Isaiah chapter 58 - Hebrews

The fifty-eighth chapter of Isaiah opens with a call from God for Isaiah to show His people their transgression (singular).

“Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins.” (Isaiah 58:1)

What would have been Israel’s transgression at the time of Isaiah?

“Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as a nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinance of their God: they ask of me the ordinances of justice; they take delight in approaching to God. Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not? wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge?” (Isaiah 58:2-3a)

It looks like Israel was doing what they were supposed to do, but God doesn’t seem to be pleased with their actions.

“Behold, in the day of your fast ye find pleasure, and exact all your labours. Behold, ye fast for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness: ye shall not fast as ye do this day, to make your voice to be heard on high. Is it such a fast that I have chosen? a day for a man to afflict his soul? is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the LORD?” (Isaiah 58:3b-5)

Israel was going through the motions, but they had lost the purpose of their works. In the verses that follow, God explains what He is really after.

“Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh? Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the LORD shall be thy rereward. Then shalt thou call, and the LORD shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am. If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking vanity; And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noonday: And the LORD shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not. And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in. If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the LORD, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: Then shalt thou delight thyself in the LORD; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it.” (Isaiah 58:6-14)

It appears that Israel was pretty consistent in their behavior. Behind what God indicates through Isaiah for the people of his day as to what their motive should have been, we see that what God desired to do was to bless them, but they were so busy going through the motions that they completely missed what He intended. Nothing had changed by the time Jesus of Nazareth came on the scene. They crucified their God and went right on performing the temple ordinances. Let’s take one last look at Isaiah 58:9.

“Then shalt thou call, and the LORD shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am. If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking vanity” (Isaiah 58:9)

What was God talking about through Isaiah when He said; “If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke”? What was Israel’s yoke? It was the Law of Moses. What part of the Law of Moses was in “the midst” of the people of Israel? The temple was the central and focal point of Jewish life. That was where they did all that business but they missed God’s intended purpose. The writer of Hebrews wrote to the Church in Jerusalem to help them get the idea straight. And, one of the primary messages of the book of Hebrews is…

“Now of the things which we have spoken this is the sum: We have such an high priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens; A minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man. For every high priest is ordained to offer gifts and sacrifices: wherefore it is of necessity that this man have somewhat also to offer. For if he were on earth, he should not be a priest, seeing that there are priests that offer gifts according to the law: Who serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things, as Moses was admonished of God when he was about to make the tabernacle: for, See, saith he, that thou make all things according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount. But now hath he obtained a more excellent ministry, by how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second. For finding fault with them, he saith, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they continued not in my covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people: And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more. In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away.” (Hebrews 8)

With the work of the cross completed, God was finished with the Law of Moses and with the Levitical priesthood and with the temple, but the Jews would have none of that. The temple made them special. The temple made them good in their own eyes. The temple gave them many ways to think of themselves as giving to God. And, as with the words of Isaiah chapter fifty-eight, they missed the point again. Hebrews chapters six, seven, eight, nine and ten was written because the Jewish Christians needed those words. That says that things had not changed much since the days of Isaiah.

This is Isaiah chapter fifty-eight, and Hebrews is the fifty-eighth book in the Bible. They are connected.