The One who commanded the light to shine out of darkness Himself has shined in our hearts. Such light is ours to share with an ever-darkening world.
Dark times. Sooner or later, everyone faces them. Isaiah prophesied over a period of sixty years. There were moments of light in those decades, but, on the whole, the time was bleak. His book was written to Judah and Jerusalem (1:1), largely to reprimand the nation for its evil ways. It was during Isaiah’s ministry that Judah’s sister nation, Israel, fell to the hand of the king of Assyria. And it wasn’t only in his surroundings that Isaiah discerned problems. When he considered his own condition, he was forced to lament, “Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips” (6:5). Dark times.
Confronted by sin, around and within, faced with the immediate judgment of Israel and the eventual judgment of Judah, how did the Lord enable Isaiah to persevere? By graciously giving him magnificent portraits of the coming Christ.
The kingdom of Israel was on the verge of captivity. Although few realized it at the time, the hope of Israel wasn’t in a kingdom, but in a King. So the Lord promised His people that, one day, “Thine eyes shall see the King in His beauty” (33:17), and that this King would reign in righteousness (32:1).
In judgment, God was going to remove from Judah “the mighty man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet, and the prudent, and the ancient, the captain of fifty, and the honorable man, and the counselor, and the cunning artificer, and the eloquent orator, … their princes and rulers” (3:2-4). But, in reality, there was Another who was their true Mighty Man (42:13), Judge (33:22), Counselor (9:6), Prince (9:6), Ruler (40:10). Isaiah’s hope, Israel’s hope, Judah’s hope were all the same: Messiah.
In the New Testament, when the Hebrews were again facing times of trial, God’s remedy remained unchanged: “Looking unto Jesus…consider Him” (Heb. 12:2f). And it is the same today. During difficult times, the world has a stream of shifting “solutions”—entertainment, drugs, self-esteem, materialism, psychology, etc. But the believer has the privilege to rely on the one Answer that has remained unmoved, unchanged, and unequalled for all of human history: Christ.
However, it turns out that these portraits of Christ aren’t only meant for the saved. Seven hundred years after Isaiah prophesied, an unbeliever was sitting in his chariot poring over Isaiah 53. He realized that the description wasn’t an end in itself, and so he asked, “of whom speaketh the prophet?” (Acts 8:34). “Then Philip opened his mouth, and began at the same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus” (Acts 8:35). And the man got saved! The picture had done its job—not simply revealing Christ, but doing so in such a way that caused others to desire to know Him.
It would be helpful, wouldn’t it, if all unbelievers spent their free time reading Isaiah, desperate to know of whom he was writing. Alas, today, for every person who has read Isaiah 53, there are thousands who have no idea that his book even exists! But this comes as no surprise to God. And that is why He has scattered throughout the earth some other portraits of Christ. Us. We are called Christ-ians, aren’t we? Certainly we aren’t the perfect pictures that we see in the Scriptures. Not yet, anyway. But we are being “changed into the same image from glory to glory” (2 Cor. 3:18).
We aren’t ends in ourselves either. It is true that we aspire to live in such a way that others will notice a difference in us. But we’ll know our portrait is truly accurate when it inspires people to look past us and long to know the Original.