So you probably don't need me to say this to you if you're at all familiar with the Old Testament, "You're familiar with Isaiah." Maybe there's a way in which Isaiah is the most comfortable of the Old Testament books for those of us who tend to spend most of our time in the New Testament because it reads a lot like the New Testament because there's no Old Testament portion of Scripture where the gospel is more apparent and more obvious than it is in Isaiah.
I would title Isaiah, although this is really a title for every portion of Scripture in the Bible, "Looking for Jesus." You know, I do appreciate how all of the gospel themes, the themes of the gospel that we're familiar with are apparent in Isaiah, apparent there with a whole lot of digging.
Isaiah presents us this central reality; it's a God who is in our world and is holy beyond our understanding. There's this moment in the throne room that's captured in Isaiah 6 where we get to look into the throne room of Almighty God. We get to eavesdrop on the voices there, and we hear, "Holy! Holy! Holy! is the Lord God Almighty. The earth is filled with His glory." That glory of His holiness; it's trying to capture the expansiveness of the holiness of God.
God's holiness is not one of His characteristics; it's His essence! He's holy in every way. He's holy in grace and holy in righteous and holy in justice and holy in mercy and holy in faithfulness--He's holy!
But there's a second reality powerfully depicted in Isaiah. It's people who are corrupted by sin, unholy. You see gross idolatry; gross materialism; horrible, sad, cultural corruption; injustice; lack of care for the needy. You see a world as broken as the world that you live in. You know, as you look at the Internet or you follow the news, you think, "How can this world be this broken?" Well, that's Isaiah as well.
And then you see a God who acts. He doesn't just exist; He acts. And He acts in two ways. He acts in judgment and mercy. You wouldn't want to live in a world where there is no righteous judge because evil would reign without challenge. You wouldn't want to live in a world where there is no mercy because none of us could sustain life in that world. There's a God of justice and a God of mercy, and in that there's hope.
There's a fourth thing that's clearly there. Hope can't be found in us; it's only found in God. And so it makes sense that as Isaiah talks about justice and mercy, you have some of the clearest prophecies of the coming Messiah because that justice and that mercy will meet on the cross. Because of God's justice, Christ will die. Because of His mercy, He will die, and there is redemption found for us.
Isaiah preaches the gospel to us; the gospel that is a combination of bad news and good news. The good news culminates in the person and work of the Lord Jesus, which is the joy that's put before us, the joy of His coming in Isaiah!
