Clearing the Site: From Vainglory to True Glory

Isaiah 3–4

On that day the Branch of the Lord will be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the land will be the pride and glory of Israel’s survivors. (Isa 4:2)

Main Idea: God clears the wreckage of his people’s sins so that he can build a perfect Zion in its place.

1. Bookends of Grace Surround Severe Judgment.
   1. The mountain of the Lord (Isa 2) and the Branch of the Lord (Isa 4)
   2. Clearing the building site (Isa 2–3)
2. Loss of Stability (3:1-15)
   1. The “pillars of society” are gifts of God.
   2. God removes these pillars, resulting in anarchy.
3. Loss of Unstable, Luxurious Vainglory (3:16–4:1)
   1. Luxurious daughters of Zion
   2. Luxury stripped away
   3. The fall of the men
4. Gain of Stable, Luxurious Glory (4:2-6)
   1. The Branch of the Lord is Jesus Christ.
   2. The remnant will bask in his glory.
   3. The dwelling of God is with men at last.

In the aftermath of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001, a huge pile of debris was left on Ground Zero; twisted steel girders, rubble, and other wreckage continued to smolder for five months after the attack. On May 30, 2002, there was a significant ceremony: the last piece of steel from the World Trade Center was removed from the site to be recycled as the bow of a new assault ship, the USS New York. Without the clearing of the pile of debris, the new Freedom Tower, 1,776 feet high, could never have been built (Okwu, “Ceremony”).

By spiritual analogy, God’s ultimate building site is both the hearts of his people and an eternal city—the new Jerusalem, a combination of spiritual dwelling place and literal city. The rubble is the residue of human arrogance and sin that must be cleared or the eternal structure cannot be built. The history of the actual city of Jerusalem is a spiritual picture of God’s spiritual building project in his people. So in our passage in Isaiah 3–4 we see the destruction of Jerusalem for sin; but it is destruction with a redemptive purpose so the new Jerusalem can be built. This is a passage that speaks a word of warning to our own time, a word of repentance and prayer, not presumption, to present-day Christians.

Bookends of Grace Surround Severe Judgment

Isaiah chapters 2 and 4 contain two of the sweetest and clearest prophecies of the future glory of Christ’s kingdom. They stand like bookends around the smoldering words of chapter 3. Bookend 1 is Isaiah 2:1-4: the mountain of the Lord’s temple exalted and the streaming of the nations. Bookend 2 is Isaiah 4: the Branch of the Lord fruitful and Mount Zion cleansed and protected by a canopy of glory. But between the glorious bookends, Isaiah 2:10-21 and Isaiah 3 are smoldering with descriptions of the terrible judgment on Judah and Jerusalem. It is as though the building site is being scraped clean for a future and glorious building.

Loss of Stability

Isaiah 3:1-15

As with any building, society itself depends on structural pillars to hold it up. Architects and builders know how significant a load-bearing pillar or beam is; if it cracks, the building crumbles. In a similar way, all of human society is built on some key social pillars: supplies of basic commodities and key individuals whose skills are vital to the smooth functioning of the community. These “pillars of society” are gifts of God, and in this chapter he is threatening the removal of all the structural supports of Jerusalem and Judah, causing a total collapse. God threatens the supplies of food and water to the city, ultimately by the invading Gentile armies (Assyrian and Babylonian) whose conquests would put an end to farming and the flow of water. God also threatens to remove the key men whose leadership is vital to the smooth function of society. Start with good political leaders: godly kings and ministers whose wise rule provides stability for the nation. Proverbs 29:14 says, “A king who judges the poor with fairness—his throne will be established forever.” But Isaiah 3 depicts the total vacuum of leadership, the scourge of anarchy and instability. Furthermore, military heroes are gone, those warriors who rally the troops to make heroic stands against the enemy. The courageous men will all be dead; the men who are left are stripped of courage and flee for their lives.

Beyond these, the removal of the “pillars of society” goes to every level: judges, prophets, elders, lower-level commanders, counselors, skilled craftsmen; even cunning magicians and fortune-tellers are gone. All of the old order has been removed, and the remaining flimsy structure is tottering and ready to collapse. The resulting vacuum of leadership is devastating, and the anarchy is a direct judgment from God. His ordinary pattern of leadership is qualified men. He raises them up, seasons and trains them, preparing them to bear the burden of leadership. From the moment God created Adam alone for a time without a wife, God was establishing men to lead in the home and in society. In the whole Bible, Deborah is the only example of a godly woman established as a leader over men (in the book of Judges). And that era was a strange one in redemptive history, in which Israel had no king and everyone did what was right in his own eyes. But in Isaiah’s prophecy concerning Judah and Jerusalem, the qualified men are dead or removed; all that are left are women and children and weak, unqualified men. In verse 4 unseasoned boys become rulers. In verses 6-7 we have a shameful vignette in which one of the few remaining men is forced into leadership simply because he still owns a cloak. But this weak man refuses to take the role of ruler of “this heap of rubble”; he has no remedy for the ravaging disease of his people. In verse 12 the fact of women ruling over men is clearly displayed as shameful, a judgment from God.

The root cause of this judgment from God is the sweeping wickedness of the people. Verses 8-11 make it plain that the evil of their hearts is pouring out into open patterns of wickedness similar to that in Sodom. Amazingly, verse 9 implies that openly parading and flaunting sin is a final stage of rebellion. When people no longer feel the need to hide their sin, but are actually proud of it and boast over it, society has reached its nadir. Verses 14-15 single out the corruption of the leaders that led to their judgment: they have used their positions of power to plunder the poor and grind their faces into dust.

For all of this, God is bringing severe judgment on his people. But in the middle of this dire warning, God speaks a message of consolation to the righteous in verse 10. God will judge everyone according to their deeds (Rom 2:6-8), and he makes no mistakes.

Loss of Unstable, Luxurious Vainglory

Isaiah 3:16–4:1

Isaiah gets very specific in 3:16-24 about the arrogance and selfish luxury of the “daughters of Zion.” In a chapter in which the plundering of the poor is exposed and judged, we have a long list of luxury items with which the women of Judah made themselves beautiful. First Peter 3:3-5 makes it plain that a godly woman’s beauty does not come from outward adornments but from the godliness and submissiveness of her heart. But these women are like the proverbial pigs wearing gold rings in their snouts (Prov 11:22); the only beauty they possess is a lie, an outward disguise of their inner corruption. When the judgment falls, all their outward luxuries will be snatched away by their conquerors. Then, instead of soft garments and luxurious accessories, they will wear sackcloth bound with a rope; and instead of smelling lovely, they will stink (Isa 3:24). In the end their physical condition will match the ugliness of their souls.

The women of Zion will have lost their men in battle and now they stand exposed, with no shelter (3:25-26). Their shame is completed by seven of them pleading with one of the few men left for the mere honor of a marriage in name only; he wouldn’t even have to provide food or clothing for them (4:1). How the mighty have fallen!

Gain of Stable, Luxurious Glory

Isaiah 4:2-6

In the midst of the darkest night of Zion’s history, the glory of the Lord shines the brightest. God will not finally exterminate the seed of Abraham; his promises to David will be fulfilled. God will protect a remnant by his sovereign power (4:3); and in the smoldering ruin of Jerusalem the Branch of the Lord will flourish. The branch of the Lord in Isaiah 11:1 is clearly Jesus, growing from the stump of Jesse. Christ is called “Branch” in other prophetic passages (Jer 23:5; Zech 3:8). In Isaiah 4:2 the word “Branch” could be seen to refer first to the remnant of Jews that the sovereign Lord allows to survive and then ultimately to Jesus, whose human ancestry would come from those survivors (Rom 1:3).

The Branch here is described as “beautiful and glorious,” a radiant display of the attributes of God. So Jesus was seen to be the “radiance of God’s glory” (Heb 1:3). By contrast with the darkness and wickedness of the circumstances in Jerusalem leading to the judgment of God, Christ will stand forth as the perfect man, the perfect ruler.

In the immediate horizon, Isaiah predicts that God will restore the remnant to a peaceful and fruitful dwelling in the promised land. The people will delight in the fruit of the land and take pride in it as evidence of God’s restorative favor. But the ultimate glory of the people will be in the Branch, Jesus Christ. Not only will Christ be our perfect ruler, but the fruit of his perfect righteousness will be the pride and glory of the remnant whom God will save by his grace. According to 4:3, this remnant was elected by God’s grace, for the Hebrew says they were “recorded for life.” For eternity this remnant will boast in the Lord, and his achievements at the cross will be their righteousness, their glory. The remnant will be called holy, and all their filth will be washed and burned away by the spirit of God’s judgments (4:3).

The final image of this chapter is one of a lasting dwelling place between God and his remnant. God will create a cloud of smoke by day and the brightness of a flaming fire by night. The smoke and fire refer immediately back to the “spirit of burning” of verse 4 by which God purged Jerusalem. So our God who is a “consuming fire” will actively guarantee the ongoing purity of his holy city. But beyond that, the cloud and fire evoke memories of God’s leadership of Israel during the days of the exodus. Just as the pillar of cloud and fire led Israel every step of the way (Exod 13:21), so God now promises to guide his settled city of Jerusalem. And just as God’s pillar stood between Israel and Egypt as a wall of protection (Exod 14:20), so God will now be a shelter of protection from the heat, storm, and rain. This image is one of total safety for the people of God against all their enemies, a safety ultimately fulfilled in Christ. The atoning work of Christ on the cross is our final protection from all our enemies. These rich images point ahead to the day when, at last, the dwelling of God will be with his people, and he will live with them (Rev 21:3).

Applications

We should realize the gift of God that all skilled laborers and leaders are to society, and we should thank God for them when they do their work well. Anarchy is a great judgment on a society, and so we should pray for our leaders, that they would do their leading for the glory of God. We should yearn for God to raise up competent and skilled men to be our leaders, and we should pray that they would not use their positions to crush the poor and needy but rather to care for them. Any man should read Isaiah 3 and yearn to be a strong leader of his home and in society as God raises him up to lead. Any woman should read Isaiah 3 and yearn not to be characterized by the vapid, arrogant, and deceptive beauty of outward adornment. First Peter 3:3-5 is an excellent remedy to the kind of selfish “beauty” that Isaiah 3 describes. The accumulation of a wardrobe or the latest fashion accessories is shameful if not accompanied by “a gentle and quiet spirit.” The overall wickedness and corruption of the people in Isaiah 3 should make us yearn for God to search us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. It should make us confess our sins in detail and have the fire of his Spirit and Word purify us. Finally, Isaiah 4 points to a day when Christ’s saving work will be completed and God and redeemed humanity will dwell together forever in the new Jerusalem. We should look forward to this day and speed its coming.

Reflect and Discuss

1. How does this chapter show the “common grace” blessings of various skilled laborers and leaders in society? In other words, how is a skillful plumber or an honorable senator a gift of God to a nation?
2. How is the removal of such “pillars of society” a great judgment from God? How is anarchy a severe trial, worse than dictatorship or other bad forms of government?
3. In what way is the luxury of the women of Zion reflected in our culture? How is this chapter a clear commentary on the emptiness of an external beauty that is purchased at the mall and not wrought in a woman by the Spirit and the Word?
4. Why is it far worse for someone to parade their sin like Sodom than for them to hide it? How do you see this kind of bold pride in sin in our culture today?
5. What encouragement does 3:10 give to the godly in a society that is suffering the general surrounding wickedness? How does verse 10 relate to Romans 2:6-9?
6. Do you think verse 12 implies that female leadership of the nation was a judgment from God? Do you think the modern world has outgrown such thoughts, or is it still the biblical norm for men to lead in the home and in society?
7. What rich imagery do you see Isaiah use in 4:2-6 for the future restoration of Jerusalem? How do these images point both back to the exodus and ahead to the Christ?
8. How does Isaiah 4 give you a picture of God’s constant protection of believers now through the work of Christ on the cross?
9. How can we grow in our yearning for the final fulfillment of Revelation 21:3, which Isaiah 4 also predicts?
10. Why is it important for us to live our lives here as aliens and strangers, as though we still lived in tents?