Reality

The chapter in Isaiah that we are going to look at this morning is a collection of three oracles. Unlike the oracles that we have looked at in the past, the titles of these oracles do not include the name of the nation that they are addressed to. However, from what each contains we can tell who Isaiah was referring to. The first oracle is about Babylon, the second Edom and the third Arabia. We’ll only be looking at the first of these, the oracle about Babylon.

Listen as I read Isaiah 21.

I’m pretty sure that this oracle about Babylon didn’t make a whole lot of sense when I read it to you. Don’t be alarmed. You’re in good company. The smart people that I read aren’t sure about it either. There’s this big fork in the road when it comes to interpreting what Isaiah is talking about. And the issue there is the date of the fall of Babylon. You see, Babylon fell more than once. So, the smart people choose which fork to follow and then try to piece together what’s going on here. Some of them even admit that there’s a lot reading between the lines.

Now, this situation should not be surprising. It’s important to remember that when Isaiah preached his sermons he didn’t have us in mind. There are things that his original audience understood about this oracle that we don’t because they were alive then. The day will come soon enough when the words, ‘the horror of 9/11’ will make no sense to someone reading them. But if we keep our goal clearly in mind there is enough that we can understand here.

So, let me take a moment and have us step back and look again at the big picture. What was Isaiah aiming at when he preached his sermons and then wrote them down? One way to answer that is to say that he was talking about what is real and what isn’t. He was explaining reality and how it works. That’s important because everyone everywhere is confused about reality, at least to some extent. So, in chapter one Isaiah points out how the people were good church‑goers, and yet they were crooked in their business dealings. This is how they thought reality worked. It’s good to be religious, but you have to be practical when it comes to doing business. Isaiah told them that they were wrong and described reality accurately. At the heart of reality is Jesus. He is central to a person’s life when he is in church and when he isn’t. That’s reality. Every Sunday I do what Isaiah was doing. I explain to you what reality is and how it works. I try to help you to see your life in light of Jesus since He is at the heart of reality. In doing that I sometimes point out where you have misunderstood some aspect of reality and then try to explain it accurately. I do that in the hope that the Spirit will change you so that you see reality more clearly. Living according to what is real works much better. Now, there is much in this oracle that we are not sure about, but there is enough that is clear so that we can get another perspective on reality and how it works.

So, let’s consider the last two verses of this oracle. They are about eschatology. I know that as soon as I say that eyes begin to glaze over. What’s supposed to follow is a lecture on the pros and cons of some millennial position. But that misunderstands this word. Eschatology is an abbreviation for something important. It’s about how the story ends. And knowing that helps. When Sleeping Beauty pricks her finger and falls into a deep sleep, you’re not completely undone. You know that Prince Charming will show up and that they will live happily ever after. Knowing the end of the story helps when you’re dealing with the middle of it. And while that says something about fairy tales, it becomes so very important when we’re talking about your life. You are in the middle of a story, Jesus’ story. It’s a love story. Jesus is Prince Charming, battling His enemies so that He can rescue His Sleeping Beauty, the Church. Once He does that, they will live happily ever after. There are times when the story takes a dark turn, but when you know how the story ends you’re not undone. The Church today is in the middle of the story and your life is a chapter of that story.

So, how does the story end? How does Isaiah picture it in this text? Listen. ‘Fallen, fallen is Babylon; and all the carved images of her gods he has shattered to the ground.’ Now, for Isaiah’s immediate audience, this is only how one chapter ends. And that was helpful for them to know. But the Spirit has used this theme more broadly for our sake. Babylon shows up elsewhere. Listen. ‘After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority, and the earth was made bright with his glory. And he called out with a mighty voice, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great!”’ [Revelation 18.1, 2] What we have in our text in Isaiah is just one instance of this greater theme that runs through all of Scripture.  The Spirit uses the imagery of Babylon to describe our enemy. When we get to Revelation He uses this image to describe one aspect of the end of the story. Another key place that Babylon shows up is nearer the beginning of the story. ‘Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens…”’ That sounds familiar, I’m sure, to many of you. It’s about the tower of Babel, which is another name for Babylon. The image of Babylon is the image of an enemy of the people of God. That’s what these two bookends are about. And they are there to remind us that we have an enemy. That’s why the middle is so hard. The middle of the story is filled with battles. But there is good news. Babylon will fall. Our enemy will be defeated. We will ultimately win. That’s how the story ends.

What I’d like to do next is to flesh out a bit how it is that Babylon is our enemy. The bookends that I mentioned reveal two ways that Babylon fights against us. There’s this from Revelation. ‘And in [Babylon] was found the blood of prophets and of saints, and of all who have been slain on earth.’ This is about violent persecution. One way Babylon fights against the people of God is by killing us. Though this is happening around the world, it’s not something that we, here, are faced with. It’s not part of our immediate situation. So, let’s look at another way that Babylon attacks. Let’s return to that tower back in Genesis. Now, what can be so wrong about getting a bunch of folk together to build a tower? Is God against building projects? Well, actually it depends. Everything depends on the motive. God includes motives when He evaluates people’s lives. It’s not just what you do but also why you do it. Remember that in Isaiah’s day Judah was filled with good church‑goers. But why did they go to church? So, listen again to Genesis. This time I’ll read the whole sentence. ‘Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”’ What’s the ‘why’ here? What was the motive for building this tower? It was all about making a name for themselves. Babylon didn’t want to be forgotten. They didn’t want to be nobodies. They wanted to be remembered as significant. So, a huge tower would be a memorial to them. This would make them somebodies. ‘…let us make a name for ourselves.’

We, like all other Christians, have our feet in two worlds. In our case, we are both Christians and Americans. To be sure, there are many blessings we enjoy because we live here. But it’s not all good. One problem that plagues American culture is its pride. We expect to be the biggest, the best, the brightest. When you examine that closely what you get is, ‘… and let us make a name for ourselves.’ That’s America. That’s the culture of Babylon. So, every day the culture of Babylon cries out, telling everyone to live as if its proud ways are reality. The culture of Babylon establishes the standard and then tells everyone to meet it. So, there are standards about jobs and which are suitable and which are unworthy even of consideration, standards about kids and what good parents are supposed to do for them and standards, of course, about what success looks like after the job is done and the kids are grown. Here are the standards, Babylon tells us. Meet them so that you can establish yourself and gain its approval. Meet them and become somebody. If, however, you don’t meet them then you feel Babylon’s condemnation. ‘You are a failure!’ That’s pride and its fruit. That’s the culture of Babylon. The culture of Jesus, on the other hand, explains reality very differently. ‘But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.’  Out of that comes this exhortation. ‘Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you.’  And how, exactly, does Babylonian pride fit with this?

Two very different worlds. And there you are in the middle with one foot in each. The pressure is on. And as you make decisions you’re pulled in both directions. It would be so much easier if these pressures were clearly marked. Then all you’d need to do is look at the label. You’d reject the pressure labeled ‘Babylon’ and go with the one labeled ‘Jesus’. But they aren’t labeled, are they? Your enemy is craftier than that. The pressure is on and it isn’t always so clear which way to go. Life really is a battle.

Every Christian’s reality is life with his feet in two worlds. Every Christian’s reality includes an enemy and warfare. Every Christian’s reality includes some confusion. But every Christian’s reality also includes hope. And Isaiah reminds us of two aspects of that hope.

First, there is the reminder, ‘Fallen, fallen is Babylon…’ One day we will hear those words. One day the battle will be over. One day Jesus will conquer all His and our enemies and then He and we will live happily ever after. That is a great hope. Recently, I was thinking about some things and a question popped into my head. ‘What if heaven really is real?’  By that I was trying to imagine what it would be like to live in a place where every day was happiness. The sun would shine and everyone there would feel up all the time. And each day would be filled with really good things to do and enjoy. What if…? I told myself that such a place is so foreign to my experience. It seems like something that just cannot be. It’s just too good. But I also told myself that heaven really is real and that I will experience it. One day I will hear, ‘Fallen, fallen is Babylon…’ and I will experience a life that is just short of impossible because it will be so good. And so will you. It’s that future that can keep us going when life gets so hard here. Every Christian’s reality includes this hope. It is a hope that you need to nurture.

Another aspect of our hope is in Isaiah’s last verse. And while that first hope looks to the future, this second one looks at the present. Verse 10: ‘O my threshed and winnowed one, what I have heard from the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, I announce to you.’ How odd for Isaiah to call the people of God ‘threshed’ and ‘winnowed’. Those are terms that describe what happens to grain. When grain is harvested it still has a covering on it. That covering is the chaff, something that you’ve heard about in another context. The way that folk in Isaiah’s day removed the chaff was by beating it with sticks and such. That would crack it and allow the chaff to come off. That’s what threshing is. Then, they would winnow it. That is, they would toss the wheat and chaff up in the air and let the breeze carry the lighter chaff away while the heavier wheat would fall back down. Isaiah understands that the people he speaks to, the people of God, feel like they are being threshed and winnowed, beaten and tossed. That may not sound hopeful, but it is for a couple of reasons. It’s hopeful because it explains your experience. You feel the pull from both sides, the culture of Babylon and the culture of Jesus. And there are times when it feels like you’re being beaten and tossed. It feels horrible. And sometimes, when it gets tough, you wonder what is going on. You wonder whether you’ve done something wrong or made some bad choice. But you just might be doing it exactly right. Being faithful to Jesus in the presence of Babylon is tremendously difficult. And you will feel it. You have felt it. But knowing that you’re feeling it because you are working at being faithful makes a huge difference. It gives you hope. You can tell yourself, ‘What do you know? Maybe I’m on the right path after all.’ Remember, this following Jesus thing isn’t supposed to be easy.

There’s more to what Isaiah is saying here. When those farmers were beating on the grain and tossing it up in the air, they were taking something that wasn’t at all useful and making it into something that was so very useful. They took newly harvested grain and changed it into food. The beating and tossing were necessary parts of the process of separating the chaff from the wheat. The beating and tossing that you suffer are also necessary parts of the process of making your life into something useful to Jesus. Those farmers couldn’t eat the grain while the chaff still had it all wrapped up. Jesus can’t use you while your chaff also has you all wrapped up. If you’re going to be useful for Jesus, you need to be beaten and tossed. And seeing that gives hope because when you are experiencing the beating you can tell yourself that Jesus is doing this for some good. He is changing you from something trapped by chaff into something useful. And while that won’t make it hurt less, it will give a purpose for the pain, and that helps when life gets hard.

So, once again I’ve explained some of reality to you. There’s something here that can be very helpful for you. What is it?