A Crush To Judgment (Isaiah 63:1-6)

“I am Groot.”

In Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 1, StarLord gets annoyed because those are the only words spoken by Groot. Rocket explains,“He don’t know talkin’ good like me and you, so his vocabulistics is limited to ‘I’ and ‘am’ and ‘Groot,’ exclusively in that order.”

Actor Vin Diesel ‘voiced’ Groot. Since all he says is “I am Groot,” he did so each time with subtle differences in his tone of voice, its inflections, its timber, etc.

He recorded the line over a thousand times. Something I didn’t know – he additionally did the voice in 15 languages!  Maybe he earned the $54mil he was compensated.

If I had to choose a verse that communicated a great deal of information about God with an economy of words, Isaiah 63:1 would be in the top five.

“I who speak in righteousness, mighty to save.”

From beginning to end, from Genesis to the Revelation, creation to consummation, God has spoken to mankind “in righteousness mighty to save.” We see it in our text. Isaiah makes it clear that the Messiah will come to save a remnant of Jews, and when He does, He will establish the promised kingdom of God on earth with Israel as the spiritual and political capital of the Earth.

• Righteousness is mighty to save the Jews for all  eternity.
• Righteousness is mighty to save the Jews from all Earthly enemies.

I’ll organize my comments around two points: #1 “Righteousness Mighty To Save” Is Your Only Eternal Hope, and #2 “Righteousness Mighty To Save” Is Your Only Earthly Help.

#1 – “Righteousness Mighty To Save” Is Your Only Eternal Hope  (v1)

President Ronald Regan was given the nickname, the Great Communicator.

The greatest communicator is the God of the Bible. His vocabulistics are unparalleled:

• His Word can be understood by a child, while simultaneously humbling the highest intellect.
• He chose, inspired, and sovereignly guided the biblical authors who were equipped by Him to write the very words of scripture. He did it without changing the author’s personality or understanding while doing so.
• He is constantly speaking without words, through His Creation, so much so that He says, “There is no speech nor language Where their voice is not heard” (Psalm 19:3).

Isa 63:1  Who is this who comes from Edom, With dyed garments from Bozrah, This One who is glorious in His apparel, Traveling in the greatness of His strength? – “I who speak in righteousness, mighty to save.”

“Righteousness” is a word that can be used different ways in different contexts. The good folks over at GotQuestions.org point out, “The Bible’s standard of human righteousness is God’s own perfection in every attribute, every attitude, every behavior, and every word. Thus, God’s laws, as given in the Bible, both describe His own character and constitute the plumb line by which He measures human righteousness.”

For our purposes today, think of righteousness as perfectness, perfection, being perfect as God is perfect, in your every thought, every behavior, and every word.

God is perfect. We are definitely not perfect. That is a problem; that is THE problem. The Bible says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God… There is none righteous, no not one” (Romans 3:23 & 10).

This is going to sound strange, but the people to blame are your parents. Not your biological parents, but your OG parents – Adam & Eve. All they had to do was not eat figs; how hard is that?? With a little push from the Devil, however, they ate.

We are just coming out of the Mother’s Day and Father’s Day season. Gifts were given to express love and appreciation. God is our Father, deserving of gifts. What do you give to God? Adam & Eve ought to have given Him obedience as a gift to

Show their love and gratitude.

God sought them out. The LORD had new vocabulistics. He  spoke words they had never heard before: Curse… Thorns… Pain… Toil… Sweat… Sorrow.

He also “spoke righteousness mighty to save.”

He said to the Devil, “And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, And you shall bruise His heel” (Genesis 3:15).

Scholars have labeled this the protoevangelium. It means the ‘First Good News,’ or, the “First Gospel.” The LORD promised to defeat the Devil, restore creation, and redeem mankind.

If you don’t see all that in the verse, it’s OK. The LORD let His plan be known progressively, over six-thousand or so years. These words in Genesis are foundational for what is to come. You can at the very least understand from the protoevangelium that Someone very unique & special was going to come. He would be sent by God, to resolve the cosmic conflict.

That Person was Jesus. He “made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:7-8).

He came as promised in Genesis – the Seed of the woman. How does that help us?

It enabled God to place the sins of the world on Jesus so that, in turn, His righteousness could be given those who believe Him and are thus in Him.

The apostle Paul gives us this summary of that spiritual transaction. He said, “God made [Jesus] who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become [perfect].” (Second Corinthians 5:21).

“I speak righteousness, mighty to save.” God’s entire, wonderful, fragile but providence-guaranteed, plan of salvation is communicated in that phrase. He provides the necessary righteousness needed to be saved. He provides it for “whosoever will believe.”

Is there any other Almighty God Who became a man? One that was fully God and fully man? Jesus is your only hope for eternal life.

I came across a quote: “Our biblical hope is not a hope-so, it is a hope-sure.”

A passage in the NT Book of Titus extols our hope-sure: “Denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works” (Titus 2:11-14).

#2 – Righteousness Mighty To Save Is Your Only Earthly Help (v2-6)

Isaiah’s audience are Jews in Judah in the 7^th century BC. He excitedly wrote to them about the coming of their Messiah. Not His first coming. No, these are the vocabulistics of the Second Coming.

In His First Coming, Jesus made the nation of Israel a sincere offer to establish the Kingdom of God on the Earth. He came to His own, but they refused.

Since God must keep His unconditional promises to Israel, Jesus will come again, a second time. This time the Jews will receive Him.

Notice something in verse one. Jesus will come “from Edom, from Bozrah, with His garments stained crimson” (NIV).

Popular belief is that Jesus will return to the Mount of Olives to an immediate confrontation of nations in Megiddo. “Armageddon” is a compound word meaning Hill of Megiddo, hence the Battle of Armageddon.

What we call the Battle of Armageddon is better called the Campaign of Armageddon; It isn’t a single battle fought in one location.

Isaiah says that the Lord will return to Edom, and comes to Bozrah. Edom is southern Jordan, while Bozrah is the Hebrew name for the city of Petra.

In a great prophetic passage, Jesus alerts the Jews who will be living in and around Jerusalem to flee into the wilderness when the Antichrist desecrates their rebuilt Temple. Scholars suggest they will flee to Petra to be kept safe while the worst part of the Great Tribulation takes place on Earth.

Micah 2:12, “I will surely assemble all of you, Jacob, I will surely gather the remnant of Israel. I will put them together like sheep in the fold; Like a flock in the midst of its pasture They will be noisy with men.”

Don’t see Bozrah in that verse? It isn’t translated that way in the NKJV. The answer is found in the phrase “sheep in the fold.” That is a translation of the Hebrew word Bozrah. The Lord returns to Bozrah.

Something incredible happens in Bozrah. We read in Hosea 6:1-3, “Come, and let us return to the LORD; For He has torn, but He will heal us; He has stricken, but He will bind us up. After two days He will revive us; On the third day He will raise us up, That we may live in His sight. Let us know, Let us pursue the knowledge of the LORD. His going forth is established as the morning; He will come to us like the rain, Like the latter and former rain to the earth.”

Over a three-day period, the remnant of Jews holed up in Petra will repent, returning to the Lord. The Bible tells us, “And I will pour on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and supplication; then they will look on Me whom they pierced. Yes, they will mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son, and grieve for Him as one grieves for a firstborn” (Zechariah 12:10).

The Jews will receive the Lord, Jesus Christ. The apostle Paul will later write, “all Israel will be saved.”

The Campaign of Armageddon looks something like this:

1. At the mid-point of the tribulation the faithful remnant of Israel heeds Jesus’ words and flee to the vicinity of Petra.
2. The forces of the Antichrist attacks the remnant.
3. The remnant remembers Jesus’ words in Matthew 23:39 and call for their Messiah.
4. Jesus responds and returns to the area of Bozrah to rescue His people and initiate world-wide judgment that will bring the Great Tribulation to an end.
5. Having rescued the remnant in the area of Bozrah Jesus then leads a campaign to rescue Jerusalem.
6. Jesus arrives at Jerusalem on the Mount of Olives from Bozrah.
7. The siege of Jerusalem comes to a sudden and spectacular end.

Isa 63:2  Why is Your apparel red, And Your garments like one who treads in the winepress?

Isa 63:3  “I have trodden the winepress alone, And from the peoples no one was with Me. For I have trodden them in My anger, And trampled them in My fury; Their blood is sprinkled upon My garments, And I have stained all My robes.

Jesus wasn’t talking about a visit to a winery where you can have a feets-on experience crushing grapes. He will be bloodstained from crushing the enemies of Israel. In the Book of the Revelation, it is described this way: “He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God” (19:13).

He isn’t upset that He will do it alone. No one else could. This is similar to the experience of the apostle John when it seemed like no one was able to take & open the scroll in Heaven. No one, that is, until Jesus stepped forward.

We understand the words “anger” and “fury” to derive from His righteousness. He was mighty to save, but these refused, and sought to take it out by attempting genocide against the Jews.

Jerry Bridges comments: “God, by the very perfection of His moral nature, cannot but be angry at sin – not only because of its destructiveness to humans, but, more important, because of its assault on His divine majesty. This is not the mere petulance of an offended deity because His commands are not obeyed. It is rather the necessary response of God to uphold His moral authority in His universe. And though God’s wrath does not contain the sinful emotions associated with human wrath, it does contain a fierce intensity arising from His settled opposition to sin and His determination to punish it to the utmost.”

Isa 63:4  For the day of vengeance is in My heart, And the year of My redeemed has come.

God is longsuffering, waiting to return because He does not wish that anyone would perish. There is coming a day when His longsuffering will – it must – end.

Gentile martyrs of the Great Tribulation “[Cry] with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, until You judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth? Then a white robe was given to each of them; and it was said to them that they should rest a little while longer, until both the number of their fellow servants and their brethren, who would be killed as they were, was completed” (6:10-11).

His longsuffering waits, but it ends.

God maximizes opportunities to save by having perfect timing. He keeps time in our lives, too. By that I mean He is always on time.

Isa 63:5  I looked, but there was no one to help, And I wondered That there was no one to uphold; Therefore My own arm brought salvation for Me; And My own fury, it sustained Me.

Is Buddha mighty to save? Confucius? Joseph Smith? Muhammad? Karl Marx? Vishnu? Krishna?

Isa 63:6  I have trodden down the peoples in My anger, Made them drunk in My fury, And brought down their strength to the Earth.”

One commentator noticed the following: “In one passage His wrath, in the other passage His righteousness. Both are available to every human being ever created. This is everyone’s personal choice – We must choose either Christ’s wrath or Christ’s righteousness! Have you chosen dear listener?”

If you are not in Christ, how do you plan on defeating Death when it comes? Especially if it comes suddenly? You need to be declared righteous believing in Jesus. He remains mighty to save.

Christian – What are you dealing with? Is it a season of blessing… or buffeting? Plenty… or want? Health… or sickness?

Christ’s righteousness is for more than your initial salvation. It is for your daily interactions in a hostile cosmos. This everyday help is your sanctification.

One of the things Jesus uses to sanctify us is the Word of God. To put it another way, sanctification is a result of obeying God’s Word.

Let’s use the illustration of a bad situation at work. Examine your own heart, to see if you are the problem. If you are… Repent and change your attitude.

Let’s say you are not to blame. When that’s the case, He is “mighty to save” can mean He will deliver you from the situation. It’s been my experience that Jesus more often wants to deliver you by going through the trial with you. When that is the case, He will speak to you, through the Word & the Spirit. He will speak your righteous response so that the world may see Jesus at work.

In one of the Airplane movies, the stewardess was having a hard time communicating with a passenger. He spoke jive. An elderly Caucasian woman came to the rescue, telling the stewardess, “I speak jive.” A hilarious exchange took place.

We “speak righteousness” in at least three ways:

1. By growing in the Lord after our initial salvation.
2. By sharing with unbelievers that God is mighty to save them, too.
3. And by reminding each other in our fellowship that He who has begun to perfect us has promised to complete the work.

My hope [and help] is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.