JULY 29 ISAIAH 52-57

Isaiah 52-57

Start by imagining yourself the eunuch of Acts 8. You are a treasurer for Queen Candace of Ethiopia, but you are a eunuch. You were probably made a eunuch when you entered the queen’s service. You are probably a Jew living in the dispersion of that day. You had come to Jerusalem to worship, and were on your way home, when you stopped the chariot to read a scroll you had obtained. What are you reading? The first two of our chapters for today! A man with bright, happy eyes approaches you, looks over your shoulder and asks if you understand what you’re reading. “How can I, without someone to explain it to me?” you say. Then Philip, the evangelist, explains each verse in Isaiah 52-53, and how they point to Jesus!

Try this for yourself. Read the 4th Servant Song, Isaiah 52:13—53:12, and make your own list of everything that reminds you of Jesus. Let the prophetic nature of the words overwhelm you, as they did the Ethiopian Eunuch, who desired baptism when Philip was finished explaining!

Isaiah 54 is “the eternal covenant of peace;” when you read this chapter, make yourself a list of all the promises you can find. One that my brother and I shared with Mom, shortly after Dad’s death, was v. 5: “For your Maker is your Husband.” Just as God is a Father to the fatherless, so He is a Husband to the widow!

Isaiah 55 is an incredible invitation to the free gift of salvation and a call to “seek the Lord while He may be found.” When this word, this invitation, goes forth, God promises fruit. Even the trees of the field will clap their hands for joy.

Isaiah 56 is more hope for foreigners and eunuchs. When the Ethiopian Eunuch read this chapter, he’d have been blown away by the grace of God!

But Isaiah 57, beginning, actually, in Isaiah 56, the prophet rails against the irresponsible leaders of a people addicted to idolatry. But by the end of the chapter, we read one of the most hopeful revival verses in the Bible: Isaiah 57:15

“For this is what the high and exalted One says—he who lives forever, whose name is holy: “I live in a high and holy place, but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.”

Your fellow pilgrim through the Prophets,

Pastor Gary