the storyline of scripture, pt 6a (or The Smoldering Stump)

I think many people are familiar with Isaiah chapter 6. You know, it’s the one where Isaiah is in the Temple and he sees Jesus (John 12:41) and then yells “Woe is me!” Isaiah said he had unclean lips and so an angel touched his lips with a burning coal. Then the Trinity said “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” (ESV) To which Isaiah replied, “Here am I! Send me!”
...I think Isaiah’s response has often been the theme of missionary commissioning services and the slogan of many evangelistic programs... Isaiah did give a good response to the Lord’s call – one worth emulating.
I think the familiarity with Isaiah 6 stops there. Which is unfortunate because the rest of the chapter gets quoted all over the place in the New Testament in relation to Jesus.
So Isaiah told God that he would go. Then God told Isaiah what he was to say to the people of Israel:

“Keep on hearing, but do not understand;
keep on seeing but do not perceive.”

Why did God tell Isaiah to preach this? The answer is that God wanted Isaiah to:

“Make the heart of this people dull,
and their eyes heavy,
and blind their eyes.”

Dull hearts? Heavy and blind eyes? Why did God want Isaiah to do this? Shockingly, God said Isaiah was to do this:

“Lest they see with their eyes,
and hear with their ears,
and understand with their hearts,
and turn and be healed.”

Did you catch that? It seems to me that what God was telling Isaiah to do was not very Christlike.
Maybe this is why Isaiah asked, “How long, O Lord?” A good and understandable question for Isaiah to ask. Especially if, or so it would have seemed to me, any amount of time seemed too long for anyone to have to proclaim such a terrible message. If Yahweh’s words weren’t disturbing enough already, look at what He answered to Isaiah’s question about when he could stop:

“Until cities lie waste without inhabitant,
and houses without people,
and the land is a desolate waste,
and the LORD removes people far away,
and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land.
And though a tenth remain in it,
it will be burned again,
like a terebinth or an oak,
whose stump remains when it is felled.”

Dang! This sounds like a scene out of Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Road. What despair and desolation! The Promised Land (which was meant to reflect Eden and image the New Creation) was to become a desolate wasteland “without inhabitant.” Yahweh told Isaiah that he could quit preaching his message once that happened.

But then, at the end of the narrative, there is a strange and mysterious word from God. It is a statement that, in Isaiah’s day, must have pictures the anguish felt over what had occurred and been lost by the people of Israel. But it is a statement shrouded in hope:

“The holy seed is its stump.”

This declaration is about redemption. In Scripture the first mention of redemption comes in Genesis 3 when God told Adam and Eve that He would send a “seed” to save them. What a sense of horror that must have been expereinced by Isaiah when he heard that the seed would be reduced to a burning, smoldering stump. Yet, as the Lord continued to speak, He foretold that “there shall come forth a shoot from the stump” (11:1). He foretold of One who would spring up “like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground” (53:2). There is no drier ground than burned up ground and out of it came the holy seed. Yahweh spoke of the One who would bear “the sin of many” (53:12) and He said that in “that day the root of Jesse, who shall stand as a signal for the peoples – of him shall the nations inquire, and his resting place, shall be glorious” (11:10).

That seed, that root, is Jesus. Am I just guessing because it sounds like Jesus? No, check out Revelation 5:5-14. Isaiah was proclaiming a message about Jesus.

The third plot movement in the storyline of Scripture is Redemption. Redemption centers around Christ. If that is missed, then the storyline is misunderstood.
The texts for the first two parts (Creation and Fall) are primarily found in the first three chapters of the Bible. Nearly the whole rest of the Bible is about redemption. Thus, I think it will be helpful to first look at redemption as it is promised in the Old Testament and then turn to redemption in the New Testament.


Fire
“God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob,” not of philosophers and scholars
Certainty, certainty, heartfelt, joy, peace.
God of Jesus Christ.
God of Jesus Christ.
My God and your God.
“Thy shall be my God”
The world is forgotten, and everything except God. H
He can only be found by the ways taught in the Gospels...
Let me not be cut off from him forever! “And this is life eternal, that they may know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.” Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ...
- These words were found inscribed on a piece of parchment sown into the jacket of Blaise Pascal.