Isaiah, Introduction I
Isaiah · Vern Peterman · Dec 4, 2005
Isaiah, No. 01
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/48262338565393

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Good morning. What we'll be doing is three weeks of introduction. So we want you to be properly introduced. As we do so, Isaiah is one of the largest of the prophetic books. If you count by chapters, it is the largest. He lived about 700 years before the birth of Christ, and yet you may have looked at it and said, heaven sakes, the things that it describes in there just sounds like Christ. And as we'll see, indeed it is. He foretold things about Christ's first coming and about Christ's second coming. He foretold many things, and yet here it was seven centuries before Christ actually came, and yet he foretold many details.

Now, some of you may be shocked. We're not going to stay in the New Testament. That may make you a bit nervous. Relax here. Well, let's take a look at the timeline here. Just kind of give you a time frame reference here. Here's Abraham, and we'll get some round numbers, about 2,000 B.C., about 4,000 years ago.

He started at Ur. The Lord said, I'll take you to the land that I will show you. And he went over to what is now Israel. About 1,400 B.C. is when Moses looked over into the Promised Land and said his last to the people of Israel, and they entered it.

And then here's David about a thousand years before Christ. Here's a map of kind of the kingdom that David had. Here are the excavations just south of the Temple Mount where the city of David had been excavated. And by the way, excavations are ongoing, but this was from like about 1979. This is an artist's rendering of what the city of David would have looked like. So this is about a thousand BC. Here's Christ about a thousand years after the time of David. Here's you and me, right here. Now, Isaiah fits in here about 700 years before the time of Christ.

So we've got some kind of frame of reference. Oh, you also have that on page 2 of your handout, too. Alright, if it still bothers you, we're not in the New Testament. Let me talk about that. You may be thinking, why are you putting me through this? Here's why.

Isaiah is a part of scripture. Paul wrote all scriptures inspired and profitable, and he included in that Isaiah. This is a God-inspired book. Paul essentially said then that our studying through the book of Isaiah will be profitable. How about that? We're doing it because it's spiritually profitable. So that would be one reason. It's profitable because he wrote here to people who were in the church it's spiritually profitable for those who have been placed into the church. If you have put your trust in Jesus Christ for salvation, 1 Corinthians 12, 13 says the Holy Spirit has placed you into the body of Christ. If you are in the church, you're qualified, it's profitable for you.

Now, you might be thinking, yeah, but wait a minute, isn't this in the Old Testament, wasn't He addressing Jews? Specifically? Exclusively? And since we're in the church, and we're certainly not under law, isn't Isaiah just for the Jews then, right? Well, yes, it's true. Isaiah was a Jew, and he was ministering to the Jews. And it's true that he did not directly reveal information about the church to those who are in the church today.

That's true. But, let's take a look at it. And we looked at this back in Ephesians chapter 2, and we're studying through there. You may remember this study in Ephesians 2, 11-22. The Lord created these people Gentiles, those who are descended from Adam, and then those taken out from the Gentiles, chosen from them, Israel, and then with the cross took the dividing wall down and created the church. So what's Isaiah going to talk about since we've said he doesn't talk about the church explicitly? Isaiah will tell us about the Gentiles, and Israel, and Christ's births and second comings, but not specifically about the church. But, remember we're going through Ephesians, Ephesians 3, verse 5 particularly, this understanding, this insight into the mystery of Christ, which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed. So Paul was revealing things about the church that Isaiah didn't have.

That's true. To preach to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ and to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery which for ages has been hidden in God. One of the things we're going to find is amazing as we go through the book of Isaiah is we're going to find Isaiah saying God referring to my people. some people that we will be amazed that he will say, those are my people. Astounding.

Isaiah has been called the salvation prophet because he so frequently makes reference to salvation, and he offers salvation to the Gentiles. Nonetheless, he still did not have this message that Paul uniquely had to the church. The authors of the New Testament, however, did quote Isaiah often, and they did so Not because that they were just staunch Jews, but because they did so for the benefit of the church. Now, if you look at this pie chart here, one of the things we look at is about out of some 260 times that the New Testament quotes some significant section of the Old Testament, about one out of every five of those times is from the book of Isaiah.

Significant. It is the most often quoted profit out of the Old Testament. Psalms is the only one that has it beat by a few percentage points. Now, it's possible that pie charts and percentages kind of cause you some problems. That's okay. Just relax. We'll make a seasonal adjustment and you'll be just fine. Okay.

Now, the other thing, several years ago, and some of you may have recalled this, others of you may have even caught up with tapes or handouts, We went through Revelation, and one of the things we pointed out back then is that the book of Revelation is 70% of it right out of the Old Testament. Many people are surprised to hear that because they read through Revelation, and unless one takes the right approach to it, they'll find it baffling. And yet, one of the key insights that we have is that over two-thirds of the book of Revelation is straight out of the Old Testament, and a good percentage of that is Isaiah. Isaiah is a key source of many words and concepts that are repeatedly used in the book of Revelation. Let me give you an example.

Isaiah 42.9 describes a sharp sword coming out of the mouth. And what do we find throughout the book of Revelation? Starting with chapter 1, carrying on to chapter 19, the last chapter where judgment is executed upon the earth, speaks of a sword coming out of the mouth of Christ. and it consistently uses the Greek word, ramphaia, barbarian battle sword. That comes out of Isaiah.

We also see, and we made note of previously in the Ephesian study, that Christ made these I am statements throughout the Gospel of John. Seven different I am statements, sometimes repeated. The Greek word behind those is ego, a me. In these passages, and out of the Greek Old Testament, this was where Moses is speaking to the Lord in the burning bush in Exodus 3.14, and he says, Who shall Isaiah sent me? In the Greek Old Testament, therefore, I am as Ego Emi. That's why in at least one instance where Jesus said Ego Emi, they picked up rocks, because they knew exactly what He was claiming. He was claiming deity. and they didn't like it.

Isaiah 41-4 and 46-9 are a couple of examples of places where the Greek Old Testament of Isaiah uses that exact same phrase, and it's God speaking those words. Let me give you a for instance. Revelation speaks of, I am the beginning and the end, I am the first and the last, and also I am the Alpha and the Omega. It turns out the claim of the beginning and the end and the first and the last comes from Isaiah, several different times. The book of Isaiah is the source of that claim.

And interestingly, in the Greek Old Testament, in several of those locations, it's Ego Emi, the same term that Jesus used in the Gospel of John. Before Abraham was born, Ego Emi. One of the things I know is in the back of your mind, you're terribly concerned about this, knowing that it took us almost two years to get through Ephesians and Colossians. You're looking at the book of Isaiah and you're thinking, oh my heavens, 66 chapters!

Aren't we going to be done with this in about the year 2023? What does this mean? How many babies are going to be born by then? How many touchdowns? Quickly, get the slide rule out. Flipping around, that's 70 babies! Heavens sakes! Okay. You're concerned too. Isn't that about 3,500 pages of handouts per person over the years of study? Then you're thinking, ah, the binders. The binders, I haven't even thought about the binders yet. Well, I'd recommend maybe you consider some large ones. Oh, I have to buy a new bookshelf? Well, think about it. actually relax. It's going to be really, really good.

And the way we'll handle it is this. After three weeks of introduction, which certainly would make you think that it's going to be the year 2023 before we're done. What we're going to do is we're going to go through the book of Isaiah, generally speaking about a chapter a week. Okay, that'll be our approach.

And we'll start off by summarizing each chapter. Here's the big picture in each chapter. but rather than go through it like we do with Ephesians and Colossians and do every single verse and all the Greek and Hebrew and culture, no, we won't do that. What we'll do instead, we'll focus on a smaller portion of it and zero in most of our time, not on the summary, but on this is the smaller portion, the select portion out of each chapter. So what will happen then, is you will get a summary of, here's overall what Isaiah is saying, and then we'll take a look at a particular portion of it, sometimes it will only be one verse, that has particular relevance to us now.

And we will have occasional exceptions to that, but most of the time, about a chapter a week will be our pace, okay? So, don't worry about long-range planning, don't worry about naming your kids Meher, Shalal, Hashbaz, and sure, jash him, okay? Or worry about how do I accommodate 70 baby births before the end of Isaiah? Okay. We'll do, for example, Isaiah chapter 7. It has 25 verses. We'll summarize. Here is the general message of those 25 verses.

And then we'll study focusing on Isaiah 7.14, which we'll take a quick glimpse at this next week.

Very well fits the season, doesn't it? And it's quoted oftentimes, you'll see it on plaques and Christmas cards and things of that sort. Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call his name Immanuel, God with us. Now that will be okay, won't it? No splitting headaches, no burst arteries, none of that.

So, back to the timeline here. Look at this section of this big timeline. And that's going to be like this. So you're now on page three on your handout. Okay. Here's the divided kingdom. Some of you have even seen this chart. And so hopefully it won't be as terrifically disorienting, but here's the divided kingdom. And here's what it amounts to David ruled for 40 years. Okay. Just get that number 40 in your head, 40 years, his son, Solomon, Forty years after that civil war split Israel into two nations. There's your divided kingdom. We'll go into that in more detail, but that's the general outline. Here's the civil war about 931 BC. Previously, Israel had been one nation prior to that civil war.

There was a northern kingdom and a southern kingdom. The northern kingdom was called Israel after the name of its prominent tribe, sometimes Ephraim. The southern kingdom was called by its prominent name, Judah. It was actually Judah and Benjamin. That's why Paul was proud to claim to be of the tribe of Benjamin, because it was loyal to Judah, the southern kingdom. And so these were the two kingdoms. Now, do you know how you tell between Israel and Judah, the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom?

Do you know how you tell? If you were in Jerusalem and somebody comes up and asks you, you know, what happens if I go south here? The person would turn around and give them instructions. Well, you're going to Bethlehem. Okay? Then you know you're in the southern kingdom. Okay? Alright. Okay. Now, just so we got it straight here. Israel, that's this upper line on the divided kingdom. And in Judah, that's the lower line on the kingdom. Okay. All right. So you got that straight. All right. Back to Isaiah's timeline here. We're going to take a smaller segment here. That's going to be this little slice out of the divided kingdom. Just look at a smaller piece there. Okay. So now you've got Isaiah.

He ministered only in this southern kingdom. He ends up speaking of nations all around and we'll touch on that. but he ministered out of this southern kingdom. That's where he was at. If you want to look at historical records, 2 Kings 15-21 has the historical account of what took place during his time of ministry. Alternatively, and this is not in your handout if you want to write this, 2 Chronicles 26-33 is a parallel passage that describes that. Micah was one. Micah was one who ministered in the southern kingdom and was a contemporary of Isaiah.

Another prophet. One of the, called them minor prophets. Not that you should consider them insignificant, but it's minor. Hold on to that. Okay. Amos had a short ministry in the northern kingdom just prior to Isaiah's ministry. That being the case, the two of them were they at least lived some portion of their lives as contemporaries and both had ministry as prophets, although no evidence that they had contact with each other. Hosea is another Old Testament prophet, a minor prophet, who was a contemporary of Isaiah's.

Okay, now, the other thing is the Northern Kingdom, and this is shown on your divided kingdoms chart there, the Northern Kingdom in 722 BC got carried off They didn't get carried away, they got carried off. Because Assyria came in and took them over.

Now, to get the picture here, the northern kingdom had ten tribes. The southern kingdom had the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, so the northern kingdom had the others. So just two kingdoms in the south, ten kingdoms in the north. By this time, this wasn't true initially, but by this time the capital of the Northern Kingdom was Samaria.

And as we'll talk about later, this explains why the Samaritans who lived in Samaria were not well regarded because a lot of the Jews had been taken off and the people that replaced them were not Jews. There are other reasons behind that and we'll talk about that later. The capital of the Northern Kingdom was Jerusalem.

Now, in order that we get some kind of sense of scale here. If you look at Holly Hills, Holly Hills Bible Church, and we'll call that the location of Jerusalem, compare, and Samaria would be somewhere up around Loveland. That's how far apart they were. That gives you some sense of distance. Let's look at the people that are around them, because Isaiah is going to refer to them.

And we will bring these maps back up. But just to kind of give you a general intro, To the north, you had the Phoenicians. They were ancient mariners. They were, by the way, phenomenal mariners, evidence that they went up to Britain, evidence that they circumnavigated Africa and came back up the eastern side of Africa. Phenomenal mariners.

They identified themselves more often by the name of the city that they were from than as a people in general. But the Phoenicia or the Phoenicians is the term that you'll see. early history, Genesis 10, and we'll see them referred to in Isaiah there. Another one, the Aramaeans were an ancient people centered around the city of Damascus. This is the city where Paul eventually became a believer, and they're the source of the Aramaic language, which was the common language spoken in Israel during New Testament times.

Now, Edom descended from those who are from Esau, And you find, of course, the account of that in Genesis. We're going to see reference to Edom also in the book of Isaiah. Ammon and Moab were descended from the sons of Lot. And we'll find early reference, of course, to that in the account in Genesis and reference to it in Isaiah.

Just be careful of one thing here. We don't want any Moabites. Okay? All right. They're dangerous. All right. Oh, well. Okay. The Philistines. The Philistines were an ancient people. They remain through the Old Testament times, and you find reference to them in Genesis and Isaiah, and even the prophet Zechariah has reference to the Philistines. Now, if we were to take a space station view of the Middle East, this is not your handout, but here's Israel and Judah. We've been looking in that particular region. Now you back up and you take a space station view.

You've got Egypt over here, and you've got Assyria up towards the top. And you got Babylon and then Persia over there, okay? Now, because each of those nations had kings, right? Now, we want to kind of get it in mind that northern nation, Israel, northern kingdom Israel, also called Ephraim by the dominant tribe, they had 19 kings.

And as we used to say on the farm, you can hold a sheep's opinion about these kings. Do you know what a sheep's opinion is? They're really bad. Okay? We would hear them give that opinion all day long, believe me. Anyway, all 19 of these kings are really bad. Alright.

Now, in Judah, they had 20 kings, and those 20 kings, there were 8 that were pretty much good, and 12 that were ungodly. A few of them kind of transitioned, but that's a good generalization. In the northern kingdom in Israel, notice that there were nine dynasties.

And the reason is, in about half the cases, the kings would die violent deaths and somebody else would take over. So you wouldn't have any family continuity in the kingship. Half of them would die nasty. So in the southern kingdom, you had all of the kings, all 20 of them were descendants of David. So a distinction there. Not all godly, but all descendants of David. Now, one more good... Man, who does this stuff? Okay, that's not good either. Alright.

Isaiah had a wife and two kids. If you're wondering, how is this thing relevant to me? Here we are, this is 2,700 years ago. How is this relevant to me today? Isaiah was a Jew living in a place. They didn't even have cell phones. Alright. Isaiah had a wife and two kids. Do you think he was concerned about them? Yeah. His people, Israel, had already divided into two nations. The culture in each nation was pretty much going downhill fast. Start to sound a little familiar? How about some more? How does one live and where do you turn when the culture around you is headed downhill morally and spiritually?

What do you do? How do you handle that? Who do you turn to? What are your thoughts? What answers do you give to others at a time like that? When somebody else says, man, things are really getting bad, you say, yeah. And then what do you say? We could make some more comparisons. What do you do when an enemy from the Middle East is attacking your nation right within your own borders? Start to sound a little more familiar? Making threats of devastation. Who do you turn to at a time like that? What do you say?

Interestingly, Mosul, which is, I understand, where Matt Kirby is stationed, is Nineveh. It's the modern name for Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, the nation that attacked Judah, as we'll see, the nation that hauled off the northern tribes. Here's Babylon, just south of Baghdad, capital of the Babylonian Empire. And just over the border, into Iran, is Susa, capital of the Persian Empire.

Three empires that will be relevant as we go through the book of Isaiah. You see how it starts to get a whole lot more relevant? What do I do when things are falling apart? Who do I turn to? And interestingly, the enemies that we're contending with are in very much the same places. Here's Isaiah. 52 and 53. We want to turn to that this morning. It's particularly relevant.

I kind of jumped ahead, although we'll be going in much more detail later on, because we're taking the Lord's Table this morning. Notice in Paul's writing in 1 Corinthians 15, he summarizes the Gospel this way in verses 3 and 4, "...for I delivered to you as of first importance..." How important is the Gospel? First importance, okay? what I also received that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures and that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures." Notice the repeated reference, according to the scriptures. What scriptures? What scriptures is Paul referring to?

Does he mean the New Testament, the Old Testament, or both? Well, one of the things we can look at here, if we look at the sequence of the books of the New Testament and when they were written. When he wrote this, there were only a few New Testament books written at all. Generally speaking, most people had not but maybe one or two New Testament books available to them. And as Paul introduced this one, this may have been the only one that some of them had. So if you look at the balance, the ones to the right there, those are the books of the New Testament that they haven't even seen yet. Well, it turns out all these New Testament books were written after what Paul wrote here, where he twice says, according to the scripture. So I think that points pretty strongly to he's talking about the Old Testament.

Here's the book of Acts. It refers to scripture or scriptures in a number of places, most of which were before most of the New Testament books were written. There are several places in Acts, even starting in chapter 1. And then there are specific references to Isaiah in Acts. And some of those show up early as well. So when we look at here, according to the Scriptures, there were a few New Testament books.

It gets pretty clear, especially as you start seeing Christ made reference to the Scriptures. This Matthew 26 is shortly before He is to be crucified. And the reference in Luke 24, that's where He's on the road to Emmaus. And He's explaining to these disciples that are puzzled about what's happened in the last few days. He's explaining to them from the Scriptures about Himself. He meant the Old Testament. I think Paul is pretty clearly saying the Old Testament spoke of these things.

Christ died for our sins. Well, Isaiah 53, 4-6, 8, 10, and 12 all speak of Christ dying for our sins. We look at that. Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried. Yet we ourselves esteem him stricken, spitten of God, and afflicted. He was pierced through for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The chastening of our well-being fell upon him, and by his scourging we are healed." See it? Repeated claims out of the Old Testament, out of Isaiah.

Isaiah 53.9 says he was buried. makes that claim. His grave was assigned with wicked men, and yet he was with a rich man in his death, because he had done no violence, nor was there any deceit in his mouth. He was raised, Isaiah 53, 10-12.

Notice, as we look at this passage, the three things that are to be believed in order for a person to be saved are spelled out in Isaiah 53. The three things. Do you believe that Christ died for your sins? Do you believe that He was buried and that He was raised on the third day? Isaiah 53 spells those things out in advance. 700 years in advance. 700 years in advance of the events. If we look at it here, but the Lord was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief, if He would render Himself as a guilt offering. He would see His offspring.

He would prolong his days, and the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in his hand. As a result of the anguish of the soul, he will see it and be satisfied. By his knowledge, the righteous one, my servant, will justify the many, as he will bear their iniquities. Therefore, is he going to stay in the grave forever? No. I will allot him a portion with the grave, and he will divide the booty of the strong, because he has poured out himself to death. He was numbered with the transgressors, yet he himself bore the sin of many. interceding for the transgressors.

Now, there's one more really big little thing for us to look at here. Built within the understanding of the word Christ is that He was deity. When the apostles made the claim and they made the statement about Christ, here's the Philippian jailer, you know, what must I do to be saved? Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Simple statement. It had built within it that He was the Son of God. meaning having an intimacy with and a close connection to. Look at what John writes in the end of the Gospel of John, but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.

Then there was a certain Ethiopian Acts 8.26-39, Philip the deacon was brought to convey the gospel to an Ethiopian court official, the treasurer for Candace, the Queen of Ethiopia.

As he did so, Philip started explaining the gospel beginning in Isaiah 53. The court official had bought a scroll of Isaiah. We don't know exactly what he paid, no record of that. Some estimates, he probably paid an average person's annual wages for that one scroll. But he had it with him in the chariot, and he had it opened up there, and Philip began explaining out of Isaiah 53, the passage you just looked at, and explained to him the Gospel.

Jesus Christ died for you. Jesus Christ was buried. Jesus Christ was raised for you. He's the Son of God. Do you believe it? Yeah. Good. Let's baptize you. And he was baptized that day. We have spoken often as we've gone through Ephesians and Colossians about being identified with Christ in his crucifixion, his burial, his resurrection, ascension, and seeding.

The first three of these events were prophesied in Isaiah. Not the identification with Christ, but those events. And so Isaiah is pointing ahead by seven centuries to the one with whom we are identified. Identification with Christ, of course, is given in the New Testament. We're told that and we understand that from those passages. Isaiah looked forward to the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.

He looked forward with some understanding, sufficient that the believers in the early New Testament era could tell the gospel and people could be saved from reading Isaiah 53. He knew that much. And yet we have this marvelous privilege of looking back with retrospect, having much more teaching, much more understanding, based on God's revelation of those momentous events. We have an opportunity for remembrance.

Think of Isaiah. He was about midpoint during the period of time where Passover went from being instituted, and the Jews were told, do this in remembrance, to that Last Supper, as it's called, which was the handoff point to the institution of the Lord's Table. Here was Isaiah, at the halfway point, looking ahead, looking ahead to the Savior's coming, knowing that there would be one whom God would provide, who would bear the sins of many, Himself included, as we'll see. Looking ahead to that time, every time Isaiah observed the Passover, he did exactly that. He looked ahead to Christ's coming.

We have the marvelous privilege this morning of looking back and seeing it as an accomplished fact. Isaiah had to put his faith in God regarding salvation through this coming servant, didn't he? We look back. Yes, we have greater insight and understanding as a result of it, and yet we must look back by faith as well. We have much more that we can count upon and look to, and yet it's confidence in the Lord Jesus Christ and what God has done through Him and God's accomplishment. And we put our trust based on what God has revealed, because we couldn't know it otherwise. We have the privilege of this marvelous revelation. All the things that we now know are true of this thing that Isaiah saw 700 years in advance.

We can thank the Lord for what we know and have come to understand, that we have been identified with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection. And this morning, after the hymn, and after we take a moment to pray here, we'll take some time to share the Lord's table together. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you.

As we look at your Word, you put it within the mind and heart of Isaiah to tell these key things in advance. And Lord, that is just such a tremendous thing. And yet, how awesome a privilege we have to look back now on an event coming up on 2,000 years ago. Things that You accomplished for us that we could not do. Things that You did in us. And that as a result of these things, we are in Christ. That is awesome indeed. We thank You in Jesus' name, Amen.