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"Was It Ashes, or Was It Grace?"
"Was It Ashes, or Was It Grace?"
1.1 I want to say thanks to the church and to you, because you allowed me to have a wonderful vacation this year. I was able to be refreshed and renewed during this time. While I was walking on the shore of Clear Lake, MB, I thought about why I wanted to be a pastor and to study theology. For the first time — as I already shared several weeks ago — it was because of my personal well-being and solving my family issues. That was one of the common reasons in Korea at that time: to solve problems, or to be blessed by God. People don't want to experience any bad situation; rather, they want to have a graceful and blessed life in God.
1.2 But if these lives are only for the Christian's life, we cannot fully understand the book of Isaiah. And we have been dealing with this theme throughout this year. So, before we open Isaiah 66, I want you to hold one question in your mind — not to answer it yet, just to carry it through the whole message:
Over this past year, in your own life, did you see ashes — or did you see grace? Or did you see grace standing in the middle of the ashes, refusing to leave?
1.3 I have said one sentence to you more than once this year, back in July, in Isaiah 44: "God's final word is never ashes. His final word is always grace." I meant it. I still mean it. But today we come to the actual final chapter of Isaiah — and its actual final verse does not end with a wedding feast or a new heaven. It ends with fire that is never quenched and a worm that never dies. So this morning we have to ask the question honestly: was I wrong? Or is there something here I haven't yet understood? That is where Isaiah 66 will take us. Let us read Isaiah 66:18-24.
Isaiah 66:18–24 ESV
“For I know their works and their thoughts, and the time is coming to gather all nations and tongues. And they shall come and shall see my glory, and I will set a sign among them. And from them I will send survivors to the nations, to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, who draw the bow, to Tubal and Javan, to the coastlands far away, that have not heard my fame or seen my glory. And they shall declare my glory among the nations.
And they shall bring all your brothers from all the nations as an offering to the Lord, on horses and in chariots and in litters and on mules and on dromedaries, to my holy mountain Jerusalem, says the Lord, just as the Israelites bring their grain offering in a clean vessel to the house of the Lord. And some of them also I will take for priests and for Levites, says the Lord.
“For as the new heavens and the new earth that I make shall remain before me, says the Lord, so shall your offspring and your name remain. From new moon to new moon, and from Sabbath to Sabbath, all flesh shall come to worship before me, declares the Lord.
“And they shall go out and look on the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against me. For their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.”
Where We Started: Empty Religion
Where We Started: Empty Religion
2.1 When reading Isaiah 66, we can naturally recall chapter 1 of Isaiah. On January 11th, our very first full sermon in this series, we sat in Isaiah 1 with a phrase I called "Busy Religion" — people parading through God's courts, multiplying sacrifices, and God saying: "Who asked this of you? ... I cannot stand your assemblies." The problem was never the ritual itself. The problem was people going through the motions of worship while their hands were full of injustice.
Isaiah 66:1–2 ESV
Thus says the Lord: “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest? All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the Lord. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.
2.2 Sixty-five chapters later, the same God says the same thing, almost word for word. Sacrifice offered in the wrong spirit is called an abomination — the text even compares it, shockingly, to idolatry and even to violence (v.3). Nothing has changed about what God wants. What has changed is who is listening.
2.3 It is so true that people can easily forget God when they are in a comfortable situation. I have many friends who call me when they have a specific issue or problem. There is a Korean proverb that says no news is good news. For sure, people don't think they need someone to help them because they are peaceful and calm. That is why when my friend calls me, I can tell that they don't have a peaceful life right now. They need someone to help them, and that's why they need me. Notice the word in verse 2: trembles (ḥārēd) at His word.
2.4 In chapter 1, the people trembled at nothing — they were comfortable, confident, self-assured in their own religiosity. Here, at the very end of the book, the mark of the true worshiper is not confidence — it's trembling. Not fear of punishment, but the kind of reverence that takes God's word seriously enough to let it interrupt you.
2.5 A year ago I asked you: what do our lives smell like — the sweet aroma of Christ, or be'ushim, the stink of hollow religion (Isaiah 5)? Isaiah 66 asks the same question one more time, in its very last breath: are you still just walking through these courts, or are you trembling at what God actually says?
2.6 True worship does not begin with what we bring to God's house; it begins when our comfortable hearts are shattered and we tremble before His word. God does not desire our busy motions, but our broken, listening spirit.
Psalm 51:17 MSG
I learned God-worship when my pride was shattered. Heart-shattered lives ready for love don’t for a moment escape God’s notice.
3.1 Some of you were here on Mother's Day when we sat with this passage already. I won't re-preach it in full — but I don't want to skip past it either, because it belongs to this closing.
Isaiah 66:13 NLT
I will comfort you there in Jerusalem as a mother comforts her child.”
3.2 Zion, who could not even labor, gives birth in a single day (v.7–9) — a birth with no proportional pain, only sudden, miraculous multiplication. And the God who does this is the same God who kneels down, nurses, and bounces a child on His knee. Remember what I said in May: the Cosmic King, the Nurturing Mother, and — we're about to meet Him now — the Warrior Judge. All three. The same God. At once.
3.3 Anoki — "I — I am the one comforting you" (v.14, echoed from what we heard on Mother's Day). That pronoun, forced to the front of the Hebrew sentence where Hebrew grammar doesn't require it, is the same move we heard on Father's Day in Isaiah 63–64: Attah — "You, only You, are our Father," when every other name (Abraham, Jacob) had gone silent. Isaiah keeps doing this all year: stripping away every other name we could hold onto, until only the pronoun for God Himself is left standing.
4.1 This is the piece of chapter 66 we have not yet stood in this year. In May we lingered at the throne and at the mother's lap. We did not linger here — in the fire.
Isaiah 66:15–16 NIV
See, the Lord is coming with fire, and his chariots are like a whirlwind; he will bring down his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire. For with fire and with his sword the Lord will execute judgment on all people, and many will be those slain by the Lord.
4.2 This is not a contradiction of the Mother and the King. It is the same God refusing to let comfort become sentimentality. A mother who comforts a child being harmed and does nothing about the one doing the harming is not actually loving either of them. The fire in verse 15 is not the opposite of the comfort in verse 13. It is what love looks like when it finally, fully deals with what has been destroying the ones it loves.
4.3 Remember Isaiah 8 — the two waters, the gentle stream of Shiloah versus the overwhelming Euphrates. Remember Isaiah 5 — the vineyard that produced be'ushim, rot, instead of fruit. This fire has been building the entire book. It does not arrive out of nowhere in chapter 66. It arrives because God has been patient far longer than the text has let us notice.
4.4 This part certainly teaches us the importance of the foundation and root. In appearance, it looks like a healthy tree, but when we get the fruit from the tree, we can realize its true condition. It obviously makes us recall the teaching of Jesus in Matthew 7:21.
Matthew 7:21 ESV
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
5.1 This is the climax — not just of chapter 66, but of the entire book, and arguably of everything we've studied since January.
Isaiah 66:18–19 ESV
“For I know their works and their thoughts, and the time is coming to gather all nations and tongues. And they shall come and shall see my glory, and I will set a sign among them. And from them I will send survivors to the nations, to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, who draw the bow, to Tubal and Javan, to the coastlands far away, that have not heard my fame or seen my glory. And they shall declare my glory among the nations.
The Hebrew word for these survivors is pělêṭîm — the escaped, the spared remnant. They are not simply rescued. They are sent. Rescue and mission are the same motion in this verse.
5.2 Everything this year has been pointing here. Think back with me:
• May 31 (Isaiah 45), Cyrus: God reached across every category we'd built and used a pagan king who never once acknowledged Him. Here in verse 21, God does something even more radical — He takes people from the nations themselves and makes some of them priests and Levites. Not just used by God at a distance. Brought inside the innermost circle of worship, the one thing reserved by bloodline for over a thousand years.
• August 16 (Isaiah 56), the wall: The foreigner and the eunuch, standing outside, afraid of the words "I don't belong here." We asked, "Where is the wall now?" Isaiah 66:21 is the wall coming all the way down — not just "you may enter," but "you may serve at the altar."
• March 1/8 (Isaiah 49), light to the nations: "It is too small a thing that you should restore only Jacob... I will make you a light to the nations." Here, at the very end, that promise stops being spoken and starts being fulfilled in real time — coastlands that have never even heard God's name receive His glory.
5.3 And then the promise that outlasts every ruin we've sat in all year — Babylon's ashes (Isaiah 44), Jerusalem's burned temple (Isaiah 63–64), the desolate tent of the barren woman (Isaiah 54):
Isaiah 66:22 NKJV
“For as the new heavens and the new earth Which I will make shall remain before Me,” says the Lord, “So shall your descendants and your name remain.
Ka'ăšer ... kēn — "just as ... so." The permanence of the new creation itself becomes the guarantee of your name not being erased. Whatever this year cost you — whatever felt like it turned to ash — this verse says your name outlasts the ash.
6.1 Now we come back to where I started.
Isaiah 66:24 NRSV
And they shall go out and look at the dead bodies of the people who have rebelled against me; for their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.
Lō' tāmût ... lō' tikbeh — will not die, will not be quenched. Two negated imperfects — grammatically, an action with no future endpoint. Jesus Himself quotes this exact verse (Mark 9:48) to describe the reality of judgment. This is not decoration. Isaiah means it, and so does Jesus.
Mark 9:48 ESV
‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.’
6.2 So, was I wrong in July? Is ash the final word after all?
Here is what I want you to see: verse 24 is not the last thing God says. It is the last thing the book shows us happening to those who never turned. The actual sequence of the chapter is: worship first (v.23 — "all flesh shall come to worship before me"), then this appended, sobering footnote about the ones who refused to. Grace is not answering to judgment in this chapter. Judgment is the fine print underneath a promise of grace that has already been declared complete. The order matters. God's word to the world — new heavens, new earth, your name enduring — is spoken first, permanently, unconditionally. What verse 24 shows us is not God's last word, but the last state of those who refused to hear God's first and only word.
6.3 So the sentence I gave you in July still stands, but now I can say it with the weight of the whole book behind it: God's final word is grace — spoken over the new creation before the fire is ever mentioned. The fire is real. The worm is real. But it is not what God is saying to you. It is what remains true about a person who never let themselves tremble at what God said.
Closing
Closing
7.2 So I will not close today with a tidy conclusion. I will close the way this whole year has tried to teach us to close — with the question I asked you at the very beginning:
7.3 When you look back over these past eight months — through all the uncertainty, the quiet ruins, and the busy routines — what did you actually tremble before? Did you tremble at the fear of the ashes, or did you tremble in awe before the God of unrelenting grace?
7.4 And as you walk out of these doors today, will you keep trying to manage your life with comfortable religion — or will you surrender your broken heart, and let His final word of grace have the very last say over yours?
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