Sin City
Have you ever wondered what it was like emotionally for those who lived through World War II as it came to its conclusion? Some of you may know what it was like but most of us probably only have an idea. I imagine it was different depending on whether or not one identified themselves with the winning Allied or losing Axis powers.
Those who found themselves on the losing side likely had their heads hanging low, finding no reason for optimism, and no reason to celebration. Resources were low, and many loved ones were lost. It’s not just a military loss, but also a loss of morale as well. It would have been a time of despair.
Those who found themselves on the winning side likely had reason to celebrate! They were victorious, and probably had a more positive outlook on things. Yet even underlying the joys of victory, there was probably a sense of grief that came with it. Some people lost dearly loved friends and family, and the anxious waiting likely took its toll. The victory came with no lack of suffering and loss, and potentially with remorse for the other side as well. This is the kind of tension we will see today in our passage.
Introducing new themes
Before we get there, I need to note that Chapter 24 serves as a transition in this section of Isaiah, and so far this sermon series has largely been a lesson on trust. The human nations around Israel were not to be trusted, and God revealed how he would bring their power, their pride, their glory and their gods to nothing.
After this, one might feel as though the nations are actors doing their own thing, and that God is simply reacting to them. This next section will make it very clear that is not the case. Yahweh is working and purposing everything for their appointed end. And we will see this as God addresses his judgment to the whole world in today’s passage.
There are two themes that we will see come up in these chapters, and they are each shown as a contrast. The first theme is song. There is the song of the ruthless and the song of the redeemed. The second theme is of cities, the ruthless city of earth, and the city of salvation.
Today’s passage will primarily focus on the city of the ruthless, the earth city.
The Size of Sin (Vv. 1-6, 17-20)
With that we will look at today’s passage, starting with verses 1-3. These verses are bracketed by statements that the earth will be emptied and made desolate, and it is made very clear that this will be the Lord’s doing, for he has spoken it. God has said, and therefore it will happen. Just as God spoke the world into existence, he can speak it out of existence.
We also see in verse 2 that this desolation will affect everyone. There will be no-one exempt from this, whether rich or poor, high or low. No-one can escape. But why does God have to do this? Reading further we see why.
“The earth mourns and withers; the world languishes and withers; the highest people of the earth languish. The earth lies defiled under its inhabitants.”
The word “defiled” here is better translated as “polluted” as the NASB translates it to communicate the idea. We see this as one of the results of Adam and Eve’s sin in the garden in Genesis 3, when the ground is cursed because of them, as it both fights against sinners and reveals that the earth which God declared good has been damaged because of them.
God then states three charges against the inhabitants of the world in verse 5. First, they have transgressed the laws, better understood as authoritative instruction. So, the charge is that they disregarded divine instruction that was given for their good.
Second, they violated the statutes, or as the King James Version says, they changed them. The second charge is that the world has not only disregarded God’s instruction, but have created their own system of morality in replacement of his.
Third, they have broken the everlasting covenant. The covenant being referred to here is the covenant that God made with Noah.
We have just finished a Sunday school series on the covenants in the Bible, and if you would like to learn more about covenant in the Bible I encourage you to find them on the church website under the resources tab. Or there is also a sermon series from a few years before that on the bottom of the home page titled “You are Here.”
In short, this covenant was made with Noah on behalf of all humanity, restating much of the covenant God made with Adam that had been broken, and they are to be fruitful and multiply, filling the earth, as well as uphold justice, in order to honour the image of God in man. By failing to do this, the inhabitants of the world refused fellowship with their creator.
This is why the earth is cursed, and those who dwell on it suffer. It is a consequence of their own sin. This is why God must empty it and reconstruct it. The weight of wickedness is enough to corrupt the the whole world.
And there will be no escape either, moving ahead to verses 17-20 (we will be returning to verse 7-16 later), “Terror and the pit and the snare are upon you, O inhabitant of the earth! He who flees at the sound of the terror shall fall into the pit, and he who climbs out of the pit shall be caught in the snare.” Even if someone tries to flee, they will fall into a pit, and even if they manage to climb out of that pit they will be caught in another trap.
I am reminded of 2012, a year where the world was predicted to end in my conscious lifetime and some had built doomsday bunkers which ended up being a multi-million dollar industry.
Or in more recent memory during COVID-19, where people had stockpiled hand sanitizer and toilet paper, shutting themselves up in their homes. Doomsday prepping and bunkers will not save anyone in this event. There will be no escape because “the windows of heaven are opened.”
This is the same language that was used in Genesis 7:11 when God opened the windows of heaven to pour out the flood in the days of Noah. The earth is broken, split apart, violently shaken, staggered and swaying under the weight of the waters. But the water is only an image and the real weight that lies heavy upon the earth is the weight of its transgression.
When a house is rotting, because there is mold in the walls and trash litters the floors in heaps and mounds, the proper course of action is to either demolish the whole thing, or to empty it and strip it down to the framing and rebuild. By the end of either process, the house is made new. In much the same way, God will empty the earth and recreate it, and the recreation part will be described in more detail in the following chapters in following weeks.
The Sovereign Supreme (Vv. 21-23)
God’s judgment moves in verse 21 from the earth to the everything created. He will “punish the powers in the heavens above, and the kings of the earth below” as the NIV translates it. The gods of the nations, as well as their kings will be shut up in a prison.
When a rebellion arose, opposing a king, the rebels would be imprisoned until the king had final control over the uprising. Then the king would make a reasoned judgment in response to their treachery, and declare their sentence.
“Then the moon will be confounded, and the sun ashamed.” In the time of Isaiah, the sun and the moon were considered to be deities. But God puts the lie to that. They are just as much a creation of his, and just as much subject to him as anything else he has made. He is the one who said, “let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night” in Genesis 1. And he can shut them up in a dark dungeon should he choose to do so. In fact, there will be no need for them anymore in the new creation, because it is the glory of Christ that will be the light for the new earth.
God alone will be Israel’s king, reigning from Mount Zion, and his glory will be before his elders. The elders once led God’s people astray earlier in the book of Isaiah. But now, whether they have turned from their old ways or were replaced, they will take part in his coronation. The image presented in Revelation 4:9-11 fits this nicely, where the elders cast down their crowns before him, that he had bestowed them, and give him the glory.
There is an irony in this, that God will judge those who seek to glorify themselves, yet he will give glory to those who humble themselves before him, and it will be given back to him. It is as we heard in last week’s sermon, that God opposes the proud, and gives grace to the humble.
The Songs of Saints and Sinners (Vv. 7-16)
Finally, we will move back to look at the middle of this passage in verses 7-16. “The wine mourns, the vine languishes, all the merry-hearted sigh. The mirth of the tambourines is stilled, the noise of the jubilant has ceased, the mirth of the lyre is stilled.” We see the city of the ruthless seeking immediate and earthly joy and satisfaction in a lifestyle of partying. But as we saw earlier in verses 4-6, the earth will not work for those who oppose its creator.
J. Alec Motyer wrote about the irony here: that it is their spiritual depravity that brings them to rely on the earth’s productive powers instead of God, and also to destroy its productivity at the same time. Not only the fruit but also the vine will fail, and their wine will be bitter to those who drink it.
“No more will they drink with singing.” This is a striking picture. What is something that drunk people often do without inhibitions. They sing! There is a reason there is often karaoke and jukeboxes in bars. Generally speaking, drunk people sing. But their song will be stilled at the time of God’s judgment.
Their city will be broken down. The word for wasted here is the same one used in Genesis 1, where it says the world was formless. In other words it is nothing but chaos. The picture of a city is fitting here, because what could be more representative of human innovation and industry? And it’s all brought to nothing.
The people rejected God, and he removed his ordering and life-giving hand. They got exactly what they wanted, and it severely backfired.
The city that once celebrated with wine and music has been silenced in its ruin. To paraphrase what Franz Delitzch wrote about this passage, as the essence of this city was destruction of the harmony of the divine order, it’s destruction back into chaos would be it’s end.
There is now a scarcity of wine, and those who would depend on it as a means of joy cry out for its absence. “All joy has grown dark; the gladness of the earth is banished.” It has been irretrievably lost.
The gates of a city would have been gathering places, filled with people coming and going, and they are in ruins. Gates were also structures of defense, and now the city is left completely vulnerable.
Verses 4-12 pictures for its readers successive hammer blows, sinking nails into the world’s coffin.
This will be the condition of the world. As an olive tree beaten. Olive trees were beaten with sticks to bring down the olives, and only a few stray clusters would be left at the end of the harvest. The world will be reduced to bits and pieces.
This next part is probably the most difficult to interpret. As best as I can determine after studying this passage, the best way to explain this is that the people lifting their voices are the “few” in verse 6, and the “gleanings” of verse 13.
This is a righteous remnant singing with joy songs of praise, glorifying God. This is the song of the oppressed in response to the city of wickedness being destroyed, recognizing they have been delivered by God. This is God receiving his due glory in response to his justice.
The command to the east to give glory seems to indicate Isaiah’s excitement in the song he is hearing from the west. And the song spreads from the west to the east, to the ends of the earth. The earth will be unified in singing praise, in worshipping the Righteous One.
This is a glorious window into the future, but it is as if Isaiah snaps back to reality, away from this picture to the present condition of the world. It is as if he is asking, “but what of events until then, how can this be?” He laments at his wasting away in his present evil age, because “the traitors have betrayed, with betrayal the traitors have betrayed.” How much treachery has to take place until the gavel falls, sentencing them to their just end?
Based on Isaiah’s response in verses 17-20 which we have already looked at, it also seems appropriate to see a sense of grief for the eternal destinies of his fellow men. Even back in Isaiah 6, he declared himself a man of unclean lips among a people of unclean lips.
Paul expressed a similar sentiment in Romans 9, where he says he has great sorrow and unceasing anguish in his heart, wishing that he could be accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of his Israelite brothers. I imagine we all know people who have gone their own way, and we long for them to turn back towards God while they still can, before it is too late, perhaps wishing ourselves accursed for their sake. This seems to be Isaiah’s burden as well for those headed towards judgment.
What does this mean for us?
Now we have seen from Isaiah chapter 24; how deep the corruption of sin goes, how Isaiah despaired over the condition of the world and over those who rebel against God, how God will bring justice to the earth, and how his people will rejoice in his justice.
The question now is, “what does this mean for us today?” There are three applications from this passage that I will propose to us today.
Only God is Trustworthy, Not the World
First, we should ask ourselves the question: where is our trust? We have seen in this passage people depending on the means of the earth to bring them some kind of joy. We saw people using alcohol and partying as a way to cope with the darkness they earned for themselves. Even the sun and the moon can’t be trusted to last forever.
In the time of Isaiah, people largely did not comprehend that history would come to an end or be radically changed. They just lived with their gods above them, and the ground below them.
We see this even today where people simply expect the sun to rise every morning.
Why should we expect to wake up the next morning when lay our heads? Do we sometimes take tomorrow for granted, forgetting that it is God who upholds the universe by the word of his power (Heb. 1:3)? I’m asking myself this question as much as I ask everyone else here.
Saying we believe in God, yet living in such a way where we are unaffected by his existence, or relying on ourselves or others instead of God is what some have called “practical atheism.”
Are we practical atheists in certain areas of our lives? In all our plans we are to say, “if the Lord wills, we will do such and such a thing” (James 4:13-15). We do not exist to simply go through the motions relying on our own strength, but to give glory to God in all that we do, and God is glorified when we depend on him.
I don’t know of a better gauge of our trust in God and our dependence on him than prayer. Simply put, someone who says they’re a Christian but doesn’t pray is at the very least inconsistent, and at worst an unbeliever. If there is an area in my life that I struggle it is this, I do not pray enough.
I hope I am speaking for all of us parents here, when our children come to us with problems or ask for our help, more often than not we are delighted and honoured to be trusted by our children. In the same way God delights in hearing the prayers of his children.
And sometimes we see what our child needs instead of what they ask for, and provide an answer according to their needs rather than their desires, and God often does the same in answer to our prayers as well. God can be trusted to provide for us as we need.
Not only this, but he can be trusted to forgive us for our sins when we confess them to him (1 John 1:9). We are perhaps the most vulnerable with God when we are in this position, having sinned and needing forgiveness. Jesus has already payed the price for our wickedness, and our confessing of sin is one of the greatest ways we can express our trust in his sacrifice.
Finally, concerning prayer, it changes us, and teaches us to think more like God does. As we think more like him, we pray for what he desires, and this is one of the ways we are conformed to be more like Christ.
Consider all that God has done for you, and what there is to be thankful for. He is literally giving you every breath you take right now. He has placed you in a church family that cares for your soul. Please don’t take that for granted. Know that he is faithful and can be depended on. Put your hope in him who saves you rather than the world.
The World Needs to Know Her Maker
Second, to repeat something that was said two weeks ago, Isaiah was burdened by his prophecies. Today we heard a prophecy of judgment against the world, and it is therefore our burden now as well.
The whole world will be judged, so the whole world must hear of the one who can save them. The reality that the world will be judged should ignite a desire in us to bring the gospel to those who have not heard it before that time comes. I’m talking about missions.
God’s model for the spread of the gospel is missions. People cannot believe in and call on a God they have never heard of, therefore Christians need to go to the unreached to tell them (Rom. 10:14-15). This does not necessarily mean just going overseas; we have a great example in our church as a few men and their families are preparing to plant a church in Flin Flon, seeing there is great spiritual need there.
Many First Nations reserves in Canada are so poorly served spiritually. If there is Christian influence it is highly likely to be a false gospel, whether it is guaranteed prosperity, works-based salvation, or syncretism—which is the blending of Christianity and false religions.
But for some of you, missions may involve turning your life upside down and setting aside any semblance of comfort, and it may even lead you to your grave. And even then it would be so worth it, to see brothers and sisters from different tribes, languages and nations singing praises to God, glorifying him for his justice, and sharing in the joy of knowing him, from the west to the east as we saw in verse 16, which leads us into our last point of application for today.
The Tension Between Grief and Joy
Third, there is a tension that we must hold between grief for this age, our own sin, and those who choose to rebel against God, and joy in expectation for the age to come, the new creation, and for God’s glory in punishing the wicked. We saw this tension in Isaiah’s elation to see the future praise of his king, and his sinking into despair over his current reality.
It is no secret that we deal with suffering in this age. Often this suffering comes at the hands of those who rebel against God or the corrupted condition of this earth as it fights against us. 2 Peter 4:12-14 tells us we should not be surprised to go through fiery trials, but to rejoice as we share in Christ’s suffering. We are actually blessed if we are persecuted, because the Spirit of God dwells in us. To be in Isaiah’s position, saying “woe is me, I am wasting away” is to be blessed.
But often we suffer as the consequence of our own sins. We have seen that the world is broken as a result of our sin in today’s passage, and it is not wrong to lament its present condition, to lament over our own sin and the sins of others as Isaiah had.
In fact, I believe we are seeing things as God does when we are sorrowful over our sin as well as the sins of others. It is a good thing to experience godly sorrow over sin and its effects on the world.
Grief is not all that we should feel. It is actually with the backdrop of darkness that the light is made even brighter. Without the dark of night, we would not see the light of the stars. And this present darkness has an appointed end of future light.
We can experience joy today and praise Jesus for coming into this broken planet, living the sinless life we should have lived, and dying on the cross, taking upon himself the planet-shattering wrath of God that belonged to all of those who would believe in him and follow him, and rising from the grave, having satisfied his Father’s wrath for us.
We can express joyous expectation and celebrate the fact that Jesus will come again, and deliver us from this wicked world. We can look forward eagerly to the new creation and say, “come, Lord Jesus.”
Every tear will be wiped away, and our sin will be no more! Can you even comprehend that? A life with no sin any longer. An eternity of glorifying our saviour as he deserves without the slightest taint upon our souls holding us back! This present age of suffering is only the prologue to an eternity of joyous celebration with our saviour.
I would be remiss if I didn’t say this is only for those who put their faith in Jesus, and follow him, becoming citizens of the city of salvation. If you are not submitting your life to him, and do not acknowledge him as your lord and saviour, his wrath remains over you as a citizen of the world. Rather than a prologue to the eternity I just mentioned, it will be the precursor to eternal conscious torment in a place known as hell.
Sin is so serious because it is cosmic treason against the eternal creator who made you to worship him. Because he is the perfect and eternal king of all, the slightest treachery is deserving of his eternal wrath.
The judgment described in this passage will come, but for now today is the day of salvation. I have heard it said this way, it is as though God is currently holding back his wrath with one hand behind him, and beckoning the world to come to him with the other in front of him. But one day, both hands will be dropped.
Please do not leave here today without considering your position before God. The joy I just described could be yours if you would lay down your life, pick up your cross, and follow Jesus.
What will your song be when all is said and done? Praise, or silence?
As we go to the Lord’s table, let us look forward to the future celebration we will have, singing and feasting at the marriage supper, giving all glory to God. For he reigns victorious and just.