Isaiah 55:1-5 - A free lunch

God is offering life, He is offering food to hungry and drink to the thirsty. Remember that Jesus referred to Himself as the bread of life (John 6:35), and said that anyone who comes to Him will not go thirsty (John 4:13,14). And this food and drink has been paid for by Jesus, it costs us nothing. The offer of life is open to all.

But instead we so often spend money, time and effort on things that ultimately do not satisfy. Israel had chased after many things. She had tried many ways of ensuring her safety. She had made alliances with various nations, worshiped all sorts of idols, tried various military and economic strategies. None of them had worked. Here she was desolate and in exile.

Yet the offer of the choicest of fare was being made to her. We need to realise that this is the offer of salvation that God makes. It is not just to make things a little less bad, but to give us the best. In John 10:10 Jesus said He came to give us life and life to the full.

How would this happen? Well God would make an everlasting covenant with us. Again remember that Jesus talked of His blood being the blood of the new covenant (Luke 22:20). Then there is reference to a person who is a "witness to the peoples, a ruler and commander". This Jesus. Jesus is the new covenant.

And this salvation will go out to many nations. Instead of being despised by the nations, they would come running to them wanting to know who Jesus is. For when a people turn to Christ they are endowed with splendour.

Isaiah 54:15-17 - Under attack?

"If anyone does attack ..." All this does not mean that no one will ever attack us, but it does mean that God will not attack us.

Now we need to understand the difference between attack and discipline. As it says in Hebrews 12, God disciplines those whom He loves. God will work in our lives to teach and train us, sometimes this will be difficult, but it is all done for our good and will build us up. But He will never attack us.

We need to understand this, for when we are attacked a very natural reaction is to ask "what have I done wrong, has God got it in for me?" No He hasn't.

No weapon fashioned against us will succeed. There are two approaches to seeking peace. One is to hope that nothing will ever go wrong, no one will ever attack us. This is futile and means living in fairytale land. The other is to know that whatever does happen, it will not succeed in destroying us. This is Biblical.

Notice that it says "you will refute", ie we will refute every accusing tongue. In Christ we become strong. Paul says several times in his letters "be strong in the Lord". We need to learn to live in the authority that we have in Christ.

This is our heritage in the Lord. We have been born again, born to a new life, born to a new family. We need to learn to live that in the fullness of that new life.

Isaiah 54:9 -14 Rebuilding

This salvation represented a completely new start. The flood was God's judgement upon the earth, after the flood God said He would never again send such a flood. The salvation God sends is a completely new start, as Paul puts it we are a new creation.

God's love for us is unchanging. Again we get the emphasis on His deep compassion for us. We need to meditate on the fact that God loves us. The creator of the whole universe, the giver of life, the One who keeps everything going, love us. 

"Afflicted city, lashed by storms ..." God was fully aware of what had happened to Israel, just as He is fully aware of all that has happened to you and I. But now He is in the business of rebuilding our lives, and He is building us into something beautiful. And this involves righteousness.

Isaiah 54:5-8 - Fruit of salvation (2)

The cross brings an end to rejection by God. We need to face up to the truth of this, sin meant we were rejected by God. In Genesis 3 we read that Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden and death came into their lives. Paul tells us that we were enemies of God and "by nature, objects of wrath". Sin meant we were subject to God's judgement. Israel had experienced much of this in the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile. All of us have suffered the results of sin in our own lives.

This rejection was real, but the "calling back" is even more real.  It tells us that God calls us back with deep compassion, it tells us that He will have compassion on us with everlasting kindness, it tells us that He is our husband.

There are two key elements to the work of the cross, and both are equally important. One is the judicial/legal nature of the work of the cross, the other is the emotional/heart side. The cross deals with the legal problem of sin. In 1 John it says that God is "just and forgives us". Our debt has been paid on the cross. Satan can accuse us all he likes, but God just looks at the cross and says our sin has already been dealt with, the penalty is paid in full.

But the cross is also an expression of the heart of God. God loves us, and it says in John 3:16, "God so loved the world ..." God's heart is for us.

Think of adoption (and the Bible refers to us as being adopted by God). For adoption to work it needs two things. The legal side has to be done properly, and the new parents have to love the child. Both aspects are needed for adoption to work. So it is with the cross. 

Isaiah 54:1-4 - The fruit of salvation (1)

A key point to note is that Isaiah 54 comes after Isaiah 53, and it wasn't Isaiah who put the chapter numbers in.  The cross is something that has consequences for our lives, and this chapter outlines the response that God is looking for, and the effect of the cross and resurrection in our lives.

The first is to overcome rejection of self. We say “I cannot do”, “I can never be” (have a successful marriage, get my finances sorted out, be a soul winner, produce fruit for God, hold down a job) – i.e. we reject ourselves. The first thing we need to do is shout for joy. The whole prospects for our lives have changed because of what Jesus has done. Things that were previously impossible are now possible.

Instead need to rejoice and enlarge the place of our tent (expect and prepare for success). We need to have a different mindset. We are often conditioned to expect failure, we need to expect success. I am not talking about some cheap form of prosperity teaching here, or a "life will all be wonderful" teaching, but we do need to radically change our outlook and expectations.

Having experienced failure and shame in the past, there can be a deep fear of future failure, of being put to shame again. We need to overcome this. God promises that we will not be put to shame.

Isaiah 53:6-12 - Suffering Servant, Risen Lord

Verse 6 sums up what was going on at the cross. We have all turned to our own way, and the Lord has put our sins upon Jesus. The reason there is hope, the reason there is salvation, is because The Lord laid our sin upon Christ. He took up our sins.

At the "trial" Jesus was falsely accused and mocked, yet He remained largely silent and was calm throughout. Then He was led to the cross. He was oppressed and persecuted by the Jewish authorities and the Roman rulers. Then He was cut-off from the land of the living, He died because of our sin.

He died with the wicked, but also with the rich when Joseph of Arimathea gave his tomb.  Although all this happened to Him, he had done no wrong, there was no violence, no deceit.

Despite this it was the Lord's will to crush Him and make Him suffer. The Lord did this in order to make Jesus a sin offering. 

Yet despite the fact that Jesus was made a sin offering, that He was killed on the cross, He would live forever. He would see His offspring (which includes you and I), and He will reign. This is a prophecy of the resurrection. For after He had suffered He would see the light of life. He would justify many. 

Because of this the Lord has given Him the Name above all Names, because He took up our sins.

Jesus was mocked, and many still despise the idea of Jesus taking our sins and suffering for it. Yes it is precisely because He did this that He has been made Lord of Lords and King of Kings. The Lordship of Jesus Christ is intimately linked with His suffering.

Isaiah 53:4,5 - By His stripes you have been healed

Many, many things were achieved on the cross. First, Jesus took up our pain and suffering, or our griefs and sorrows, or . Now on the cross the crowds thought He was being punished by God. Now, of course, this is true, but He was not being punished for His own sin (He had none), but for our sins. 

Jesus was pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities. The fundamental and basic reason for the cross is Jesus taking the judgement that should have been ours. This is called "penal substitution" if you want a theological word for it. He suffered the death that I should have suffered.

This punishment brought us peace. It is through the cross that we have peace with God.

Now we come to one of the most misused verses in Charismatic circles, "by His stripes we are healed". This is most commonly quoted in the context of seeking physical healing for someone, or for ourselves. This is not the primary meaning of this verse. The wound we are healed of is the wound of sin and all its effects. Now this can include sickness, and I am not saying that the cross has nothing to do with healing (see later comment), but the primary problem that is being dealt with is sin. Throughout Isaiah the problem of Israel is her sinfulness. In Jeremiah God speaks of the wound of His people, and is referring to their sin (eg Jer 6:14).

Peter quotes this verse in 1 Peter 2:24. 

“He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.”

What is the context? Sin, and Jesus bearing our sins.

Let me make it clear that I absolutely believe that we should pray for healing, and should expect to see much more in the way of healing than we do, but physical healing is not the primary application of this verse.

Interestingly Matthew does quote from Isaiah 53 when he  talks about Jesus healing many people (Matthew 8:14-17), but it is 53:4 that Matthew refers to, not verse 5.

There is healing in the cross, but we do need to understand that the root problem is sin, and the primary target of the cross is dealing with our sin.