Year 6, Day 47: Isaiah 63

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Discipleship Focus: Character

• Character: Having the interior life that is necessary to support the work that God sets before a person.  It is hearing from God and obeying.  It is doing the right thing when nobody is looking.

Isaiah 63 is a chapter that can really catch a person off-guard if they are not paying to what Isaiah is actually saying.  This is even truer if you read a Bible with section titles.  In the ESV, the section title above Isaiah 63:1-6 is “The Lord’s Day of Vengeance.”  It is easy to open up this chapter and feel like we are going back into the chapters on the wrath of the Lord.

However, that really isn’t what is going on here.  Yes, we are talking about God’s wrath.  The image of the winepress is nearly always an image of wrath from God.  If you think about it, what happens in the wine press?  Grapes are trodden upon.  Red liquid flows freely.  This is a dramatic symbol of God’s wrath.

The question that I’m left asking, though, is to what day is this prophetic message speaking?  Certainly the prophet Isaiah is speaking it to his contemporaries.  But is Isaiah only speaking about this with reference to the judgment that will fall upon Assyria and Babylon because of the way that they treated the Hebrew people in captivity?  Or perhaps it is easy to see in this passage the final Day of Judgment when Christ comes back and judges all people.  Certainly that day can be seen through these words.

However, I think the best day to think about this passage is the day of the crucifixion of God’s Messiah.  This may even sound like a foreign idea to you.  After all, how does the death of Jesus apply to these words of judgment?  I’ll show you.  Look at what these initial words of this chapter say.  The robes of the Lord’s Messiah, whom the people don’t recognize because they have to ask who He is, run crimson.  The Lord’s Messiah even says that He has come to save.  But I think the most meaningful verses in this passage are the ones where the Lord’s Messiah says, “I have trodden this winepress alone” and “I looked, but there was nobody to help.”  These verses talk about a Day of God’s wrath where the Messiah was left alone to do the work of salvation.  What day will that be truer other than the day of the crucifixion?

That is why I chose to talk about character today.  Even on a day when the work of salvation is to be done alone, the Lord’s Messiah is there.  Even on a day when those who are being saved cannot help because of their nature, the character of Lord is to do the work before Him in righteousness.

   

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