“In that day the Lord with his hard and great and strong sword will punish leviathan the fleeing serpent; leviathan that twisting serpent; and he will slay the dragon that is in the sea.”
– Isaiah 27:1
There’s injury obviously that’s going on in this verse when you see leviathan. This is a symbol of evil in the world. The dragon that is in the sea, this picture of evil and all of its effects in the world.
Isaiah 27:1 Reminds Us One Day Evil Will Be No More
And Isaiah 27:1, it’s promising that there’s coming a day when the Lord with his hard, great, strong sword will punish evil and slay it. It will be gone. So the picture in Isaiah is holding up the hope that one-day evil and injustice will be no more.
There is coming a day when the Lord will slay evil.
I was having a conversation this week about the evil of human trafficking, that injustice and its effect on little girls and boys and people’s lives and just the horror of it. And we’re talking about what we can do to help mobilize churches to address that injustice.
And that on top of so many other pictures of injustice we see around us in the world. But the good news is that Isaiah 27:1 is saying that there’s a day we’re not going to be mobilizing churches and followers of Christ to address injustice in the world because injustice will be gone. Because the hard, great, strong sword of God is going to eliminate evil and injustice.
This Verse Leads Us to Pray For Jesus To Come Quickly
So we pray. God, we love for that day when a revelation like we pray. Come Lord Jesus, come quickly. Come and bring your sword and bring an end to evil and injustice around us in the world. God, we pray for that. We plead for that. Give us hearts that aren’t content with a world of evil and injustice, that long for your coming and until you come, that work for justice, that work to show your goodness and proclaim your gospel in a world of evil and injustice.
Isaiah 27:1 Leads Us To Pray For God To Use Our Lives
God, we pray that you would indeed use our lives, use our churches to show your goodness and your grace and your mercy in a world of evil and injustice. God, use us today in that way. Help us to think through in our lives today how we can be a demonstration of your mercy, of your goodness in the midst of evil around us in all kinds of different ways.
So God use us today toward that end, help us to love justice like you do with the confidence that one day, you are going send Christ back and your sword is going to punish evil to the fullest extent and justice will reign. God, we long for that day when justice will reign.
We pray these things in anticipation of Jesus coming, in Jesus name. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
