Second Quarter 2004 Adult Sabbath School Lessons:
Isaiah "Comfort My People"

Insights to Lesson 2
Crisis of Leadership
April 3-9

(Produced by the Editorial Board of the 1888 Message Study Committee)

As a poet, Isaiah is greater than Shakespeare. His poetry depends not on rhyme or iambic feet but on the greater beauty of parallelism. It becomes lyrical poetry in whatever language it is translated. His figures of speech are legion. If you are an unbeliever, reading him is an intellectual delight; if you are a believer in the Lord, he is soul-thrilling to read.

When the Lord called him, the king had to suffer a permanent humiliating rebuke from the Lord—his remaining days pent in leprosy-isolation. He had led the nation brilliantly in economic and military success. Had there been an election, he would have won by a landslide. But at the height of his worldly glory, he indulged a sinful desire to “be like the Most High,” to usurp to his royal prestige the office of high priest—the nation’s pastor. Rarely has the Lord taken action so de pronto (another case was when “Herod, arrayed in royal apparel, sat upon his throne” and played God; “immediately the angel of the Lord smote him,” Acts 12:21-23; prompt judgments like these cause youth to think seriously).

Imagine the solemnity that permeated the populace as Isaiah began his ministry. The Lord had prepared the people this time to listen.

The heart-preparation the Lord gave young Isaiah is what every young minister or teacher must have if he honors the Lord: a thorough understanding of his own sinful unworthiness—combined with a glimpse of the glory of agape as the character of the Lord. What Isaiah saw (ch. 6) was a vision of our Savior in the heavenly sanctuary, “high and lifted up.” Probably this one vision contributed to his prophetic insights throughout his lifelong career, until cruel King Manasseh cut it short. For us today, the “vision” is very special: now the Lord high and lifted up ministers in the Most Holy Apartment.

The Lord gave him a cosmic view of the great controversy which included his intimate view of the cross in chapter 53. “Woe” to anyone who presumes to preach or teach who has not had that self-humbling experience. (If someone responds, “It’s not my fault! The Lord hasn’t given me that vision-experience!,” very well, then; don’t presume to preach or teach.) It’s not that the Lord wants to squash one with an overwhelming sense of His material glory. (We may have thought that is what Isaiah 6 is about.) That “glory” and “holy, holy, holy” was not a numbing experience; it was an awakening to full consciousness to the kind of love that led the Lord of glory to give Himself to the hell that was the second death on His cross. Every cell of Isaiah’s soul thrilled to the holy solemnity of self crucified “with Him.” For him, it was humanity becoming a “partaker of the divine nature” of agape. For us, it is unique to the cleansing of the sanctuary.

Isaiah is called “the gospel prophet” because fear is not his dominant appeal; he often rises to the level of New Covenant ministry. He is the Old Testament revelation of “Christ and Him crucified” the “objective” Gospel glorified. If the civil leadership of Judah had cooperated with him, together they could have evangelized their ancient world. But, as our Lesson suggests, there was “a crisis of leadership.”

In these last days, the message to Laodicea is not addressed to the people, but to the leadership of the church (“unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans, write … ”). It’s a much needed warning to all who serve in any capacity of leadership in the Lord’s church—even those who teach the little children in Sabbath School. But with the warning comes the assurance of Heaven’s rich blessing if we cherish the vision as Isaiah did, if we simply love it, as he did.

The Lord’s messenger applies Isaiah 6 especially to Seventh-day Adventists today: “The vision given to Isaiah [ch. 6] represents the condition of God’s people in the last days. They are privileged to see by faith the work that is going forward in the heavenly sanctuary” (Review and Herald, Dec. 22, 1896, written in the 1888 message era). What Isaiah’s vision meant to his ministry, our insight into the ministry of Christ in His closing work in the Most Holy Apartment means to our work for the world today. Christ has opened the door into the Most Holy Apartment. We are called to follow Him there, by faith; that’s what distinguishes us as Seventh-day Adventists from being Seventh Day Baptists.

As we pray for the Holy Spirit to be our Teacher in this new quarter’s lessons, let us remember that He will minister to us “present truth”—the issue before us is His final work as our High Priest—a preparation for translation at the coming of Christ. What Isaiah’s ministry was to the ancient kingdom of Judah, the 1888 message which the Lord sent us “in His great mercy” is to this generation. This is because that “most precious message” was above all a call to follow Christ in that special final work of atonement—an understanding unique to Seventh-day Adventists. Remembering this will supply a missing glow that will make all these new lessons on Isaiah especially meaningful to you.

Read the study notes for Lesson 3