Context for Isaiah 65
God gives us a warning and a promise through the prophet Isaiah: few will enter His kingdom, but those who persevere to reach it through faith and the righteousness that results from faith will receive the greatest of rewards.
God has no use for sin, especially the sin of those who should know better. Who should know better? Those who have already received His word and rejected it in favor of the world.
It is tempting for us to look at the words of Isaiah 65:1-16 and think they apply simply to the Jews of Isaiah’s time and not to us, yet to make that presumption would be foolhardy and false. Indeed, God will judge everyone by the same measure of faith that He promises through Isaiah: Jew and Gentile, faithful and faithless alike.
What is the warning here then? For us to avoid the temptation to think that we somehow know better than God how to save ourselves. For us to avoid the temptation of the devil, the world, and our own sinfulness to indulge in the way of sin, somehow thinking that God does not care or notice.
Instead, God wants us to seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, focusing ourselves constantly on our faith in Jesus Christ and our goal of Heaven. Our reward for that focus, received through faith given to us as a gift, will be a place in the new Heaven and earth, where we will not want because we will have what we need.
DLH
