Sermon Tone Analysis

Copyright October 16, 2022 by Rev. Bruce Goettsche

As we move into the last chapters of Isaiah, we will find some of the most triumphant verses in the entire book.

However, amid these declarations of God’s redeeming power, there is chapter 63 which shows us the flip side to the joy of salvation: the reality of God’s judgment.

We don’t like to think about judgment.

We much prefer a God who shrugs at sin and says to everyone, “It’s OK!

I love you just the same.”

But that is not the God of the Bible.

The true and living God cares about right and wrong.

He is passionate about wanting the best for you.

As a result, He will judge those who spurn Him.

But we must keep in mind that the God who judges is also the God who offers salvation to any who will embrace it.

He is willing to forgive anyone who will come to Him, acknowledge their sin, and ask for God’s help in turning from that sin.

He will give salvation to anyone who dares to believe the promise of Christ that “no man comes to the Father, except through me.”

In this emotional passage, we learn some important truths about the God who loves us.

God Has the Power to Save or Condemn

1 Who is this who comes from Edom,

from the city of Bozrah,

with his clothing stained red?

Who is this in royal robes,

marching in his great strength?

“It is I, the Lord, announcing your salvation!

It is I, the Lord, who has the power to save!”

2 Why are your clothes so red,

as if you have been treading out grapes?

3 “I have been treading the winepress alone;

no one was there to help me.

In my anger I have trampled my enemies

as if they were grapes.

In my fury I have trampled my foes.

Their blood has stained my clothes.

4 For the time has come for me to avenge my people,

to ransom them from their oppressors.

5 I was amazed to see that no one intervened

to help the oppressed.

So I myself stepped in to save them with my strong arm,

and my wrath sustained me.

6 I crushed the nations in my anger

and made them stagger and fall to the ground,

spilling their blood upon the earth.”

Edom was a nation to the south of Israel, and Bozrah was the capital city of Edom.

Edom and Israel had been combatants since way back in the book Genesis where twin brothers Jacob and Esau were rivals and eventually enemies.

It carried on to their descendants.

Edom (descended from Esau) hated Israel (who descended from Jacob).

Edom was a thorn in the side of Israel.

They did not help them when they were attacked and remained indifferent to their suffering.

The chapter begins with the Lord with stained clothes from the blood of His judgment on the nations (specifically Edom).

We don’t like passages like this.

We like to think of God’s judgment as like being punished by our parents.

It may be unpleasant for a while, but you get over it.

As a result, many do not fear God’s judgment.

The Judgment of God is devastating.

We read of weeping and gnashing of teeth and an eternal fire that people must endure forever.

It is the reality of God’s judgment that should spur us on in right living and in our witness to others.

Our indifference to the real plight of those who walk past us every day shows how deficient our view is of God’s judgment.

There are some things we must keep in mind.

First, The Lord’s wrath is not impulsive or uncontrolled.

Most of the time when we become angry, we are reacting to something.

It is largely an impulsive response to an irritant.

We talk about “losing our temper.”

We lose all sense of control.

At times it is as if we are watching ourselves behave poorly but can do nothing to stop it.

God’s anger is not like that.

It is measured and purposeful.

Second, the Lord’s anger is directed toward persistentrebellion.

God does not wake up one day irritable and decide to wipe things out.

The Lord has endured the rebellion and insults of man since the Garden of Eden.

Mankind has persistently turned away from God to worship and give devotion to things we have produced or to other people.

Commentator Ray Ortlund wrote,

Our natural moral calculations always overestimate what we’ve done and what we deserve and underrate what God has done. . .

Our deepest beings are too infested with hostility toward God for merit-based pay to work.

We fail God more than we know.

Then we blame him and get bitter and small and hateful.

If that’s where you are with God right now, hang on.

Trust him as much as you can, and let him lead you forward.

He has something better for you.[1]

Third, the Lord’s final act of judgment will be devastating and unending.

In Revelation 6:15-16 we read,

“Then the kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from … the wrath of the Lamb’ ” (Revelation 6:15, 16)[2]

There are some who would say: I cannot serve a God such as this.

This judgment seems to extreme for this to be a loving God.

They ask, “How could a loving God send anyone to eternal damnation?”

Commentator John Oswalt gives us a picture that may help you.

Think about the prisoners in a Nazi concentration camp.

Striding up to the barbed-wire gates comes a blood-spattered, smoke-begrimed GI, who with one burst of his submachine gun blasts the locks off the gates.

Does he look distasteful to those prisoners?

Not in the least!

He is the most beautiful thing they have seen in years.

He means freedom; he means deliverance; he means life from the dead.

Can you imagine any of them saying, “Now Yank, those Nazis are really nice people, and if you had just talked to them gently and rationally, I am sure all of this unpleasant violence would have been unnecessary”?

Hardly!

On that field, there was only one approach, a fight to the death and winner take all.

The same is true in the spiritual world.

There can be no negotiation with sin, for it is the sworn enemy of all that God is.

It is sin that killed the Son of God, and it is sin that will kill all God’s creatures if it can.

The idea that we can have a negotiated peace where God holds one part of the creation while sin holds another is ludicrous.

In the end, either the righteous God will rule the world or sin will.

The same thing is true of the human heart.

The thought that we can have forgiveness of sin by the blood of Jesus while continuing to practice that which killed him is ludicrous.

Christ the warrior comes to destroy sin and set us free.

(NIV Application Commentary, Isaiah pp.