Even for Isaiah it was a challenge to believe that God really does want to save everyone. So, for example, we can find him singing of God’s rich provision for all the world:
“On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear” (Isaiah 25:6). A feast “for all peoples” sounds pretty promising: plenty of great food and wine at this celebration, enough for everyone. At the same time God gets rid of the ultimate cause of sadness: “And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever. Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.” (25:7-8).

So the power of death gets broken, and all our sorrows get swept away, so that we sing: “Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the Lord for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation” (25:9).

What could ever be better than this action, to overcome death and sorrow as God brings all the world in to the great feast of the kingdom! But look at the very next verse, where we see Isaiah denouncing the Moabites, the neighbors, and on-again-off-again enemies, of the people of Judah: “The Moabites shall be trodden down in their place as straw is trodden down in a dung-pit” (25:10). It’s quite a contrast. Isaiah leaps in a flash from “Joy to the World” to “Trample the Moabites!” We need to pause and consider the suddenness of this shift, and ask what it means.

Should we recognize that “all peoples” doesn’t actually mean “all peoples,” instead it means “almost all peoples,” because the love of God intends to bless and save almost everyone, but the Moabites are the eternal exception to this: they are forever consigned to the cesspool? Or should we recognize that “all peoples” really does mean “all peoples,” but Isaiah was like a lot of us today, struggling to make the application that the love of God really did include the people he hated the most?

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It is hard for us to get it, Lord: if your love and grace really are big enough to reach to us, then they really are big enough to reach to our enemies as well. Let us be glad, and rejoice in the salvation you have established for us, and for all the world.