Isaiah 48:1-8

SOVEREIGN IN WISDOM, CHAPTER 48

a.

PROOF

TEXT: Isaiah 48:1-8

1

Hear ye this, O house of Jacob, who are called by the name of Israel, and are come forth out of the waters of Judah; who swear by the name of Jehovah, and make mention of the God of Israel, but not in truth nor in righteousness.

2

For they call themselves of the holy city, and stay themselves upon the God of Israel; Jehovah of hosts is his name.

3

I have declared the former things from of old; yea, they went forth out of my mouth, and I showed them: suddenly I did them, and they came to pass.

4

Because I knew that thou art obstinate, and thy neck is an iron sinew, and thy brow brass;

5

therefore I have declared it to thee from of old; before it came to pass I showed it thee; lest thou shouldest say, Mine idol hath done them, and my graven image, and my molten image, hath commanded them.

6

Thou hast heard it; behold all this; and ye, will ye not declare it? I have showed thee new things from this time, even hidden things, which thou hast not known.

7

They are created now, and not from of old; and before this day thou heardest them not; lest thou shouldest say, Behold, I knew them.

8

Yea, thou heardest not; yea, thou knewest not; yea, from of old thine ear was not opened: for I knew that thou didst deal very treacherously, and wast called a transgressor from the womb.

QUERIES

a.

What are the waters of Judah?

b.

What are the former things Jehovah showed?

c.

What are the new things being shown?

PARAPHRASE

Listen to this, you descendants of Jacob whom I have called Israel, you who are from the royal tribe of Judah and who take their oaths in the name of Jehovah boasting of your relationship to Him; I know that your relationship is not in truth or righteousness! You boast of your citizenship in the holy city of Jehovah and of your dependence upon Him; but do you not realize He is the Lord God Almighty?!
The Lord says to Israel, For centuries I have been proving to you My sovereignty in wisdom by predicting what would take place; then suddenly I brought it to pass. I knew beforehand that you would be stubborn and unbending and hard-headed. And so I predicted your future long ago, telling you through prophets what was going to happen to you before it happened. I had my prophets predict your future centuries in advance so you would realize I am sovereign in wisdom and not the idols of wood and stone you worship. You have seen all My prophecies come true thus far, but you have refused to confess the truth of it, haven-'t you? Now I am predicting, through My prophets, new revelationsthings impossible for you to know unless I tell you. These are completely new things; nothing like this has taken place in the past. You cannot say of these things, This is no proof of Jehovah's sovereigntywe knew this all along! The reason you never got the message from all My revelations, both present and past, is you deliberately chose to close your ears to My word. I know you, Israel, you have been treacherous and rebellious from the days you became a nation!

COMMENTS

Isaiah 48:1-5 PERSEVERANCE OF JEHOVAH: God addresses the people of Isaiah's day sternly. Shama (hear) means to heed and obey. It appears they call themselves Israel but God addresses them as house of Jacob. Whether there is an intended sarcasm on the part of Jehovah or not is not easy to determine. Certainly God permitted writers of the Bible to employ sarcasm in their attempts to call men to repentance. We have discussed the difference between the terms Jacob and Israel earlier. Coming forth out of the waters of Judah simply means the audience of Isaiah's writing are the people of the southern kingdom whose main source is Judah (see Deuteronomy 33:28; Psalms 68:26 for similar phraseology). The main point in citing the three names (Jacob, Israel and Judah) is to emphasize their culpability for not trusting the message Isaiah is giving them about captivity, Cyrus-' future return of the exiles and the messianic destiny in their future. These are people of Jehovahthey are His specially graced people, but they do not hear. They make mention of Jehovah but not in truth or righteousness. To acknowledge the name of God in truth means to hear and obey what God has revealed for man to obey. Whoever says I know Him but does not keep His commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him (cf. 1 John 2:3-6). They worshipped Jehovah with lip-service but their hearts were far from Him (cf. Isaiah 29:13-14). They boasted of their citizenship in the holy city (where the temple of Jehovah was located) and they glibly declared their allegiance to Jehovah but it did not seem to register on their minds that He Is Jehovah-Zev-'oth (zev-'oth is Hebrew for armies, hosts, myriads and is also used for war, battle, etc.). In other words, Jehovah is Lord of all! He is Lord of earth and heaven. He is Lord of the inward man as well as the outward man. He knows everything created everything and commands everything.

Judah should have acknowledged His lordship with their hearts as well as their lips for Jehovah had proven His sovereignty in centuries past by predicting (through the mouths of His messengers) the events of Judah's history long before they came to pass. Jehovah also demonstrated through His prophets that He knew the hidden, secret thoughts of men (e.g., Nathan and David). The nation and individuals often knew years and centuries in advance of the coming of minutely-detailed events. Many of these events came to pass suddenly without any gradual development or advanced signals. Two needs of the Hebrew people are the motivation prompting Jehovah to predict their future; (a) their obstinacy and hardheadedness toward His sovereignty must be broken; (b) they must acknowledge once and for all that idols are not godsthere is only One God, Jehovah. This indicates that God's primary purpose in predicting the future is not simply to satisfy the curiosity of man about tomorrow. No theology should be built on eschatology! Our theology should be built on the character of the One who knows about tomorrow, not on when and what tomorrow will bring. The only reason God foretells the future is to demonstrate His sovereignty! That is the point! Once man surrenders to His omnipotence and omniscience he does not need to know the future (cf. Matthew 6:25-34; Acts 1:7). Prophecy fulfilled is a means to an end, not an end in itself. The end is to believe God's revelation of Himself and to accept His written word from the hands of the writers as being validated (cf. 2 Peter 1:16-21, etc.).

Isaiah 48:6-8 PERVERSITY OF JUDAH: The onus is put squarely upon the perverse people of Judah. You have had opportunities to know all these past predictions and their fulfillments; I remind you to study them again, would be Jehovah's challenge to Judah. The question of verse six is undoubtedly rhetorical: And you, you will not declare it, will you? or, And you, how can you not declare it? The meaning is that what the Lord predicted came to pass and they must acknowledge the factuality of it even if they do not obey the moral implications of it! This shows that unbelief is a moral problem, not an evidential one!

But now, the Lord is predicting new things (things that will have their fulfillment yet in the future). Among these things (so incredible for Judah to accept) were the captivities, release from captivity by a pagan ruler and a coming Messiah who is bringing a way of salvation which is absolutely foreign to their present dispensation. Salvation by grace, through faith in the substitutionary atonement of the Messiah (Isaiah 53, et al.) had to be by revelationit had to be a new prediction because it could never have been thought-up by the human mind (cf. 1 Corinthians 1:18 to 1 Corinthians 2:16). This plan of salvation was created by God and worked out in His sovereign plans (cf. Romans 9:10, Romans 9:11) as a mystery to be revealed (cf. Ephesians 1:3-10, etc.). God predicted it all and typified it all in the Old Testament dispensation, to be sure (cf. Romans 3:21-22; see special study, The Righteousness of God As Revealed by The Prophets, page 282), but it was dim and abstruse (cf. Hebrews 1:1). The Lord predicts and rules in history toward His goal of redemption. He reveals His will and plan for man; He reveals Himself (His own person, nature, charactereven in the flesh!). Man cannot know God's plan or God's nature until God reveals it. Man may not even be able to understand it all when it is revealed. But God revealed enough of it in human language (which is human experience) (cf. 1 Corinthians 2:13) and in human flesh (Jesus Christ; cf. John 1:1-18; 1 John 1:1-4, etc.) that man can know His will for salvation and obey His will for salvation.

In verse eight we have the reason God chose to hide these new things from Judah until He was ready to reveal them. The Hebrew syntax would indicate the latter half of the verse should read literally: dealing treacherously you would deal treacherously.. God did not let them knowHe did not open their ear to these new things because of their perversity. They were spiritually unprepared to hear them. He had yet to put them through a long period of indignation (the captivities, the return from exile, the centuries of the Greek-Seleucid oppression and the Roman oppression) before the new dispensation could come and be accepted. This verse definitely teaches the sovereign wisdom of God in a gradual revelation from Old Testament times to the New. There were things Jesus could not reveal to the twelve until after He had gone away because they were unable to bear them while He was with them in the flesh (cf. John 16:1-15). Fleshly-mindedness prohibits man from listening to God's word even when it is being spoken and revealed (cf. 1 Corinthians 2:6; 1 Corinthians 3:1-4; Hebrews 5:11-14, etc.). It was difficult for the apostle Peter to accept the revelation of Christ about His atoning death (cf. Matthew 16:21-23) because Peter simply refused to accept the concept of a dying Messiah! So, Isaiah says, until Judah stops its rebellion against Jehovah's sovereignty, she is not going to hear the new things Jehovah wants to reveal.

QUIZ

1.

What is Isaiah's point in mentioning the three names of the covenant people?

2.

Why must one obey the commandments of God to say I know Him?

3.

What two needs of the people prompted the Lord to reveal their future?

4.

Why should a theology not be built on an eschatological system?

5.

Has God revealed enough of His will to man?

6.

Why do most men not know God?