Finally, what we appreciate! A nice big-picture description of God's judgment of the earth. At the end of all this, those who remained faithful to God will rejoice and praise God from the east to the west [24:14]. All very exciting, except for Isaiah, who is unable to rejoice. He sees and understands the punishment of the earth.
Isaiah praises God in ch. 25 for His faithfulness and truth. This particular passage means a lot to me. God is faithful, His people are not. God is truth, is open and honest with His people. Nothing happens to His people without Him warning them first, whether it be coming judgment or the coming Messiah. Isaiah also prophecizes the end of death [25:8] and the joy of the people for receiving their salvation from God. Also very important, I think, is that Isaiah says that the Lord will make for all people a feast. Salvation is not coming just to Israel, but to anyone who turns to God.
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The fact that God is truthful and faithful is what sets him so clearly apart from all the manmade creations of gods. In the pagan world, it was generally take for granted that the gods were capricious and sometimes quite wily. This always makes the gods seem like overpower babies to me. They're just as messed up as humans at their worst, but they have lightning bolts to back them up.
I think it was Chesterton who wrote about the excitement of childhood in a garden. When your dad warns you, don't touch that, it stings, and you touch it - it actually stings! If your mother promises you something is sweet or soft or blooms in March (I'm paraphrasing enormously, forgive me.) it does! This truthfulness actually makes the world more suspenseful and more exciting because of it's reliability. Nowadays we seem to think that deception and unexpectedness are more exciting, but they only eliminate our ability to anticipate or understand anything. If we don't want to understand, what's the point of being sentient? Sentient beings crave truth of all kinds. Small facts like, sunflowers follow the course of the sun, and greater truths about a true God. So even when the promise is destruction, Isaiah praises God, who is faithful and true.
My family used to sing a hymn called "We Shall Assemble on the Mountain" for grace at mealtimes, and this is what I remember when the image of God's holy mountain is put down in a phrase; I wonder what people thought when they expected Jesus the Messiah to be an earthly king and instead of meat and wine he multiplied bread and fish? God has a sense of humor:)
God's faithfulness does set him apart from the toddler-gods of others. In all of my studies, I have found this to be utterly true--it is the nature of his timeless law that lets me relate to people writing in nearly any time; it transcends the bounds of culture.
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