Covenant Fury, Covenant Faithfulness Text: Isaiah 54:6-8
Introduction: The Divine Romance
We live in a sentimental age, which is to say, a shallow one. Our culture wants a God who is all Hallmark card and no Ten Commandments. We want a divine grandfather who pats us on the head, tells us we're special, and never, ever gets angry. We want a love that costs nothing, demands nothing, and judges nothing. But this kind of love is a cheap imitation, a plastic flower. It is not the love of the Bible. The love of God is a consuming fire, a holy, jealous, covenantal love. It is the love of a husband for his bride, and it is a love that takes sin with deadly seriousness.
The prophet Isaiah, in this magnificent chapter, pulls back the curtain on the very heart of God's relationship with His people. He uses the most intimate human relationship we know, marriage, to explain the most profound theological reality: God's covenant with His chosen. And what we find is not a tame love, but a fierce one. It is a love that allows for discipline, for sorrow, for a sense of abandonment, and even for what Isaiah calls a "flood of fury." But underneath it all, holding it all, and ultimately triumphing over it all, is an "everlasting lovingkindness."
This passage is a direct assault on two opposing errors. The first is the error of the antinomian, who thinks that because God is gracious, sin doesn't matter. He reads of God's compassion and thinks he has a license to trifle with holiness. The second is the error of the legalist, the despairing soul, who feels the sting of God's discipline and concludes that he is abandoned forever. He feels the moment of fury and cannot believe in the everlasting lovingkindness. Isaiah corrects both. He shows us that God's anger is real, but temporary. His compassion is vast, and eternal. His discipline is a momentary hiding of His face, but His gathering is a great and final act of redemption.
To understand this text is to understand the grammar of the gospel. It is to understand how God's wrath and His mercy meet at the cross. It is to understand what it means to be the bride of Christ, chosen, disciplined, and ultimately, eternally cherished.
The Text
For Yahweh has called you, Like a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit, Even like a wife of one’s youth when she is rejected,” Says your God.
“For a brief moment I forsook you, But with great compassion I will gather you.
In a flood of fury I hid My face from you for a moment, But with everlasting lovingkindness I will have compassion on you,” Says Yahweh your Redeemer.
(Isaiah 54:6-8 LSB)
The Grieved and Rejected Wife (v. 6)
We begin with the painful reality of Israel's condition, and God's diagnosis of it.
"For Yahweh has called you, Like a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit, Even like a wife of one’s youth when she is rejected,” Says your God." (Isaiah 54:6)
God does not sugarcoat the situation. He speaks to Israel as she is: forsaken and grieved. The context is the Babylonian exile. The people of God have been hauled out of their land, their temple is destroyed, and they feel abandoned. God here is acknowledging their subjective experience. He is saying, "I see you. I know how you feel. You feel like a rejected wife." This is a profound act of pastoral care. He meets them in their grief.
The imagery of a "wife of one's youth" is particularly poignant. This isn't just any marriage; it's the first love, the foundational covenant established at Sinai. This was the marriage vow, "All that the Lord has spoken we will do" (Ex. 24:7). But Israel had been a faithless bride. She had chased after other gods, committing spiritual adultery with the idols of the nations. The prophets, especially Hosea, develop this theme relentlessly. Israel's sin was not just breaking a rule; it was breaking a heart. It was covenant infidelity.
And so, the rejection she feels is the direct consequence of her own actions. The exile was not an arbitrary act of a moody deity. It was the just discipline of a betrayed husband. Yet, notice the crucial first phrase: "For Yahweh has called you." Even in her state of forsakenness, the call of God remains. Her identity is not ultimately defined by her sin or her grief, but by God's sovereign, electing call. He is still "your God." The covenant relationship, though strained to the breaking point by her sin, has not been nullified. This is the bedrock of her hope. She is not an anonymous castaway; she is a disciplined wife who is still, fundamentally, His.
The Momentary Forsaking and the Great Gathering (v. 7)
In verse 7, God puts His discipline into its proper, eternal perspective.
"For a brief moment I forsook you, But with great compassion I will gather you." (Isaiah 54:7 LSB)
Here we see the divine calculus, the glorious disproportion between God's discipline and His grace. The forsaking, which to Israel felt like an eternity, is defined by God as a "brief moment." This is not to minimize their suffering, but to magnify His grace. From the vantage point of eternity, even the seventy years of exile are but a blink of an eye.
This is a crucial lesson for every Christian undergoing trial. Your affliction, which feels all-consuming and endless, is, in the grand scheme of God's redemptive purpose, "light and momentary" (2 Cor. 4:17). God's clock runs on a different standard than ours. We are creatures of time, and we get lost in the moment. God is the Lord of time, and He sees the end from the beginning.
The contrast is stark. The forsaking is for a "brief moment." But the gathering is with "great compassion." The word for compassion here is rich, evoking the deep, tender love of a mother for the child of her womb. This is not a reluctant, grudging restoration. This is God's heart yearning for His people. The discipline was necessary, but the restoration is His delight.
And what is this gathering? It is, in the first instance, the historical return from Babylon. But it points to a far greater gathering. It points to the gathering of the elect from every tribe, tongue, and nation into the body of Christ. It points to the final, eschatological gathering when Christ returns to bring His bride home. God's ultimate purpose is not to scatter, but to gather. Sin scatters, grace gathers.
The Flood of Fury and Everlasting Lovingkindness (v. 8)
Verse 8 intensifies the contrast, giving us one of the most startling and comforting verses in all of Scripture.
"In a flood of fury I hid My face from you for a moment, But with everlasting lovingkindness I will have compassion on you,” Says Yahweh your Redeemer." (Isaiah 54:8 LSB)
Let us not be modern-day Marcionites who try to edit the "angry God" out of the Old Testament. God's fury against sin is real. It is holy. It is just. The Hebrew speaks of a "gush of wrath." This is the terrifying reality of a holy God confronting the treason of His people. When God hides His face, it is the definition of hell. For a creature to be cut off from the presence of the Creator is the ultimate dereliction.
But again, look at the divine qualifier: "for a moment." The flood of fury was a flash flood. It was intense, terrifying, and destructive, but it was temporary. It was designed to chasten, not to annihilate. This is the difference between God's discipline of His children and His final wrath upon the reprobate. For His children, the wrath is momentary. For His enemies, it is eternal.
And what is on the other side of that momentary fury? "Everlasting lovingkindness." The Hebrew word is hesed. It is one of the great words of the Bible, and it is notoriously difficult to translate. It means covenant loyalty, steadfast love, mercy, goodness, faithfulness all rolled into one. It is God's unbreakable commitment to be for His people. And this hesed is not momentary; it is everlasting. It is the very fabric of eternity.
The foundation for this promise is found in the final title God uses for Himself here: "Yahweh your Redeemer." A redeemer, a goel, was the kinsman who had the responsibility to buy back a family member from slavery or debt, to avenge their blood, or to marry their widow. It was a costly, loyal, family obligation. By calling Himself our Redeemer, God is binding Himself to us with cords of covenant kinship. He is saying, "Your debt is My problem. Your freedom is My responsibility. Your future is My business."
The Redeemer and His Redeemed
How can a God of holy fury also be a God of everlasting lovingkindness? How can He look upon our filthy, adulterous sin and not cast us off forever? The answer to that question is not found in us. It is not because our repentance is so perfect or our sorrow so deep. The answer is found in the cross of Jesus Christ.
On the cross, the "brief moment" of forsaking and the "flood of fury" that we deserved were gathered up and poured out upon the head of our substitute. When Jesus cried out, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" He was experiencing the full, undiluted force of that hidden face, that divine dereliction, that we earned for ourselves. He took the moment of fury so that we could receive the everlasting lovingkindness.
He is Yahweh our Redeemer. He is our divine Kinsman-Redeemer. He saw us in the slave market of sin, forsaken and grieved. He saw us rejected and without hope. And He did not turn away. He paid the price, not with silver or gold, but with His own precious blood. He bought us back. He gathered us to Himself.
Therefore, the church is that wife of Christ's youth. We are the ones who were faithless. We are the ones who grieved His Spirit. And we are the ones who have felt the sting of His discipline in our lives. But because of His redemptive work, we are also the ones who are being gathered. We are the recipients of a great compassion that we did not merit. And we are the beneficiaries of an everlasting lovingkindness that can never be shaken.
This is our security. It is not in our grip on Him, but in His grip on us. His anger at our sin is real, but in Christ, it is past. His love for us is eternal, and it is our future. He has hidden His face for a moment from His Son, so that He might never hide His face from us. He is our Husband, our Maker, and our Redeemer, and His covenant holds forever.