God’s Valley of Vision – Isaiah 22 — A Christian Growth Message

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Transcript

We are walking our way slowly but surely through the book of Isaiah, Isaiah chapter 22, we’re going to spend a few minutes in this chapter from the Old Testament, and it seems on first glance to be a very baffling and strange chapter.

I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember those pictures that they used to have where there would be a framed kind of mess or blur and you would stand and stare at it. And if your eyes did the right adjustment, a beautiful 3D picture would emerge. Does anybody know what I’m talking about?

And it’s a little bit like that with this particular chapter. Here is a chapter in the book of Isaiah in the Old Testament which describes a time of battle. There are some strange names. There’s the talk of building the walls, there’s talk of eating and drinking, and then later in the chapter we’re told that there are two men, one who’s going to be thrown like a ball far away, and one who’s going to be hammered like a peg into a very secure place.

And I looked at this knowing that this was my chapter for today, at the beginning of the week and I felt extremely confused.

But it is my job, that’s why I’m paid $10 a week, to spend time in the Word, which is what I did this week, I spent time in the Word and a great picture emerged, and I hope you’ll come with me and that we might see it together. By the way, if you’re ever reading the Bible and you come to a chapter or a section which is just in your opinion, a mess of ideas, do assume that the problem is you, not the text.

The text has stood for thousands of years and what we need to do when we see something like that is to do some work in order that the truths of the passage would come home to us, and they will, or find a good friend who’ll help you to see what’s there. Well, Isaiah, as you may remember, was God’s messenger, God’s prophet to God’s people. Can I remind you that Israel in his day, 800 BC, was North and South, two sections, but the North had been defeated.

It was very ominous for the people of the South, because they realised that they were not as permanent as they thought they were, but there was the south of Israel. Isaiah was the prophet to the south, and the people of the south had already begun to drift away from God. And so Isaiah was saying to them, if you drift too far, he’s going to discipline you. He’s gonna discipline you in a very uncomfortable way.

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So you need to listen to me very carefully. Now this is our 5th look in the prophet Isaiah. We saw first of all that he warns them, don’t drift away from God. We saw why God called him to be a messenger or a prophet. We saw that the long-term plan of God is to take them to a very good place, but in the short-term, if they continue in this turning their back on God, he will discipline them, a painful discipline.

So you see this is Isaiah like a doctor saying to his patient, the people of Israel, you’ve been smoking 100 cigarettes a day, there is now a large tumour, we can fix this, but there’s gonna have to be some painful surgery, and the people of God in Isaiah’s day were not listening.

So Isaiah begins to use all his communication skills to get them to listen.

And sadly of course they will not, and they will eventually be taken off to Babylon in exile and they’ll be there for 70 years and eventually they’ll come home.

But we’re going to divide this chapter into two simple halves, first of all verses 1 to 14, the verses we read a minute ago, and I’ve called this half two ways to follow, and the two ways to follow very simply are this, you can either go down the path of your own ideas, and we know how easy that is to do, or you can go down the path of God’s word. Two ways to follow.

And then the second half of the chapter which we haven’t read is verses 15 to 23, and I’ve called this two ways to finish. And we discover that you’re going to finish either a long way away from God or you’re going to finish very close to God.

So that’s the two things, the two halves of the chapter.

First of all, two ways to follow – chapter 22:1-14.

Look at, look at verse one, it begins by saying this, a prophecy or a message about the valley of vision, or we might say a prophecy concerning the valley of vision. Isaiah is describing Jerusalem, the capital of Israel, as a valley of vision.

Or we might say, you’ve come to a low point where you can think again.

You’ve come to a place of humility where you might start to think carefully. God has caused you to have a fall where you might come to your senses. er you’ve been brought low in order that you might wake up to yourself, and we know there are times where God causes our little world to crash, and we discover that we’re not as great and secure as we thought we were, we’ve been on a little bit of a pedestal.

But he causes our little world to crash and it’s often in those times we learn more than we did when we were standing on our pedestal. And so Isaiah says to Jerusalem, it’s opportunity time. You’re in the valley of vision, you’re in the pit of opportunity.

Now this is a bit of a shock for Jerusalem to hear this because in the last 9 chapters, Isaiah has been talking about the nations around them who God is going to bring down, and you can imagine the people of God as they listen to this public preacher called Isaiah describe how Babylon would be brought low, they said we love this.

And Egypt is going to be brought low, we love this, and Ethiopia is going to be brought low, we love this, and then he turns and says, Jerusalem, you’re going to be disciplined.

And it’s all very awkward…

So turning on Jerusalem, you see, is like me saying to you, well dear friends, you know that people who are without Christ are in big trouble and you’re in big trouble. It’s a shock to the system.

And the other thing of course is that Jerusalem was not built in a valley. Jerusalem was built on a hill.

And so to call Jerusalem a valley again is a little bit of a comedown, it’s a little bit of a shock. It would be like me saying to you this morning, well, it’s so nice to have you here all gathered in the little shoebox in Ocean Road. It’s just a little bit of a comedown. Isaiah is the only person who really is in the valley of vision. He’s the only person who is kind of humbly looking at what’s coming.

All the rest of God’s people are up on the roofs, you see that in verse one. What are you doing up on your roofs, says Isaiah. You should be down in the valley, there should be some humility. Things that are coming are quite worrying. Why are you so proud? Why are you up on your roofs, he says. These people are partying like partying on the Titanic.

And Isaiah is going around checking the lifeboats.

So this is the scene in verse 2, that he sees that he’s coming for them, and my friends, it did come.

There was a time where the Babylonian nation came and besieged the city of Jerusalem, and it was horrendous.

The people blocked any traffic in or out, the food ran out, it was a dreadful, dreadful siege.

And Isaiah predicts it here in verse 2, he says, you’ll see verse 2 that there are going to be people in the future who are dying, not by the sword. It’ll be by starvation. Verse 3, your leaders will be captured. Verse 4, I says Isaiah, am heartbroken.

This is not an enjoyable message at all for Isaiah, and what he was predicting took place in 586 BC, the Babylonian nation came and besieged the city of Jerusalem.

And eventually took the people into exile, so you see verse 5, Isaiah says, the Lord has a day, a day where your walls will fall down, and the people will come in and take you away.

Verse 6, referring to a couple of neighbours, Elam and Kir.

They will join the looting, they’ll join in the, the trouble. Verse 7, the place is gonna become a battlefield. That’s why Isaiah feels the burden of this.

Because of course the people are in the promised land and they expected it to all be wonderful and it was wonderful, but they are turning their back on God and so Isaiah has to warn them about the dangers of turning their back on God. Are the people going to listen to Isaiah? They’re not. I understand that if you go into the Louvre Museum in Paris, that the biggest painting in the Louvre is the painting of the wedding of Cana. Where Jesus turned the water into wine, but interestingly, hardly anybody ever looks at the painting for long. I wonder if you know why…

And the answer is because directly opposite is a very small painting called the Mona Lisa.

And almost everybody goes to the museum to see the Mona Lisa and they stand looking at this tiny little painting, and it’s almost like a parable, isn’t it? That the people are going to miss out on seeing the wedding, because they are distracted by this small picture of a celebrity. And that’s what Isaiah is warning these people about.

Because where you look is extremely significant. And where you look in a crisis is very significant.

Thousands and thousands of people, as we know, around the world are being brought low at the present. They’re being brought to the valley of vision, this is the pit or the prison of opportunity.

And unfortunately they look anywhere but up.

They look anywhere but in the right direction, because this is how Isaiah describes the tragedy verse 8, the Lord took away your defences, he says. That’s what’s gonna happen. He’s gonna take away your walls.

Not because he doesn’t love you. He does love you.

But he’s trying to teach you to turn back to him.

But you’re not going to turn back to him, that’s the sadness.

Well, how many people do we know, dear friends, who go through very deep water. And very deep quicksands. And they look in every possible direction but up. They look left and they look right and they look in and they look out, but they never look up.

And so we see in verse 8, Isaiah says to the people, it’s as if this has already taken place. You, you’ve tried collecting your weapons, verse 8, you’ve even gone to the palace to find all the spare weapons.

Verse 9, you’ve put your trust in your water supply, and there was a very wonderful water supply into the city of Jerusalem. It had been built by King Hezekiah. It was a kind of a, a long tunnel which brought water in from outside, and if you ever go to Jerusalem, you can walk the tunnel through the water. I’ve walked the tunnel.

And so, you know, you look to your walls, you look to your water, you look to your weapons, he says verse 10.

You even pulled your houses apart to rebuild the walls. 11 writer says they cannibalised their houses to make sure the walls were secure. But this is the people. This is the people, what will we do? I know it’s weapons that will solve the problem. Oh no, no, no, it’s water that will keep us. Oh no no it’s fixing the walls, that’s what will make us secure and Isaiah says and you never looked up.

You never looked up verse 11 to the one who made the city. You never looked up to the one who planned the city. Verse 12, the Lord was calling you, he was calling you to humble yourself.

Not to save yourself, not to celebrate yourself, he brought the trouble upon you, so that as CS Lewis said it would be the megaphone that would wake you up, but you didn’t listen. And you didn’t look to him.

Instead you kept on verse 13, indulging yourselves. None of the message, the good news or the bad, got through to the people of Israel. The attitude verse 13, let’s eat, drink, tomorrow we die. It’s hard to know whether people actually ever said that in Isaiah’s day or whether they just lived like it.

You may remember that Jesus said that in the days of Noah, the people were eating, drinking, getting married and giving in marriage.

And you scratch your head and think, well, what’s the problem? What’s wrong with eating, drinking, getting married and giving in marriage? What Jesus is saying is these people lived as if that’s all there was.

They didn’t listen to the fact that there was a flood coming, they just ate and drank and got married and went to celebrations, that’s all they did.

They didn’t listen.

They didn’t listen to the danger. Well this eat, drink and for tomorrow we die has become a bit of a slogan, hasn’t it? The apostle Paul quotes it in the New Testament and I think it’s probably still used today. You wonder whether there’s anybody anywhere who does actually live by the slogan, let’s eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Well, I was reading in the autobiography of Sam Neill, the actor. And he says toward the end of his autobiography, I’d like to live, of course, it’s more interesting than what happens next. I don’t believe in an afterlife, he says, I do believe you become part of the universe again, and although I won’t be reassembled, I will be around, floating, disassembled.

And then we turn to the other page in the book to find out what Sam Neill thinks is important for this world, and his answer is food, wine, friends, and laughter, and they’re wonderful things, aren’t they?

They’re wonderful gifts from God, food, wine, friends, and laughter, but they’re not the most important thing.

They’re not the most important thing, and you can imagine Isaiah if he was in the present saying to somebody like Sam Neill, look, you’ve been brought to the valley of vision through your sickness. It’s time for you to look up to the one who actually made you, it’s time for you to look up to the one who can save you. It’s time to look up to the one who can cause your future to be reassembled and not disassembled.

It’s a tragic, tragic outlook. Now, having said all that, I completely understand what it is to evade God. Do you not, my friends, know what it is to be slippery with God?

I certainly do. I would never myself have come to Christ if he had not brought me.

And even now as somebody who’s been a Christian for a very long time, I’m pretty capable of turning almost anywhere or everywhere but to him.

There’s something perverse in my system, and I suspect the same for you.

That’s why I’m so grateful that the good shepherd continues to go looking for me.

And bringing me back onto the path when I drift so quickly and so easily and so often.

Why does Isaiah, or why does the Lord say in verse 14 that till your dying day your sin will not be atoned for? That sounds like something contrary to the whole of the Bible. And the answer, of course, is in verse 11.

That if you don’t look to the Lord, if you don’t call to him, if you don’t surrender to him. Then of course there can be no solution. There can be no forgiveness.

As long as you’re looking to yourself and not to Jesus Christ, if you’ll never surrender to Jesus Christ, if you’ll never utterly trust Jesus Christ, you can’t have the forgiveness of Christ. You might as well have walked away.

So those are the two ways to follow, one is to walk the path of the word of God, which is the path of salvation, and the other is to walk your own path.

Which will of course end in disaster, and that’s what we come to secondly and briefly.

Two ways to finish or two ways to end up.

I was reading this week that the definition of a football coach is somebody who’s bright enough to understand the game but dumb enough to think it’s important. I thought that was an absolutely fantastic definition, and what we come to in these last verses of 15 to 25, which we didn’t read, is that God comes down to the street, and he looks at two men in the world, one of whom he’s going to treat like a football, and one he’s going to treat like a peg or a hook.

Interesting little bit of communication, verse 18, 1 of these men is going to be thrown away like a ball a long way, and the other one, verse 23, is gonna be hammered securely like a peg into the wall or the fence.

Well, the first man, verse 15, his name is Shebna.

He’s an important man. He was the palace administrator, but you can see in verse 16 that Shebna was at work on his tombstone. This is a very unusual thing to be doing, but Shebna was basically saying to himself, I’m here for a long time.

I’m going to work on my memorial. I’m going to create my tombstone, it’s going to be an impressive tombstone. I’ve got a long life in front of me and I’m going to set up something which will remind everybody of who I was and what I did.

So Shebner is in some ways a picture of the foolishness of the people of God, because the people of God are thinking all is well.

We’re here for a long time, there is no danger, forget about Isaiah, he’s just a pessimist. And the Lord says to Shebna, get ready to be thrown a long way away.

Because like a ball you’re going to be thrown out of the promised land. In fact, you’re going to land in Babylon, and that’s where you will die. Here’s the man you see, like the rich fool that Jesus spoke of in Luke chapter 12, who said, the world is my oyster. I’m going to just do what I want to do. I’m a very powerful person. I will build my barns, I will make my fortune, I will make my name, I will be great. And the Lord said,

But tonight you die.

The second man you see in verse 20, his name is Eliakim, he’s also a very important man, he ran the palace for King Hezekiah, but he was a godly man, and we’re told in verse 20 that God is going to appoint him or clothe him.

Perhaps with some special gown or robe, and he’s gonna give him a key of great power so that he can open or close, um key doors, and he’s going to be established like a peg or we might say a hook into a very secure position, so he’s not going to be like the ball to be thrown, he’s going to be like the fixture in the house of God.

And everything about Eliakim is cause for thanks. God calls him, he responds, God fits him for usefulness, he becomes fatherly to the people of God, he becomes a, a person with a key to blessing, he is a secure person on whom you can trust, and so in the midst of all the troubles that are taking place in Israel, Eliakim is going to be an instrument of peace.

And of course he is a preview therefore of the Lord Jesus Christ because Jesus Christ will come with great authority and the key to the crucial doors of death and life, and he’s the one upon whom every sinner can hang their soul.

So you see in chapter 22 verse 25 that Eliakim is not gonna be permanent. No leader of course is permanent. There’s the day’s gonna come where even Eliakim will have to move on. But the Lord Jesus never moves on, the Lord Jesus is established forever. He’s a refuge for every generation.

And he holds everything that we need, and he is the security that every person needs, as we were reminded in Revelation 3.

So there are 2 men here, you see, 2 very different men, they have very different finishes because they’re walking two very different paths, and so it is with every person in this world.

Who you follow, your own thought or the word of God.

We’ll have 2 finishes, far away or in God’s presence.

And that’s why this chapter 22 is really a very serious chapter, because Isaiah kept saying the truth, but very few people listened to him.

On Wednesday, this church was pretty full with a funeral.

And a whole lot of people who seemed to me to be in their 60s, 70s, or 80s, were being told the way to go through the grave and be with Christ.

But how many people were listening?

I’ve no idea. Would it surprise us if 2 people listened? We could hope, of course, that 20 listened. Or 200. But the Word of God goes out, who listens. Or think of the nominal Christian. The person who just enjoys a slight dab of religion every now and again, just a drop in occasionally. Just pay a visit.

But they’ve never really surrendered, they don’t really trust Christ. There’s no new life in their soul, they haven’t been transformed. This is Shebna mentality. All will be well, my life is fine.

And the Lord says, no, you may be thrown away a long way. Like a ball. And we ourselves, my friends, let’s be honest, we’re very fitful, aren’t we, in our following.

We’re very quick to sort of move to the left or to the right, we’re capable of great inconsistencies, that’s why we’re so thankful for Jesus Christ, the good shepherd of the sheep, who goes looking for us when we drift to the left or the right and brings us carefully back and his goodness and mercy follows us all the days of our life.

But all the people of this world, dear friends, I remind you, whether they came to the funeral and just folded their arms and listened to nothing, or whether they come occasionally and don’t take much in at all, or whether they’re faithful followers of the Lord Jesus, knowing their inconsistencies, all these people need a saviour. And how wonderful that we have a saviour in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Who’s not only willing to save but able to save, and not only able to save, but he’s able to keep his people. And take them right through, and that’s why we follow him right through to the finish. Because that’s the mark of being a wise, humble listener in the valley of vision.

Let’s pray, let’s bow our heads.

Our gracious God, we thank you that you have not only sent your Word into the world, but that there are times where you bring us into the valley of vision where we might see more clearly.

We pray that you would give us grace to respond to you as we ought.

That we would humbly respond to your message, that we would humbly respond to your Son, that we would follow him and in your goodness finish with Him.

And we pray for your mercy on many people who we know and love, who are following a very different path, going to a very different finish. We ask that you would help and turn them, that they might too have the life that Christ came to bring. We ask it in his name. Amen.

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