Morning Light – February 15th, 2017 – Isaiah 27: Leviathan, the Piercing Serpent

Morning Light – Isaiah 27
Today: [Isaiah 27] Leviathan, the Piercing Serpent. In this chapter Isaiah steps back into the deepest spiritual perspective yet seen in the book of Isaiah thus far. He speaks of a time when Leviathan, the king of all the children of pride (according to Job), is ultimately brought to judgment in the earth. Leviathan is a serpent that swims in the troubled waters of unredeemed humanity. His scales are his pernicious opinions that refuse to yield to the reality of God’s truth. Unbelievers are completely blinded by pride and believers as well if we are not observant can be infected by this influence. The promise of Isaiah 27 is that this influence will be dealt with and that we will be brought to a place that we will blossom and bud and see the fruits of righteousness fill all the earth.
[Isa 27:1-13 KJV] 1 In that day the LORD with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that [is] in the sea. 2 In that day sing ye unto her, A vineyard of red wine. 3 I the LORD do keep it; I will water it every moment: lest [any] hurt it, I will keep it night and day. 4 Fury [is] not in me: who would set the briers [and] thorns against me in battle? I would go through them, I would burn them together. 5 Or let him take hold of my strength, [that] he may make peace with me; [and] he shall make peace with me. 6 He shall cause them that come of Jacob to take root: Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit. 7 Hath he smitten him, as he smote those that smote him? [or] is he slain according to the slaughter of them that are slain by him? 8 In measure, when it shooteth forth, thou wilt debate with it: he stayeth his rough wind in the day of the east wind. 9 By this therefore shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged; and this [is] all the fruit to take away his sin; when he maketh all the stones of the altar as chalkstones that are beaten in sunder, the groves and images shall not stand up. 10 Yet the defenced city [shall be] desolate, [and] the habitation forsaken, and left like a wilderness: there shall the calf feed, and there shall he lie down, and consume the branches thereof. 11 When the boughs thereof are withered, they shall be broken off: the women come, [and] set them on fire: for it [is] a people of no understanding: therefore he that made them will not have mercy on them, and he that formed them will shew them no favour. 12 And it shall come to pass in that day, [that] the LORD shall beat off from the channel of the river unto the stream of Egypt, and ye shall be gathered one by one, O ye children of Israel. 13 And it shall come to pass in that day, [that] the great trumpet shall be blown, and they shall come which were ready to perish in the land of Assyria, and the outcasts in the land of Egypt, and shall worship the LORD in the holy mount at Jerusalem.
The phrase “in that day” appears 43 times in the book of Isaiah out of only 112 times in the entire bible. It is a general reference to the period of time when Messiah shall come and ultimately rule the earth for 1000 years and compel the peoples of the earth to yield to His will. In verse 1we see the ultimate triumph of God’s will in the earth expressed as the vanquishing of an ancient mythical serpent called Leviathan. Job chapter 41 speaks extensively of Leviathan as representing the pride of man that is implacable and unreachable by the truth:
[Job 41:15-16, 34 KJV] 15 [His] scales [are his] pride, shut up together [as with] a close seal. 16 One is so near to another, that no air can come between them. … 34 He beholdeth all high [things]: he [is] a king over all the children of pride.
Leviathan is a piercing serpent because he is the king of all the children of pride. The sea that Leviathan swims in is the sea of unredeemed humanity that Jude 13 and Isaiah 57:20 speak of:
[Jde 1:13 KJV] 13 Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever.
[Isa 57:20 KJV] 20 But the wicked [are] like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.
The habitat of the spirit of Leviathan is the waters of our own human pride that he swims in causing the waters of our lives to be filled with upheaval and trouble. The sting of pride is the ultimate devastation that always falls out to those that are taken captive by this pernicious spirit. Leviathan is the demon whose assignment is to rule over and bring to destruction all those who partake of his nature.
[Pro 16:18 KJV] 18 Pride [goeth] before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.
Job 41:16 says that the scales of Leviathan (his pride) are so close to one another that no air (or spirit) can come between them. These are the opinions and judgments of men who turn against the things of God and the truth of God and refuse to be convinced or turned out of the way of destruction. Isaiah declares that in the day of the Lord the sword of God’s word will punish Leviathan and all of her children with reality of His truth and compel him to bow and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father as Paul declares in Phil. 2:11.
The key for us is to identify Leviathan when he seeks to gain entrance to the waters of our own soul. To expose his scaly hide by dealing with our own penchant for pernicious and biased opinion about anything. We have two choices – we can hold on to our opinions or we can embrace the truth of God’s word. This is one of the primary purposes of the word of God, to free us from our own limited human judgments and give us an opportunity to embrace and align ourselves with the judgments of God. The day of the Lord is a day of ultimate and final judgment of the children of pride but it is a seasonal time that surfaces in our lives on a cyclical basis when the seeds of our own choices come to fruition and produce their harvest either to our blessing or our detriment depending on what the ruling principal has been in our lives during that particular time. We need to be like Samuel (1 Sam. 15:33) who took the sword and hacked up king Agag before the Lord to denounce Saul’s pride. We all have a king Saul in us that thinks he knows better than God what to do next and will suffer the consequences of those choices in the loss of authority and privilege in the things of God if we choose our opinions and self-preservation over adhering to the truth of God.
When Leviathan, that stinging serpent is dealt with then those that be of Jacob shall (v. 6) take root and blossom and bud in the earth and fill the world with fruit. This is the heart of God for lost humanity. Some depict the end of time as an hour when all of humanity rejects God and is destroyed in a moment of wrath. God’s heart is not in the destruction of man but in the redemption of man IN THE EARTH. As believers we are believing for the ultimacy of “as in heaven so on earth” as Jesus Himself instructed us to pray in Luke 11:2. This is the pray of every disciple who follows in the pattern of the prayer life of Jesus, that God’s will, the Father’s will would be done in our lives and in all the earth just as it is done in heaven. We mourn the destruction that comes to sinful man and continually adjudicate in our prayers for the love of God and mercy of God to prevail and give us and all men space and time to repent and come to Christ.
Verse 9 speaks of the iniquity of Jacob being purged because the stones of the pagan altars that surrounded the hills around Jerusalem would be taken down and the images of the idols no longer be able to stand. For us we understand the our heart, our human spirit is the temple in which God dwells. Your soul is wrapped around your spirit like the hill country around Jerusalem where the pagan altars were always present during Israel’s history. We have to ask ourselves and ask God to expose for us the idols in the high places of our minds that surround the temple of God which we are where He chooses to dwell. If He did not tolerate or look the other way in dealing with the idols and pagan images around His natural temple, we must realize that He will not wink at or look the other way when there are strongholds and images of affection in our minds and emotions that resurrect themselves in defiance of and in contradiction to His truth. Again, this is the purpose of God in giving us His word. The word of God is the fuller’s soap and refiner’s fire that it is our responsibility to apply as a purgative to cleanse our thoughts and our hearts of every high thing contrary to God’s truth. Through God’s word we identify and tear away every scale of Leviathan’s pride from its place of attachment to our lives no matter how painful and how tender a rent that leaves in the fabric of our ego.
In so doing we deal with the inherent enmity against God in that part of ourselves that has yet to yield to or experience the fullness of all that Christ has done for us in redemption. When we give our lives to Christ our spirits are redeemed and we become new creations in Christ. However, the mind is still in its unredeemed state. The emotions still are vulnerable to the contaminated influences of the world around us. This is where we open up the gates that Psalm 24:7 speaks of that the king of Glory who reigns in our spirits might invade our minds and bring our emotions, our soul to heel and destroy every idol and false image found there until our thoughts and feelings and every part of ourselves is brought to submission before the throne of God in the midst of our very being.