”An oracle against the desert by the sea: Like storms that pass over the Negev, it comes from the desert, from the land of terror. A troubling vision is declared to me: “The treacherous one acts treacherously, and the destroyer destroys. Advance, Elam! Lay siege, you Medes! I will put an end to all her groaning.” Therefore I am filled with anguish. Pain grips me, like the pain of a woman in labor. I am too perplexed to hear, too dismayed to see. My heart staggers; horror terrifies me. He has turned my last glimmer of hope into sheer terror. Prepare a table, and spread out a carpet! Eat and drink! Rise up, you princes, and oil the shields! For the Lord has said to me, “Go, post a lookout; let him report what he sees. When he sees riders — pairs of horsemen, riders on donkeys, riders on camels — he must pay close attention.” Then the lookout reported, “Lord, I stand on the watchtower all day, and I stay at my post all night. Look, riders come — horsemen in pairs.” And he answered, saying, “Babylon has fallen, has fallen. All the images of her gods have been shattered on the ground.” My people who have been crushed on the threshing floor, I have declared to you what I have heard from the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel.“ (Isaiah 21:1-10 HCSB)
Simple Outline:
1. False Trust – the desert by the sea
2. Godly Grief – grieving over God’s judgment
3. Be Watchful – God’s judgment comes
Key verse: ”A troubling vision is declared to me: “The treacherous one acts treacherously, and the destroyer destroys. Advance, Elam! Lay siege, you Medes! I will put an end to all her groaning.”“ (Isaiah 21:2 HCSB)
Life can often seem paradoxical. What seems to make sense or offers some measure of trust often ends badly. We’re all keenly aware of the risks of living in our modern, connected and hyper-online way of communicating and maintaining relationships. I get daily texts from phone numbers asking about my wellbeing in an attempt to lower my defenses, respond to their queries so they can take advantage of my trust. I see offers for things I want or need in some Facebook ad and the price is so enticing, too good to be true. Sometimes we just do stupid things that have disastrous consequences. You’ve made some of those poor choices, too. Haven’t you?
I try not to be so cynical, really I do. I try to strike a nice balance between being overly optimistic and severely pessimistic. I really want to see the best in people, but my realism often takes over and I’m pretty sure I know how things are going to turn out. I really do love being able to pick up my cell phone and send a quick text to one of my kids or grandkids letting them know that I was thinking about them, praying for them, missing them. But that same ability can also consume me and cause bouts of anxiety when I don’t get a quick response. I enjoy seeing the photos and posts of my friends and family on Facebook and it helps me feel connected to them and their lives, even when we live many miles apart. But I can also see myself becoming addicted to their responses to my posts, checking to see if anyone has liked, responded to or commented on my posts (like this one).
It’s a bit like the paradox of living in a desert surrounded by water…
When we looked at Isaiah’s oracle against Egypt a few weeks ago, I mentioned how the Nile river was the only thing that kept the encroaching desert from consuming everything. But God was going to judge Egypt and part of that judgment would result in the Nile not being able to provide the protection they had come to depend upon. In this week’s oracle against Babylon, we have a similar situation where Isaiah uses an analogy for Babylon as a desert land that’s adjacent to the sea, a dry, barren land surrounded by water.
As Isaiah sees this prophetic vision of Babylon – the desert by the sea, he sees a people who believe they have everything they need and could ever want living carefree lives without fear of the future. But in Isaiah’s vision, he sees God’s judgment coming upon them. The vision causes Isaiah great distress, even to the point of having a physical reaction to the divine vision. He sees a people who believe they are safe but are about to experience the horrors of God’s judgment and he is overwhelmed with anguish for them: “My heart staggers; horror terrifies me. He has turned my last glimmer of hope into sheer terror (v. 4).”
Isaiah is keenly aware of God’s judgment and is having a visceral reaction to it but the people are completely oblivious to it. They are more interested in partying than in living in right relation with God. They’re more interested in getting what they want than in what they truly need. They are arid, barren deserts surrounded by water and they don’t even realize it.
While we may not be Babylonian ethnically, we are just like them culturally and we live similar lives with similar problems. We are also subject to the same fate, God’s judgment on our spiritual barrenness. We become so wrapped up in our “real” lives and the ensuing problems that we overlook or ignore what life is really all about. We think “real” living is pursuing a life that satisfies our physical needs and desires. It’s all about getting more, having more, enjoying more and accumulating more and more. If that were true, why doesn’t it bring satisfaction and fulfillment? If that raise we sought would make us happy, why do we still want more once we get it? If that new car or bigger house could make us happy, why aren’t we satisfied once we get it? Why does living like this leave us empty and looking for what’s truly missing in our lives? Because, like them we are arid, barren deserts surrounded by water.
Notice, their reaction seems to be: ”Prepare a table, and spread out a carpet! Eat and drink! Rise up, you princes, and oil the shields!“ (Isaiah 21:5 HCSB) While it is impossible to know the exact historical event that Isaiah seems to reference, it certainly fits with what we know from the story of Belshazzar in Daniel 5. In that story, the Babylonian king, Belshazzar, is living an opulent lifestyle and ignoring the LORD God, in defiance of what his father, Nebuchadnezzar, had learned about the God of Israel (see Daniel 4). During the feast, which seems to mirror the one noted by Isaiah in our focal passage, the Babylonians are eating, drinking and partying until a mysterious divine hand begins writing on the wall. It writes out: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN. The king is terrified by what he has witnessed and seeks someone, anyone who can tell him what it all means. None of his royal advisors can tell him, but his queen knows a man – Daniel.
The king summons Daniel and offers him wealth, position and power if he can interpret the meaning of what he’s seen and what the divine hand has written on the wall. Daniel then proceeds to tell Belshazzar the story of his predecessor and his arrogance towards everyone, including the Most High God, and how God humbled him until he acknowledged God’s sovereignty and rule over the affairs of men. Daniel then tells him: ”But you his successor, Belshazzar, have not humbled your heart, even though you knew all this.“ (Daniel 5:22 HCSB) So, God declares judgment upon Babylon:
”This is the writing that was inscribed: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN. This is the interpretation of the message: MENE means that God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end. TEKEL means that you have been weighed in the balance and found deficient. PERES means that your kingdom has been divided and given to the Medes and Persians.” (Daniel 5:25-28 HCSB)
Isaiah is told by God not only what the Babylons did to deserve judgment but also to watch or to post a lookout in anticipation of His judgment. Then the lookout reported to Isaiah, “Look, riders come – horsemen in pairs. Babylon has fallen, has fallen. All the images of her gods have been shattered on the ground.” Isaiah ends his oracle against Babylon with these words: ”My people who have been crushed on the threshing floor, I have declared to you what I have heard from the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel.“ (Isaiah 21:10 HCSB) Isaiah has no power against Babylon but the LORD God does. Isaiah can’t force the leaders of Judah to listen to his warning, he can only deliver God’s declaration, God’s Word.
I can’t force you to listen to God’s warning, I can only deliver God’s declaration, His Word. But I would urge you to consider the warning God gave Babylon and its king. The Babylonian king is judged because he has failed to learn the lesson of his predecessor, Nebuchadnezzar. He lives his life as though he is unaccountable, as though his needs and desires are his only concern. This king lives in arrogant defiance before the MOST High God and ignores any responsibility to Him. So, God has numbered his days, weighed him and found him deficient, and judged him for his arrogant defiance and spiritual shortsightedness.
Since the beginning, mankind has recognized his spiritual responsibility. We have acknowledged that there’s more to life than what we can see, feel, taste, touch and smell. We’ve even recognized not only that we have a spirit but that our physical, temporal life is preparation for spiritual, eternal life. We had realized that we were not physical beings with a spirit or soul but that we were spiritual or soulful beings with a physical body. Real life is not this life, real life is the next life.
Today, we have a tendency to deny or, at the very least, ignore what can’t be proven empirically and scientifically. If modern man can’t prove it, count it, measure it, explain it, scientifically evaluate it and recreate it then it must not exist. We’ve even reached the point in our arrogance that we believe we can mimic God and recreate intelligence and consciousness – we call it Artificial Intelligence. But shouldn’t that give us a clue? It isn’t real, it is artificial. Yes, we have made incredible scientific advances over the past century, but we’ve also made incredible moral digression. Some call it progress but I don’t think that’s what God calls it.
There’s an old saying that goes: If you don’t learn from the past then you are doomed to repeat it. In case you didn’t know it, Solomon said the same thing almost three thousand years ago: ”What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun.“ (Ecclesiastes 1:9 HCSB) And this: ”For with much wisdom is much sorrow; as knowledge increases, grief increases.“ (Ecclesiastes 1:18 HCSB)
I can’t change how you choose to live your life, I can only tell you what God’s Word says. I can only challenge you to be aware of these things and to live your life in accordance with them. It isn’t enough to simply acknowledge the spiritual aspect of life. It isn’t even enough to know that God exists.
James tells us this: ”You believe that God is one; you do well. The demons also believe — and they shudder.“ (James 2:19 HCSB)
And this: ”But be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.“ (James 1:22 HCSB)
Isaiah is calling all of us, then and now, to live our lives in complete submission to the will and word of God. The warning to Babylon is also a warning to our own generation. We are very much like the arrogant king, Belshazzar. We spend our lives seeking out those things that bring us pleasure, those things that are supposed to make us happy and give us fulfilled lives. But those things are empty and our lives are like an arid, barren desert surrounded by water. We live surrounded by the very things we’re told will give us life and happiness. They don’t but we’ve convinced ourselves we just need more and more of them.
Finally, I want to go back and visit something that I mentioned above but didn’t dwell on. Isaiah is having a visceral reaction to God’s judgment upon Babylon. He uses phrases like: 1) filled with anguish; 2) pain grips me; 3) I am too perplexed to hear, too dismayed to hear; 4) my heart staggers; 5) horror terrifies me; 6) my last glimmer of hope has been turned into sheer terror. I think you would agree, he is filling these things deep down in his soul.
Let that sink in a second. Isaiah is having a very deep even physical reaction to God’s judgment upon Babylon. Now, I’m quite certain that he had no particular affinity for Babylonians but he is deeply moved by God’s judgment upon them. I think we have a tendency to be a bit more like Jonah was towards the people of Nineveh. When God sent him to tell them that God’s judgment was coming unless they repented, he resisted going and actually fled from God. That’s how and why he ends up in the belly of that great fish. However, after three days of being fish food, Jonah relented and agreed to go deliver God’s message to them. They repented, God withdrew His judgment and Jonah became angry at God over His mercy and forgiveness towards the people of Nineveh. He went out of town, sat down on the side of a hill and waited to see what would happen. As he sat there, Jonah wished for some shade to shield him from the hot sun and God caused a vine to grow there overnight and provide some relief for Jonah. Late the next day, the vine was eaten by a worm and died and, again, Jonah was upset and complained to God about the situation. Jonah was more grieved over the death of the plant than he was over the potential judgment of the entire population of Nineveh.
Here’s God’s response to Jonah: “Then God asked Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant? ” “Yes,” he replied. “It is right. I’m angry enough to die! ” So the Lord said, “You cared about the plant, which you did not labor over and did not grow. It appeared in a night and perished in a night. Should I not care about the great city of Nineveh, which has more than 120,000 people who cannot distinguish between their right and their left, as well as many animals? ”” (Jonah 4:9-11 HCSB)
Do you respond to God’s judgment upon those who don’t know Him like Isaiah or like Jonah? Jonah said that he knew God was merciful and long suffering and would relent from His judgment if the people of Nineveh repented. That’s why he said he ran towards Tarshish and away from God’s command to go to Nineveh. Jonah thought they deserved God’s judgment and didn’t deserve His mercy, forgiveness and love. I’m sure you probably know a few people who you think deserve God’s judgment, too. I know I do.
How ironic… we don’t deserve God’s mercy, forgiveness and love either.
So, I’m going to stick my neck out a bit here. Who are the “Ninevehites” in your life? Is it someone who has done you wrong and you’re praying that God would smite them with a plague? Is it a socio-political group that holds different beliefs and values than you do? Are you hoping (perhaps praying) for a well placed lightning bolt from God? Maybe it’s a particular political-religious group that has very, very strong feelings about our political and religious affiliations. Maybe it’s folks from a different nationality or ethnic group and you feel like they are taking advantage of a situation. Do any of those people groups make you feel a bit like Jonah?
Let me very specific here, it is entirely appropriate and responsible to expect our national leaders to develop and enforce laws regarding immigration and political asylum. It is even appropriate and responsible for you to support candidates who take appropriate and responsible actions towards the enforcement of these laws. However, it is NEVER appropriate and responsible to mistreat people and pray for their destruction. We should treat them as beloved of God and worthy of His mercy, forgiveness and favor. Why? Are they worthy of God’s judgment? Of course they are, but so am I and so are you.
Isaiah grieved over God’s judgment of the Babylonians because he had begun to know and experience the fullness of God. The more we know God the more we understand His mind, will, heart, power, love, compassion, kindness and everything else about Him then the more we begin to exhibit these qualities in our own lives. God does not find joy in judging men’s sin. God does not relish the opportunity to destroy those He has lovingly created, nourished, protected and provided for. God loves them (and you and I) SO much He gave His one and only Son as a sacrifice to redeem us and restore us to Himself.
Do we grieve over those who refuse Him? Does it impact you the way it impacted Isaiah? Do you feel it so deeply that you can say: “I am filled with anguish. Pain grips me… I am too perplexed to hear, too dismayed to see. My heart staggers; horror terrifies me.”
If it doesn’t it should. And the only way for that to happen is for you and I to seek to know Him better and to strive to be like Him more and more each day.
Hilltop Baptist Church - Shawnee, OK 
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