

     let the festivals run their round.

The context makes clear that this is a derisive statement that views in a critical and negative way Jerusalem’s repetitive religious calendar.

Now please follow along as I read vv 2-4.

Yet I will distress Ariel,

     and there shall be moaning and lamentation,

     and Jerusalem shall be to me like an Ariel.

And like David I will encamp against you;

     I will besiege you with towers

     and raise siegeworks against you.

Then deep from the earth you shall speak,

     from low in the dust your words shall come;

your voice shall come from the ground like the voice of a ghost,

     and your speech shall whisper out of the dust.

Here the prophet predicts a coming disaster that God will send upon the city because of his anger with her.  The people will experience great sorrow as they see it besieged and brought so low that her voice will “come from the ground like the voice of a ghost.”  And notice that v 2 says, “Jerusalem shall be to me like an Ariel.”  You see not only is “Ariel” a Hebrew term for Jerusalem or the Temple Mount; it is also a Hebrew term for the “altar hearth.”  So “Ariel” the city shall become “Ariel” the temple hearth.  In other words, the city will come to look like a burning altar due to the assault that is about to come upon her.

But attack and punishment are not the final word.  God will, in time, punish those who attack the holy city.  That is the message of vv 5-8.  Please follow along as I read.

But the multitude of your foes shall be like small dust,

     and the multitude of tyrants like flying chaff.

And in an instant, suddenly,

     you will be visited by the Lord of hosts

     with thunder and earthquake and great noise,

     with whirlwind and tempest, and the flame of a devouring fire.

And the multitude of all the nations that fight against Ariel,

     all that fight against her and her stronghold, and who distress her,

     shall be like a dream, a vision of the night.

Just as when a hungry person dreams of eating

     and wakes up still hungry,

or a thirsty person dreams of drinking

     and wakes up faint, still thirsty,

so shall the multitude of all the nations be

     that fight against Mount Zion.

This is a word of hope.  God’s love for the holy city will not end.  God will come to Mount Zion’s defense when the necessary punishment is completed.

The words of Isaiah the prophet were fulfilled when an Assyrian king named Sennacherib invaded Judah in 701 BC.  Jerusalem was the capital of Judah, and both biblical records and Assyrian records reveal that Sennacherib decimated the countryside of Judah.  He also besieged the city of Jerusalem but withdrew without ever conquering it.  The Lord indeed assaulted Jerusalem and brought her low.  But he also delivered when the ordained punishment was complete.

Now let’s look at vv 9-10.

Stupefy yourselves and be in a stupor,

     blind yourselves and be blind!

Be drunk, but not from wine;

     stagger, but not from strong drink!

For the Lord has poured out upon you

     a spirit of deep sleep;

he has closed your eyes, you prophets,

     and covered your heads, you seers.

Here the fullness of God’s rejection of Judah’s religion is clearly revealed.  The Lord even pours out upon the prophets a spirit of stupor and deep sleep.  That means that the ones who are supposed to serve as “seers” for the people cannot do so; they have been blinded, blinded by the Lord.

Now we come to the only portion of Isa 29 that is not in the form of Hebrew poetry.  Verses 11-12, however, do continue the theme of a not being able to perceive or understand.  Please follow along again as I read.

The vision of all this has become for you like the words of a sealed document.  If it is given to those who can read, with the command, “Read this,” they say, “We cannot, for it is sealed.”  And if it is given to those who cannot read, saying, “Read this,” they say, “We cannot read.”

Understand the words of God here is said to be due to one of two causes.  Some cannot understand because they are like a people who are unable to break the seal of a book.  Others cannot understand the words of God because they are like a people who do not know how to read.  We should be reminded that what our elementary children today can do was the exception in the ancient world.  Only the privileged few could read.  So I think the image here is that none of the people are able to perceive the will of God because those who should be able to do that (the prophets and seers) cannot, because, as vv 9-10 report, they have been blinded from perceiving by God.  As a result, the remainder of the people do not perceive God’s will and are like illiterate people who have a book and need someone to read it to them, but no one is found.

Verses 13-14, the verses used as our Scripture reading, tell us why God is cutting the people off from perceiving God’s will and why God is going to punish them while keeping them from seeing that punishment coming.  Listen again to those verses from the New Living Translation which conveys their radical force.

And so the Lord says, “These people say they are mine.  They honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far away.  And their worship of me amounts to nothing more than human laws learned by rote.  Because of this, I will do wonders among these hypocrites.  I will show that human wisdom is foolish and even the most brilliant people lack understanding.”

With these verses we come full circle.  Both Isa 1:10ff, the passage with which we began this morning, and Isa 29:1-14 convey the same reason for divine anger.  The people of Judah do lots of religious stuff, but it is all surface.  Neither their hearts nor their lives belong to God.

Gene M Tucker in his commentary on Isaiah 1-39 makes this point concerning Isaiah 29:1-14.  He writes, “this text evokes reflection on and self-examination concerning the meaning and practice of piety and religion.”[1]

Our Christian observances are intended to deepen our relationship with God.  They are to move profoundly our hearts and to transform our lives.  But they can become “nothing more than human laws learned by rote.”  We should note that the English word “rote” here refers to the “mechanical repetition of something so that it is remembered, often without real understanding of its meaning or significance.”  In this case the practices are remembered but the meanings are not.

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