Isaiah 65:1 - Meaning and Application

The apostle Paul, who explains these verses for us, shows their true meaning and their fulfillment. He says they point to the calling of the Gentiles and the rejection of the Jews through the preaching of the gospel (Romans 10:20, Romans 10:21). He also says Isaiah was very bold to speak this way, not only because the promise seemed so unlikely, but because he said it to the Jews themselves. They would take it as a strong offense against their nation, and yet Moses had already said something like it: “I will make you jealous by those who are not a people” (Deuteronomy 32:21).

Here it is foretold that the Gentiles, who had been far away, would be brought near (Isaiah 65:1). Paul gives the sense this way: “I was found by those who did not seek me; I was made known to those who did not ask for me.” This shows a wonderful and surprising change in them. Those who had long lived without God in the world would now begin to seek him. They had not said, “Where is God my Maker?” and neither they nor their fathers had called on his name. Some had lived without prayer, and others had prayed to idols made by human hands. But now they would be baptized and call on the name of the Lord (Acts 2:21).

How gladly God speaks here of being sought out, especially by those who had not asked for him before. There is joy in heaven over great sinners who repent. God also went before their prayers with his blessings: “I am found by those who did not seek me.” This happy friendship between God and the Gentiles began on God’s side. They came to know God because they were known by him (Galatians 4:9). They came to seek God and find him because he first sought and found them. Later, after communion with him has begun, God is found by those who seek him (Proverbs 8:17). But in the first conversion, he is found by those who do not seek him. We love him because he first loved us.

Even the gifts of common providence were meant to lead them to seek the Lord, if perhaps they might feel after him and find him (Acts 17:27). But they did not seek him. He was still to them an unknown God, and yet he was found by them. God also gave them the blessing of divine revelation, even though they had never made a profession of religion. “I said, Behold me, behold me,” means that he showed himself to them and invited them to enjoy the comfort and benefit of knowing him. This was said to people who were not called by his name, unlike the Jews for many years.

When the apostles went from place to place preaching the gospel, this was the heart of their message: “Look at God, look to him, turn to him, fix the eyes of your mind on him, know him, admire him, and worship him. Turn away from your idols, and look to the living God who made you.” Christ speaking through them said, “Behold me, behold me,” with the eye of faith, “Look to me, and you will be saved.” This was said to those who had long been “not my people” and “not loved” (Hosea 1:8, Hosea 1:9), and who had not received mercy (Romans 9:25, Romans 9:26).

It is also foretold here that the Jews, who had long been a people near to God, would be cast off and placed at a distance (Isaiah 65:2). Paul applies this to the Jews of his own time, calling them a people made up of evil doers (Romans 10:21). He says, “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and stubborn people.” Notice how God courted them with his grace. He did this through his prophets, through his Son, and through his apostles. He stretched out his hands to them, like Wisdom does (Proverbs 1:24). He spread out his hands like one reasoning with them and pleading with them, not only beckoning with a finger, but opening his arms as if ready to welcome them. He was offering the signs of his favor and begging them to receive them.

When Christ was crucified, his hands were stretched out, as if he were ready to receive returning sinners into his arms. And this went on all day, through the whole gospel age. He waited to show mercy and did not grow tired of waiting. Even those who came in at the eleventh hour were not turned away.

But they despised the invitation. It was given to a rebellious and stubborn people. They were invited to the wedding feast and would not come. They rejected God’s counsel against themselves. This shows both their character and the justice of their rejection. The world would see that God did not cast them off for no reason. It was for their own unfaithfulness that he set them aside.

Their general character was not what one would expect from people who had been so favored by heaven. First, they were very willful. They would do what they wanted, whether it was right or wrong. They walked in a way that was not good, not safe, because they followed their own thoughts, plans, and desires. If our guide is our own thinking, our path is unlikely to be good, because even our thoughts are often evil. God had told them his own thoughts, his will and purpose, but they chose to walk after their own ideas.

Second, they were very provoking. This was God’s complaint about them all along. They grieved him and angered his Holy Spirit, almost as if they were trying to make him their enemy. They kept provoking him to anger right in his face. They did not care what insult they gave him, even in his own sight and presence. They openly despised his authority and defied his justice, and they kept on doing it. This had been their way from the beginning, as seen in the day of testing in the wilderness.

The prophet then speaks more specifically about their sins and the sins of their fathers, which were the reason God cast them off (Isaiah 65:7). He gives examples of both. The most serious sin of their fathers was idolatry. The prophet tells them that this was provoking God right in his face. It is a sin that, as the second commandment shows, God often visits on the children. This was the sin that brought them into captivity, and although the captivity largely cured them of it, it was brought up again when the nation was finally ruined. When God comes to judge, he remembers that sin as well (Exodus 32:34).

Perhaps many people long after the captivity were not worshiping other gods, but they were still guilty of the sins mentioned here, such as marrying foreign wives. They abandoned God’s temple and sacrificed in gardens or groves, so they could worship in their own way, because they did not like God’s appointed worship.

They had left God’s altar and burned incense on bricks, altars of their own making. Their worship was based on their own ideas, and, compared with God’s appointed altar, it was no better than a brick altar compared with the golden altar God had set up for incense. Some read this as incense burned on tiles, the flat roof tiles that covered their houses. On those roofs they also burned incense to idols, as seen in (2 Kings 23:12) and (Jeremiah 19:13).

They also practiced necromancy, that is, trying to speak with the dead. To do this, they stayed among graves and slept among the tombs, seeking guidance from the dead instead of from God (Jeremiah 8:19). This may also mean they consulted evil spirits that were thought to haunt burial places. In either case, they turned from the living God to forbidden and dark practices.

They also broke God’s law about clean and unclean food, even before that distinction was removed through the gospel. They ate pork, and many likely did so openly, especially when obedience became costly. In Jesus’ time, a large herd of pigs was among them, which suggests many no longer cared much about the law. The broth or pieces of forbidden meat, called here “abominable things,” were in their vessels and used as food. The law called such food an abomination, and those who handled it made themselves unclean (Leviticus 11:42-43). Even if some would not eat the meat itself, they were willing to take the broth, showing how close they liked to live to what God forbade.

This may also stand for all sinful pleasures and profits, things God hates but people still like to taste at the edges. Those who pride themselves on going near sin are in danger of falling into it fully. It is a serious thing to flirt with evil.

But the most provoking sin among the Jews in Jesus’ time was their pride and hypocrisy, the sin Christ exposed so often in the scribes and Pharisees. They would say to others, “Keep away, do not come near me, because I am too holy for your company.” They looked down on others and thought themselves better than everyone around them. In saying, “I am holier than you,” they were not only claiming to be good, but claiming to be better than their neighbors.

God says such people are a smoke in his nose, a constant irritation. It is like smoke from wet wood, which never gives light or warmth, only stings the eyes. Nothing is more hateful to God than pride in oneself and contempt for others. Usually, those who think they are holiest are the least holy.

God had a case against them, and the evidence was clear: “It is written before me” (Isaiah 65:6). Their sins were recorded, to be brought up later, even if judgment did not come right away. The sins of sinners, and especially the proud words and scorn of hypocrites, are stored up with God (Deuteronomy 32:34). What is written will be read and dealt with. God may keep silence for a long time, but he will not keep silence forever.

They must not imagine that God is like them. He will repay, and repay fully, into their own hearts and lives. People who misuse religion, which is meant to be holy and honorable, by turning it into a reason for pride, will answer to the jealous God. The very religion they boast about will only make their guilt greater.

Their fathers’ sins would also come back on them. This does not mean their own sins were not enough to deserve judgment, for they certainly were, and even more. But God would not have brought such a great destruction on them if he had not also looked at the sins of their fathers. In the final destruction of Jerusalem, God is said to bring on them the blood of the Old Testament martyrs, even the blood of Abel (Matthew 23:35). He would judge them not only for their fathers’ idols, but also for their high places, where they burned incense on the mountains and hills, even if they meant it for the true God. That was a way of dishonoring God, because it ignored the place he had chosen for his name and the promise that there he would meet his people and bless them.

Their own sins, together with their fathers’ sins, would bring them down. Each generation’s guilt added to the other, and what looked forgotten was being stored up. God will repay into the bosom, not only of open enemies (Psalm 79:12), but also of false and treacherous friends, the shame they have thrown back at him.