Isaiah, Chapter 13

Good morning. Kind of interesting passage to take a look at. As you look at it, you say, boy, it's all kind of intense. And it's supposed to be. So that's okay. Just to kind of give us a sense of perspective, last Sunday we finished the first section of the book, the first 12 chapters. So we'll be proceeding today with the first of the next section, which goes through the 23rd chapter.

This is in great part directed to Israel's neighbors, those who were neighboring nations to the people of Israel now as we typically do except like last Sunday when six verses in our passage is the entire chapter we give a summary of the chapter and we'll do that here this morning blazing our way through Isaiah 13 verses 1 through 5 are prophecies about the ancient city and empire of Babylon And it's one we'll take a little closer look at here as we move our way through it. The next six verses, 6 through 15, are about the coming tribulation period. This is the seven-year period that scripture puts focus on from the New Testament into the Old. And it includes today's focal point verses. And then 16 through 22 tell about how Babylon will fall from its place of power. If you want to see how that happened, recorded in biblical account, you can look at the book of Daniel in chapter 5. And it says what would happen to Babylon in the centuries that would follow after Babylon fell from power.

Now, I want to introduce... That's not right. Who did this? That's a little better. Okay. We can do all right with that. Okay. I want to introduce you to Babylon. It goes like this. Isaiah was prophesying during the time when the Assyrian Empire was rising in power.

Babylon, at the time Isaiah was writing this, was a significant city and people, but was not the one in power. So he's looking ahead to a time when they would take power from the Assyrians. This happened in 612 BC. The Babylonians overtook the Assyrians, and then the Persian Empire followed. As we continue in our study, what we'll see is, as we've seen partway through already, Isaiah talks about what's going to happen with the Assyrians. He talks, as he begins doing so today, about what's going to happen with the Babylonian Empire, and finally, the Persian Empire. The Assyrians had an empire that grew over centuries. And by the time that Isaiah is writing, major impact on what's happening to the people in Judah and to the people that Isaiah cares about and is prophesying to. Now this map shows Jerusalem and Judah as being under the Assyrians.

They were not in fact under them directly in the sense of being ruled by them, but they paid tribute in order to be able to self-rule and continue to have their own kingdom. Then the Babylonians came in. It was the Babylonians that established an empire after them, beginning in 612 BC. And it was under that empire that all the Jews in the southern kingdom were taken off to Babylon.

One of the things that would be helpful to note is Isaiah has and will continue to bring up this nation of Egypt. Egypt is where the Jews were held for 430 years and the Lord brought them out through what's known as the Exodus. One of the things we show here is the philosophy of empire.

Each of these successive kingdoms have their own philosophy of how do you deal with a captured people. The Egyptians would capture as needed for slaves or for their own defense. There's capture some people, hold them as slaves so that you don't have to fight them. The Assyrians, would randomly relocate people. They would say, OK, we don't trust you, so we're going to move you over here, and we're going to move these people over here, over to where you live. Scrambled eggs was kind of their philosophy. The Samaritans, for example, were a population of mixed Jews and Gentiles, which is why into the New Testament era, many of the Jews simply wouldn't even go into the land where the Samaritans were settled.

Babylon, said, if we don't trust you, we're bringing you to where we can keep an eye on you. They would bring everybody they didn't trust to Babylon and have them be right under their close watch. And then Persia actually supported the culture and they said, do you want to go back from where the Babylonians have taken you? We'll send you back and we'll even pay for it. Very interesting. About 50,000 Jews were returned to Judah initially. after the first move to bring Jews back into their land.

We're looking at Babylon here this morning, and that's the nation that's primarily addressed here in Isaiah chapter 13. Now, here's modern Babylon. Believe it or not, what you see there, somewhat reconstructed, was done under Saddam Hussein. One of the few constructive things the fellow did. Here's an artist rendering of Babylon during the time of Isaiah.

And as you can see, it was a fairly extensive sprawling city. They would have towers scattered throughout the city where they would have priests go up and do their various kinds of rituals and worship. These towers would be as much as about a football field and a half tall. So these were not some small tower. They were pretty extensive. Give you an idea what the interior decorating was like. That's pretty fancy. And that would be an instance of what some of the finer homes would have. That's paneling like I think would cost you an arm and a leg if you were to ask for it these days.

Here is Babylon's famous hanging gardens, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. It was something written about by people who weren't even Babylonian and saying, boy, this is impressive. Here's another artist rendering of Babylon. It shows this gate that's known as the Ishtar Gate. What's interesting, let's put a circle around it so you can see, that gate's been reconstructed. There it is. And thanks to Saddam Hussein.

Now, as we look at the passage here, what we'll be doing is dividing it up into three sections, one verse at a time. I think you can probably handle that just fine. So that's how we'll proceed. Let's start with verse 9. This word, behold, is one we've seen before. We're going to see it again.

It has this idea, if we're going to put it in modern vernacular, It means to stop and take a mental picture. Sorry about the flash there. Now, Isaiah used this word often in order to grab people's attention. It was the idea, look, don't just let this go in one ear and out the other. Think about this for a minute. This is momentous. This is big. Give it some thought. Remember this, its impact is sweeping, it's profound and intense.

The Day of the Lord is a phrase that shows up not only here in Isaiah, but it shows up throughout the Old Testament prophets and even into the letters of Paul and of Peter. Here, for example, is 1 Thessalonians 5, 1-3. And Paul writes about the Day of the Lord, and he says, I have no need to write you. You yourselves know full well that the Day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.

He begins the description. What is it? It is referring, as Isaiah says here, to a future time. So it's referring to a future time. It's from the time that begins with the tribulation period and extends to the end of this present earth and the creation of a new heaven and earth. Alright.

Then he describes it cruel with fury and burning anger. Now, there are those, and maybe you've heard or read about this sort of thing, who talk about the God of the Old Testament as an angry God. You heard that one before? A God who is angry, you know?

Well, what they do often is they'll describe the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament as if they're two different gods, which is of course not the case. They'll picture the Old Testament God as this fierce and vicious, angry God, and the New Testament God as a God of light and graciousness and peace and love. And, of course, this is not the case. Certainly, Scripture is not describing two different gods.

And, as a matter of fact, we can find numerous instances where that idea is contradicted. But there's another common misconception, and that's the idea that the God of the Old Testament has an anger problem. God does not need to go to anger management classes. Then he says, the day of the Lord is coming with fury and with anger. For is coming, archetype, that's the exact form, usually what I'll give is the general form. It is coming, it's a future time, in the Greek Old Testament. And the words for fury and anger, thumos and orge, in the Greek Old Testament.

We'll be looking at the second of those in a few different passages. Here's one, remember from our study of Ephesians chapter 5, this was some months ago, but perhaps you recall. At the end of that, it says, let no one deceive you with empty words. Because of these things, the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. That word wrath, same as in this passage that we've got in the Greek Old Testament of Isaiah.

It's this word wrath, orge, or comes is the exact same form that we see in Isaiah. Paul was not coming up with something new. He's not describing God differently, he is using precisely the same words as he read in the Greek Old Testament of this verse in Isaiah. Not even sort of different, precisely the same. Here's Colossians 3, 5 and 6 of the parallel passage. Verse 6, therefore, it is because of these things that the wrath of God will come, and guess what? Exact same words, even the exact same form as we saw before as Isaiah 13, 9.

You can also take a look, I'll leave it to you to do on your own time, Romans 1.18-21, the word orge shows up there again. Now, we have not spoken about the rapture in this church for a month of Sundays, so we're going to do that here this morning.

In order to do that, we'll look at Romans 5.9, And it says, we shall be saved from the wrath of God.

Here's the same word that's used in the Greek Old Testament of Isaiah 13.9, okay? We shall be saved from it.

Or 1 Thessalonians 1.10, Jesus who rescues us from the wrath, again, same word, orge, to come.

Oh, by the way, to come, it's not the exact same word, but the same root word is in Isaiah 13.9. And then 1 Thessalonians 5, 9-11 starts off with, For God has not destined us for wrath. The same word, orge. We have repeated, repeated assurances that we won't be subject to the wrath that Isaiah is describing here. The wrath to come. Even using the exact same words and the exact same form in many cases.

You can also take a look at Revelation 3.10. There's another promise of that same kind. We won't be subject to that wrath. Now, among Christians who view scripture as foretelling the rapture of the church, there are a variety of views.

You ever run across those? Ever hear of them? As a matter of fact, Nancy and I have a friend who will repeatedly say, I hope it's the first one. She didn't want to go through the rest of them. Well, of course, there's the pre-trib, the mid-trib, the post-trib, the late-trib, and even a partial-trib rapture. Now, this partial-trib rapture thing, you may have heard it called a partial rapture, and that's okay. I don't like the idea at all. I just think of it this way, here's Nancy and I posing for a picture, Norm's got the camera, just pose, all of a sudden a partial rapture occurs. That's terrible. I don't like that idea at all. Anyway, you get the idea.

What's often lost in the discussion, as we saw in those passages there, our being kept from the wrath of God is not just some point of minor debate. It is a part of our eternal position in Christ. Scripture makes it that clear. It's that abundantly clear. It is a part of our eternal position in Christ. It is a part of who we are in Him. We will not be subject to God's wrath. Will we have tribulation without the definite article in front of it? Yes. Count on it. That's not the same as to say we'll be subject to God's wrath. We will not be. It is part of our position in Christ.

Some of these other rapture views, we have the mid-tribulation, right in the middle. We have the late tribulation, which I would point out, because wrath is scattered throughout the entire time of the tribulation, including this time that Isaiah is talking about here. The late tribulation rapture view is called the pre-wrath view, and that's very misleading. How can it be pre-wrath when the wrath is scattered all throughout the tribulation period. At any rate, the tribulation and millennium are what Isaiah addresses.

He does not address the church, as we pointed out last week, because it was simply not revealed in his time. The pre-tribulation rapture is what we teach here, because we see it in scripture so clearly pointing to that one singular conclusion. And so the other views, we'll let them go down.

Cruel with fury and burning anger. So what's the perspective on anger that makes God's anger any different morally from human anger? Why is it that God can be angry when we're not supposed to be? How could that be? Well, one thing, God who lives in the eternal present, and that's one thing that's, I think, important for us to look at, we oftentimes will think of God moving through time as we do.

Well, scripture does not indicate that. Jesus indicated it very clearly when he was talking to the Jews. Here is God incarnate. He is talking to the Jews and what does he say? Before Abraham was born, here's time warped for you, I am. He doesn't say I was, he says I am. He doesn't just say I live in time eternally, he says I live in the eternal present. The time that you count as before and right now and after, He says, I'm there right now all the time.

God lives in the eternal present and He looks at all times as right now. He has a different perspective than we do. He looks at things with infinite holiness, perfect holiness. All those in Adam fell short of God's perfect holiness. What happens? It is all those in Adam who seek life. All those in Adam seek life apart from the Lord. And they, with no other choice, unless they choose the Lord's option, with no other choice, work very, very hard for the wages that they get.

Sin pays wages very dutifully. here in Romans 6.23, for the wages of sin is death. Isn't that interesting? If you want death, you're going to have to work for it. Work really hard. As a matter of fact, that's the only thing that you're going to do if you don't choose the Lord's option.

The free gift of God is eternal life in Christ. It's interesting that these words that Paul chose, because he's writing to the church at Rome, which is, of course, the head of the Roman Empire, The soldiers got absonia as their regular pay, and when a new emperor, a new ruler would come on, the new ruler would give them a free gift to all the soldiers. It was a gift that they didn't earn. Those are the words that Paul chose. You want death? You're going to have to work for it. But eternal life? That's a free gift. You can't earn it. Notice that wages are a payment for work.

You can look at Romans 3.28 and compare that as well. Now, God is also the originator of everything. Not only is His perspective different, He is the one who started everything.

Therefore, His anger about, what did I intend, is different from ours. We don't really have a place, when we look at the universe, to say, what did I intend? It's what God intended when He created. that puts him in a unique place. We didn't create it. We didn't make it.

He brought sinless beings at the outset with choice. He made angels and human beings with the capacity to choose against him. He created those angels and human beings. He did not create space aliens from anything we have any specifics from in scripture. Scripture does not say that he created Vulcans or Klingons or Britney Spears.

Alright, so, those who choose their own way, that is, they choose not to be a part of God's eternal purpose, they seek life apart from God. It's the character of the sin nature. It is always looking for life apart from God. It looks at God's option for life and it says, no thanks, I'd rather do it myself. and he has a settled animosity towards and about. God has a settled wrath against seeking life apart from him. He, the source of life, the very definition of life.

It says here he will exterminate his sinners, and that's the reason for the bugs that you saw earlier. I know I think there was at least one of the kids here asking a question about that. It's this word exterminate, which we usually think of as the bugs. But it's not really the major problem in the world. The major problem is human sin.

It's the pursuit of life apart from the Creator. It is spiritual death to pursue life apart from Him, because there is no life apart from Him. Sinners aren't the ones that commit simply acts of sin. They are those who act out the sin that is in them by nature. That's what is at issue here. the ones chronically expressing that internal spiritual character of the sin nature. That's what sinners are. As a believer in Christ, you are not by nature a sinner. You have been separated from that nature.

Let's look at verse 10. He goes on there, The stars of heaven and the constellations will not flash forth their light. The sun will be dark when it rises, and the moon will not shed its light. We've put this in a sort of a poetic pattern here to emphasize a trio of parallel messages. Here are these heavenly beings that have now been dimmed and darkened. The sun, moon, and stars will be darkened before the second coming of the Lord.

This is a truth that is taught repeatedly in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. Isaiah, not only in this passage we're looking at now, but we'll say it again in chapter 24. We also see other passages into the Gospels. and Acts and Revelation, the same message is repeated. Scripture clearly teaches this as occurring during the tribulation period. Scripture is, in fact, quite consistent about what's going to take place and how it will take place.

So, you might be asking the question, what does God have against the stars and the sun and the moon? What do they do? How come they get to be darkened? What's their problem? Well, think about this. We've been given these various bodies in the heavenlies. And some of them are phenomenal. We've got technology these days where we can see things that were not even visible in Isaiah's time. And we get a perspective on them that is truly magnificent. Even to the point of meteors and things of that sort. Here's one that happened to land. So, what did people do with their astronomical observations in Isaiah's day? What did they do with the things that they saw? Did human beings respond as God intended? Maybe that's the way to put it.

Here's Genesis 1. Here's the very outset. Here, God created everything. There was no sin. What did God intend? God created the things in the heavens to mark time for us, and he created for them to give light in the day and then in the night. Those were the two purposes stated there in Genesis 1.

Now, the other spiritual purpose is Psalm 19.1, telling the glory of God, declaring the work of His hands. So, the question, did human beings respond as God intended? Not so much.

Here's Romans 1.18-21. I'll look at verse 20 there in the middle of the sandwich. For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen being understood through what has been made. Do people see that? Is that how people view it? Is that how people understand things when they look at the heavens? Not really.

How about this, Romans 1.25, a little farther down the passage, For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator. One of the things we saw that was relevant in Isaiah's time and shortly thereafter into the New Testament time, Assyrians worshipped Shammash, the sun god, in Egypt is Amun or Amun-Ra, the temple of Apollo in Corinth during Paul's time. He walks into Corinth on his second missionary journey and there is a temple to Apollo, the sun god. Babylonians had a moon god, Sin. Isn't that amazing? What a name. And here is Ephesus.

Here is Paul in Acts chapter 19. He is in Ephesus and all the people who were involved in the two-hour riot yell for this screaming period of time, great is Artemis of the Ephesians, great is Artemis of the Ephesians. And you know, we find that in inscriptions around the city. So what we found that they yelled and Luke wrote about is exactly what's inscribed around the city in various places. It was in this place that they screamed about their devotion to Artemis of the Ephesians.

And here's what the town clerk said, that the city of Ephesians is the guardian of the temple of the great Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and of the image which fell down from heaven, likely a meteorite. Look at Artemis too, the garland around her neck is the signs of the zodiac.

Even into New Testament times, how did they view the things in the heavenlies? They viewed them as things that controlled their lives, but did not acknowledge the true God, the one that created them all. In our own day, there are still many who pay attention to their horoscopes, ranging from, oh, just mild curiosity, I wonder what it says about me today, to intensive study, even singing songs about it. Then there are those in the scientific arena who want us to believe that we owe our very existence to these astronomical phenomenon, In the end, even our destinies depend upon what happens with these astronomical beings.

Now, verse 11. He says, thus I will punish, and here is God speaking first person, I will punish the world for its evil and the wicked for their iniquity, plus I will also put an end to the arrogance of the proud and abase the haughtiness of the ruthless. Guess what we have? A Hebrew poetry pattern, yes. And for our guests, you'll have to explain what all this flashing stuff is, okay? I'll just have to leave it to you. Okay.

Now, one of the things to take note of is Isaiah is talking about the Assyrians who were profoundly cruel, but whose cruelty was matched by the Babylonians that he also speaks of in this chapter. Notice the words that we have underlined here. Arrogance, proud, haughtiness, ruthless. Get the impression? These were people who were very arrogant and that arrogance, that pride, that haughtiness was very closely connected to their ruthlessness. In fact, what we know, and we have these pictures, by the way, these engravings are from the palace walls. It shows their cruelty. We'll talk about that cruelty in a minute.

It's no wonder that Jonah ran. Jonah was told, go to the capital city of Assyria, these cruel people, and tell them that if they repent, I'll forgive them. So what did Jonah say? Oh no! I don't want you to forgive these people! Please don't forgive them! And so he ran the other way. Here is this thing. These are a very ruthless people. They are very proud of it to the point, and we'll get into the detail here in a minute, that they put their cruelties on the palace walls for their children to see as they're growing up. They put the cruelty on the palace wall so that as people in the royal family walk the halls, they can be so proud and so well reminded of their cruelty. This likely explains the fact why Jonah was reluctant to go to preach at Nineveh and why the Lord sent a great fish to swallow him up.

Not that. That doesn't work. That's better. Okay. So now, here's the cruelty. Here is Elamites being tied down and skinned alive. That was a part of the cruelty. That's the kind of cruelty that Isaiah talked about and said, the Lord's going to put an end to it. Okay? This is not good. Here's another one.

It was believed, and it actually was believed up into the Middle Ages and even up to the time of the Reformation, that if you ground up the bones of your ancestors that they couldn't be resurrected. So the Assyrians would force people on penalty of pain to grind up the bones of their ancestors, of their own ancestors in front of them. That was a part of their cruelty, basically meaning that their ancestors could not be resurrected, never have an afterlife. Now, the Babylonians who overthrew the Assyrians, you might think, oh good, the Babylonians got rid of them.

No, it's even worse. They came in almost seven decades after the end of Isaiah's life, They were not less cruel, just differently cruel. The Babylonians would punish people by killing whole families. In other words, they wouldn't just say, you've got a problem. They'd say, you've got a problem, therefore the whole family goes, and we're going to obliterate your house so that there's not even any evidence that you ever lived there. They would burn people alive and other tortures. I kind of bounced this off of Nancy. She said, you shouldn't describe that.

Other things that were just too awful. In her own day, I'm afraid we've got some cruelties that are just as awful and against which the Lord will bring judgment as well, or He already has. But the rise and fall of empires, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Serbia's Milosevic, the one who's involved with Kosovo, and many others. I apologize if I forgot your favorite despot.

Okay, but the capacity, think about this, the capacity of the sin nature to express incredible evil is almost unbelievable. The capacity of the sin nature to be just wretchingly awful, to be agonizingly painful, is beyond belief, and yet it's real. This is one reason, as we see the capacity of the sin nature, because truly the sin nature does not always look as bad as it can be, It's one of the reasons why the Lord does see the character of it, and why the Lord is so deeply disgusted by it, not just once in a while, but continuously.

In the end, God's justice will come for all of it. Think about it. Why is God justified in His anger towards sin? We look at these three verses and we say, heaven sakes, the Lord is really, really angry. Is that justifiable? God has this ultimate disgust for these expressions of the sin nature. And where it stands out is it is in great contrast to His amazing grace.

If we look at it here, since mankind fell on Adam, God has been offering salvation by faith to everyone on the planet, to all human beings, because of His infinite and equally unfathomable love for all those of Adam's race. He satisfied his own character, his own righteousness, his own justice, his own holiness, his own love in Christ's death on the cross for us. God's wrath, as we see here expressed in Isaiah 13, 9-11, was expressed directly upon Christ. Christ received the wrath of the whole world sufficient to pay for the sins of the whole world. Everyone.

1 John 2.2 brings that forward real clearly.

The only requirement, the sole requirement, not to be added to or to be adjusted or to be taken away from, is belief. That's it. It doesn't matter what other admirable qualities someone might think that you or I have. It's belief, pure and simple. Nothing more, nothing less.

The person who believes, however, is not just forgiven of sins. Wouldn't that be something? Just to think that the Lord paid the price at his expense for our sins to be forgiven. But now he goes way, way beyond that and says, no, you're forgiven, which is a huge debt for him to pay. But, he says, I will also bless you. I will bless you unfathomably. I will bless you so much it will take eternity for you to begin to grasp the depth of that blessing, the magnitude of it.

This isn't done because of anything we've done. It's not done because of anything we've not done. It's not because we've said, I'm not going to do this, therefore God will bless me. No. It's entirely God's accomplishment on the basis of what? We believe. That's it. Nothing more. We believe in Christ's death. on the cross for our sins, His burial and His resurrection for newness of life for us. We've been identified with Christ entirely as a gift.

Why would God be wrathful? Certainly He has a basis for wrath in His character and the absolute rejection of Him even more because He said, I have paid the price at my own expense to forgive you. I, beyond that, at my own expense have blessed you to the point where it will take eternity for you to begin to grasp it. And I want to reward you on top of that. Why in heaven's name would you reject that? Why? That's what the wrath is about. It is not simply God's absolute rejection of the sin nature and all its expressions, but it's also the rejection of the Savior, who not only saved us for forgiveness, but blessed us and desires to reward us.

Let's pray. Lord, we thank you as we look at this passage. It would be easy to look upon it and to say, my, what a negative passage. And yet, in truth, it's got so much marvelous blessing, grace, and mercy built into it. and shown in it, and it shows the basis for the expression of your wrath to come. And as we look at it here this morning, and as we ponder the Lord's table, and taking that here this morning, what a wonderful and marvelous thing you have done for us. A thing so marvelous that we could spend a month of Sundays looking at it. and still just begin to grasp the vastness of it. Thank you for your amazing grace and marvelous love towards us. In Jesus' name, amen.