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Transcript 370B — The Gospel in Isaiah 54
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: I have a question on Isaiah 54:9. Is this a figure of eternal salvation?
HC: Isaiah 54:9. Let's back up a little bit and pick up the context. In verse 7: "For a small moment have I forsaken thee." Obviously God is talking about Israel. "But with great mercies will I gather thee. In a little wrath I hid My face from thee for a moment. But with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, sayeth the Lord, thy Redeemer." He's speaking here of course, about the fact that salvation will come to Israel through the Lord Jesus Christ. "For this is as the waters of Noah unto Me. For as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth, so have I sworn that I would not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee. For the mountains shall depart and the hills be removed, but My kindness shall not depart from thee. Neither shall the covenant of My peace be removed, sayeth the Lord that hath mercy on thee."
You see, God is indicating that in spite of the fact that His wrath is on Israel because of their repeated rejection of God, so that God places a curse upon them, that as a nation they will never respond to the Gospel, yet there is a covenant promise. And notice that He talks about the covenant here in verse 10, "this covenant of My peace." There is a covenant promise that He has made with Israel through Abraham, that in Abraham's seed all the nations would be blessed, that the seed of Abraham would be as the stars of the heaven in number, that they would be a multitude of nations, and that they would be given the land as an everlasting heritage.
Now these blessings had not come. But God is absolutely faithful to these blessings. These covenant promises had to do with salvation, had to do with the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, whereby the seed of Abraham would be expanded to include all believers in Him, whereby the believers would inherit the New Heaven and the New Earth, the final product of their salvation, and thereby receiving the fulfillment of the promise that the seed would inherit the land as an everlasting possession.
This promise is inviolate. It will not be set aside regardless of how wicked national Israel became, or would remain. And so therefore, even though national Israel, right up to the very present day, continues to reject Christ as Messiah, nevertheless Christ did come. He did provide salvation to a remnant chosen by grace; not only in Jesus' day but throughout the New Testament history there has been a trickle of believers from every nation coming into the body of Christ.
Now He relates this to the promise that He gave to Noah, because that also was an inviolate promise. God destroyed the earth with the flood, and after the flood God made a promise. He made a commitment to Noah that never again would He destroy this earth with a flood. He never would bring a flood against this earth that would utterly destroy everything. And even as He had kept that promise to that day, so it was His intention that He would keep the promise made to Abraham concerning salvation, that it would be accomplished.
CALLER: What does Genesis 8:21 mean, when He says, "I will not again curse the ground for man's sake"? We know that the earth is cursed, according to the Bible.
HC: The earth is cursed, but God gave a result of that curse against the earth when He destroyed it with the flood. You notice, in Chapter 9, verse 13, He says, "I do set My bow in the cloud. And it shall be for a token of a covenant between Me and the earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud, and I will remember My covenant which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh. And the bow shall be in the cloud, and I will look upon it that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth."
Now in II Peter 3 we read that when God destroys this earth again it will be by fire, will it not? He will destroy this earth by fire. But He will not bring His curse upon the earth in the sense that He will ever destroy it again by the flood. This was a tremendous curse upon the earth, when He utterly devastated this earth by the flood of Noah's day, so that the whole surface of the earth was changed.
CALLER: Thank you. Good night.
HC: Thank you for calling. Good night.