Psalm 45 Publications

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The Gospel According to Isaiah (3): A Shoot Springs Up

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1. Introduction: A New Light Dawns

We left off last week noting that God’s promise to save his people will not be thwarted by the unbelief of apostates such as Ahaz – for “the gifts and calling of God are without repentance” (Rom. 11:29). The promised Christ will indeed come, and he will be an immovable Rock, a sanctuary for his people where God fully and perfectly dwells with them without consuming or terrifying them. This mystery of the incarnation of the eternal Son of God is at the very heart of the Christian faith. But what of those who disbelieve and look elsewhere for security? They will be shattered against this same Rock who is certainly coming, and utterly destroyed. This testimony was bound up and sealed, and was as irrevocable as God’s own character. But would the people rejoice to embrace this testimony? No, as Ahaz their leader, they would disbelieve and seek out wisdom and revelation from any other source they could find than the very Word of God come down in history to reveal God to his people. At the end of chapter eight, we can hear the anguish in Isaiah’s voice as he looks to a time in which the people stumble in thick darkness, where there is no dawn, and lift up their voices in rage against their God and King. Continue Reading

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The Gospel According to Isaiah: The Greatest Sign of All

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1. When crisis comes to the people of God (vss. 1-2)

Last week, we spent some time unpacking Isaiah’s central message that, although difficult days are ahead, there is a greater salvation coming for the people of God – God’s own purpose and promise guarantee it, and he will not let his glory be stained by failing to accomplish his plan of redemption in Christ. This is an immensely comforting message; but when those promised difficulties arrive, will the promise of salvation yet to come be enough to sustain our faith? In some measure, that is the question, not just of the faithful in Isaiah’s day, but of the faithful in every age. We are promised eternal joy in the presence of Christ and a home in the New Jerusalem; but also affliction, persecution, and the loving but faithful chastisement of God’s own hand in this life. What will happen to us when those afflictions spring up all around us? Will they choke out the fruits of our faith, like thorns? Or will we rejoice even in our diverse tribulations, knowing that God has designed them for a greater good? Continue Reading

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The Gospel According to Isaiah: When He Saw His Glory

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1. Introduction to Isaiah

Isaiah is the premier prophet of the Old Testament in several ways: (1) temporally – as one of the first, he stands at the head of the amazing tradition of writing prophets before, during, and after the great captivity of Israel and Judah; and his message is so profound and monumental that everything written by the prophets afterwards is in some ways colored and shaped by his foundational work. (2) in volume – Isaiah is the longest prophetic book in the canon; his book, like his message, is big and broad, multi-faceted and all-encompassing, a microcosm of God’s whole purpose in human history. (3) in theme, style, and scope – there is simply no one else who wrote as diversely, as powerfully, as poetically, and as broadly as Isaiah. Martin Luther famously (and with good reason!) referred to the Psalms as a “little bible,” because they contain in some fashion every aspect of God’s gracious revelation to us. Isaiah is perhaps the only other book that could bear that designation with equal appropriateness. Reading Isaiah is like reading the Cliff’s Notes version of the bible – he takes you back to the eternal, inter-triune council before the foundation of the world, moves you along through fall, promise, failure, exile – then brings you to a stunning climax of redemption, which flowers into a brilliant conclusion of eternal significance. Isaiah is a truly astonishing and wonderful book: it is Gospel, like the Evangelists; it explains the theological truths inherent in those accurately depicted gospel-scenes, like John; it shouts from beginning to end that the person and work of Christ is superior to all that had come before, like Hebrews; it concludes the whole world in sin before having free mercy for all, by grace through faith alone; and it shows how the casting off of the Jews means salvation for the whole world, both Jew and Gentile, like Romans; it soars above and beyond human history and shows the coming eschaton in brilliant imagery, like Revelation. Continue Reading

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Hypocrites Beyond All Hope of Cure – Hosea 6:4-11

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The first three verses of Hosea chapter six, as we discovered last week, provide for all the elect remnant a most hopeful and comfortable promise of the mercy and life which will certainly follow all of God’s righteous tearing and breaking down of his people. This sure promise of grace, to which the faithful clung for many generations, finally received its full vindication and ultimate fulfillment on the third day after the death of Christ, the last legitimate Seed of Abraham and true Israel in himself, when, true to the prophecy, God raised him from the dead, and in him, all of his people as well, who had been broken down by exile, plague, captivity, and many other such things. This final confirmation of God’s promise of grace was so great beyond all expectation, that even today, we who are in any distress whatsoever, if we belong to Christ, may look to his resurrection and consider it a seal and pledge that God will work everything, even the most difficult of things, for our eternal good, just as the apostle later assures us at the end of Romans chapter eight. Continue Reading

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Breaking Us Down to Bind Us Up – Hosea 6:1-3

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Context of the Prophecy

The prophet Hosea, as indeed all the other prophets in some manner or another, was concerned most especially with the terrible coming exile first predicted by Moses, which would actually be brought about because of the people’s hardheartedness and impenitent breaking of the Law; and yet, as strongly as Hosea thundered his threatenings of this fearful judgment of exile against the people, God did not leave them entirely without hope, but by many strong and sure consolations promised to them a later restoration which, however his Law may have been broken, was nevertheless promised by the Gospel, which from the beginning assured the elect remnant of God’s free mercy and salvation, and which the Law, coming four hundred and thirty years after, could never abrogate (Gal. 3:17). Continue Reading

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Christ the Breath of Our Nostrils – Lamentations 4:20-22

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This text comes at the conclusion of the fourth chapter of Lamentations, which is a difficult and enigmatical book in some respects, containing five songs of lament over the destruction of the people of God that are nearly unparalleled in their vivid and gruesome presentation of the terrible judgments and miseries that God was pleased to bring upon them, in accordance with what he had first threatened in the books of Moses, of which we can read in Deuteronomy 28:15-68. The exile and captivity of which God had forewarned in many different ways, for many years sending the people prophets to show them their grave and imminent danger, had now been accomplished in very fact; and the writer of this book, who is very likely the prophet Jeremiah, is now detailing and mourning the shocking extent of this promised judgment of exile. Continue Reading

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Kiss the Son – Psalm 2

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It is a commonly accepted notion, and doubtless true, that the first and second psalms stand together as an introduction to the entire psalter, and provide all the information necessary to interpret and make sense of all which follows. Thus, there is contained in these two psalms every major doctrine that the remaining one-hundred forty-eight unfold so variously and wonderfully, from the lives of so many different psalmists, in so many different conditions. But not only is there a true summary of all the major heads of the psalter; there is contained in the first two, moreover, the very root from which those doctrines all spring, the one immovable foundation upon which the entire house is built. So that, if one were to attempt to interpret the things contained in the one-hundred and forty-eight without first being familiar with the two, he would doubtless cast himself into many needless snares and discover certain foolish and dangerous doctrines, that ought not at all to be derived from the psalms, when they are treated of as they should be. Continue Reading