One Hour. One Book: Isaiah

[Music] We want to look at the book of Isaiah. And um, I want to give you a summary of eight facts that you should know about the book that you can put on the front flap of Isaiah if you can fit them.

The book is a game-changer in the sections of the Hebrew Bible. You remember that the Bible in Hebrew, the Tanakh, is Torah, Nevi'im, Ketuvim. Torah is the books of the law. Nevi'im is prophets. Nevi'im is prophets, the book of the prophets. Ketuvim, writings. The law, the prophets, the writings. That's the way at the time of Jesus they would call the Bible, the law, the prophets, and the writings, or sometimes just the law and the prophets, or the law and the writings, because they were contracting it. The way to contract it now, Torah, Nevi'im, Ketuvim, is to simply call it the Tanakh, which is the Hebrew designation for what Christians call the Old Testament.

Okay, this is a game-changer. Isaiah is part of the Nevi'im, the prophets, but it is Nevi'im Acharonim, last or later prophets. Remember the Nevi'im Rishonim, the early prophets, include uh some of the books like um, well, what's included in them? Do you know what's in the early prophets? What's that? You're thinking, uh, you're thinking prophets the way Christians think prophets. Think prophets the way Jews think prophets. So they're grouped by, for instance, Joshua, which is an early prophet. Judges, Samuel, Kings, those are all the early prophets. Now, for some of you, you go, "Wait a minute. Those are writings." No, they're not. They're considered prophets because the definition of prophecy biblically is what? God's view of the news. God's view of the news. It's sometimes it's God's view of the current situation. Sometimes it's God's view of the current situation and how it works out in sin, or in judgment, or in um, comfort and in consolation, and in fulfillment. So it's often multiply fulfilled. And by the way, so is our sin. You, I would be willing, if I were a betting person, to wager that almost none of you have ever committed a sin just once. Generally, we repeat sin over and over and over in our lives. We just eloquently twist what it is. Jealousy as a sin gets replayed in our lives from the time we are two until the time we're 82, and we just learn new ways to express it. So sin bounces right through your life, and if you follow the bouncing ball, so does uh, so does virtually everything else, fulfillments of various cyclical prophecies. If you do this, this will result happen in our lives over and over and over. Okay.

So this is going to be one of the Nevi'im Acharonim, the later prophets. And it starts then, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the 12. The 12 meaning the minor prophets. Those will be the what are called the latter prophets. Now, um, for our purposes, the most important thing you need to know about prophets is it's God's, it's God's perspective on sin and its results. God's perspective on sin and its results. That's what a prophet is about. That's what his message is about. All of that was number one of our eight things you need to know. So the first one is it's the beginning of Nevi'im Acharonim. It's the beginning of the latter prophets. Can you write them? Uh, sure. Let's give you a couple words. Navi or Nevi'im. And remember, B's and V's. Bayit is also, Vayit is prophet. Oops. And Nevi'im is a break, a glottal stop. Nevi'im is prophets. It's the. And the other word, Acharonim, is latter. So, Nevi'im Acharonim were the latter prophets, or the later ones. Okay? It's just, it's just the language. It's not, there's nothing like deeply hidden in there that's going to change your life. It's just helpful if you understand that the, the Hebrew Bible is not laid out the way the English Bible is. And the law comes first, then the former prophets, then the latter prophets, ending with what? Chronicles. Chronicles, which is the recap of the whole thing. Okay? And that, so it's a, it's a kind of a different feature to the way the book moves.

All right. Second thing I want you to know of our eight things is that many of the prophets of Israel were what are called seers, or sometimes speakers, but not writers. Nathan the prophet, Natan, his name means gift. He was a prophet at the time of David, at the time of the rise of Solomon, and yet he was a speaker, not a writer. Now, I don't know that he didn't write. I just know that God didn't consider it something he wanted to preserve in his word. I'm not saying Nathan never wrote. I'm saying we don't have it. There were lots of apostles in the early church that wrote. We don't have what they wrote. So, I'm not saying they weren't writers. I'm saying they weren't writers that God considered a writer that you needed to have. Okay? Um, but the important thing is that if you look at Amos himself, if you look at Isaiah himself, it says that in verse one of chapter one, he is the son of who? He's a son of a guy by the name of Amos. And Amos is, according to rabbinic tradition, the brother to King Amaziah. So if that's true, that would make Isaiah Amaziah's cousin, and um, Isaiah the, it would be the cousin of Amaziah's son, Uzziah, as well. So when Uzziah dies, that's his cousin. That's the Jewish tradition. We don't know how valid it is, but it's a very old tradition, and it may be true. Uh, that would explain why Isaiah enjoyed sort of a free pass to come and go into the royal court to speak. And, uh, in fact, there's even notations in the scriptures that he was, in fact, a royal recorder. We'll see one of those a little bit later. The important thing is that, um, he seems to have access to Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah. If you look at those, uh, each one of those, um, kings, you'll find that 792 all the way down to 686, sometime in that period, is the ministry of Isaiah. Most scholars place his ministry between 740 B.C.E. and 681 B.C.E. Isaiah, 740 B.C.E. to 681 B.C.E. That's his ministry, not his life. That means if that's true, that means that he is somewhere around 60 years total of ministry. That's ministry, 740 to 681. Yeah, that's a very traditional, classical scholars. Most commentaries, the older commentaries will have something like that. Now, the important thing is he spans four kings. So he ex, he, uh, starts his ministry under Uzziah, probably his cousin. Then Uzziah dies. Jotham takes over, or Jotham, or Jotham, however you want to say it, takes over. He reigned as co-regent for 10 years and then finally became, uh, the king. And then shortly after that, Ahaz, or Ahaz, takes over. And then after that, Hezekiah. And you, and he is not, Isaiah is not around for the entire reign of Hezekiah, we don't think. Um, probably just the first half of it. But these are some significant dates. Remember that the important thing is that, that during those periods from 792 to about 740, the time period of of Uzziah was a long-term ministry in the north by Jeroboam, or Jeroboam II, and in the south, Uzziah, meaning long-term stability and also lascivious lifestyle. Whenever things are prosperous, people are turning away. And that's what happens in the, in the beginning of his reign. It's not a time when people are all have their hearts burning for God. Some people do, but the majority is going the other way.

Okay. Third thing I want you to know, that Isaiah was married. In chapter 8:3, he simply calls his wife the prophetess. So apparently it was a family ministry. They traveled together, sang, had a couple of albums, uh, maybe played a guitar. I don't know. At any rate, what, what we do know is, seriously, it was, uh, it was a family ministry. Now, he has a son in chapter 7:3, Shear-jashub. And that is, uh, Shear-jashub is to return, or, uh, returning. And Shear is, uh, a piece, a remnant. A remnant shall return. And then he has another child. And we talked about this other child when we looked at 6, 7, 8, and 9. This is the longest name in the Bible. Anybody care to take a stab at chapter eight? His other child. [Music] Maher-shalal-hash-baz is the word. Hurry. Hurry up. Hurry up. Maher. Shalal-hash-baz is the rest of his name. Maher-shalal-hash-baz. And it means, what's somebody had an idea? What's that? Swifty. Yes. Um, I usually use the older one. Speed's booty, hastens spoil, or the quicker the this thing comes, the faster the northern kingdom ends. Something along that line. Um, not only is it a tough thing to name your kid because they have to learn to spell it, it also has a pretty Here's the quick way to say it. Quick to plunder. That's the quick way to say fast to plunder. So if you want a, you know, quicker one, you can go to chapter 8 and write in Maher-shalal-hash-baz, just put in quick to plunder. Okay.

Um, let me give you a fourth one then. The fourth thing I think we want to know is the Jewish sages say that he had, um, that Isaiah had a, a relentless passion for God. And as a result, some traditions say that he was killed as late as the time of Manasseh, the wicked king Manasseh, who came to the throne when he was how old? Do you remember? 12. 12. And he followed what king? Hezekiah. Hezekiah. And he would never have been born if Hezekiah hadn't done what? Asked for a 15-year extension. So, it may be that that Hezekiah's 15-year extension, one of the negative black marks of what it left behind, was the death of Isaiah. There are in Hebrews 11:37, there are a number of, um, uh, there's a reference there to a number of God's heroes that were sawn. Traditionally, Isaiah was sawn in two, killed that way under Manasseh. The reason I mention that is not because we know biblically that it's true, but it is true in Western art. So whenever you travel in Europe and you look at a stained glass window and a guy's being cut in half, it, it's probably Isaiah, or it may be one of the others mentioned in Hebrews 11, but he's very typically the Old Testament cut-in-half guy. That's a really terrible thing to say, but you get it. Is this because Manasseh asked for? Get the relation. What did, what is that when he? I see you speaking, but I'm not hearing words. The evil king. Yeah, I remember he was the evil king. But what does that have to do with cutting down? He, Manasseh did everything possible to destroy all that was good in the kingdom. He's the, he's 53 of the worst years of of human history. And in keeping with that, letting his sons go through the fire, etc., etc., Isaiah gets cut in half. Probably not biblical, like it said. No, I'm saying it's not biblical. I'm saying that Hebrews 11:37 says that there were people that were, but he's not mentioned. However, Jewish tradition was that he died that way, and it was picked up in the West, and now it's part of artwork in the West. So when you're traveling Europe and you're looking at the great paintings, which you someday surely will do, and if I have anything to say about it, all of you should. And when you stand there and look at the great traditions of Western art, this is the common way of knowing Isaiah. In fact, sometimes you'll even see half his body and half his body. And that's that's, oh, that must be Isaiah. If he's next to a guy with a fish, it's Jonah and Isaiah. And that, that I mean, you can sort of pick these things out after a while. Okay.

Um, enough for the tradition. Let us get back. Chapter, uh, number five is the pivotal scene of the scrolls of the book. We're going to do the eight scrolls. Did you get them already? Okay. Did you mark them out in the side of your text? Yes. Okay. I want to make sure that you understand how the book works. And those eight scrolls are are absolutely critical. So, I will play them out on the board for those of you who didn't get them. But here's what's terribly important. The pivotal scene of the book is one that we have read in class during 2 Kings. And it's the scene from, um, chapters 36 to 39. Since the book is divided roughly in half, 1 to 39 is bad stuff, 40 to 66 is good stuff, or 1-39 is, is, uh, condemnation, and 40-66 is, is, comfort or consolation. The hinge between them, chapters 36-39, is a scroll that is specifically on a historical interlude. Can anyone remember from Second Kings and our classes concerning Hezekiah what that story was? Cuz I read to you from Isaiah during that time. Aside from Hezekiah, and you know all these, um, signs about living 15 years longer, what's the other big story of Hezekiah that sticks out in your mind? Um, Sennacherib. Sennacherib. And Sennacherib's attack on Jerusalem is chapters 36-39. And the highlight of that is that Hezekiah, in the flesh, was utterly whooped, outmanned, outgunned, and pouring himself out before the Lord. That the Assyrians were making the people afraid by announcing things in their own language that were upsetting them. And Hezekiah walked in before the Lord, got down on the temple, on the floor, on his face, and said, "God, if you don't save us, we're done." That is that scroll, and we already talked through that scroll. Now, I'll reference it, but I wasn't planning on going through 36 to 39 carefully because you already did. But you should know that's the hinge pin or the pivotal point in the book. Roughly, we think all prophecies before that, chapter 36, fit into the time of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz. And all the ones after fit into the time of Hezekiah. But even that is not sure. One of the things you should understand about this book is the book is not considered a book in the Hebrew scriptures. It's considered a collection of writings in no particular chronology. Don't expect Isaiah to be chronological. And in fact, in the same sentence, he makes reference to two different time periods. This is one of the reasons that Isaiah is a tough book for a novice to pick up. You have to sort of be into the way prophecy works to get anything out of the second half of Isaiah because he's talking in the first half of the sentence, he'll be talking about the, the first coming of Jesus to the earth as a suffering servant. And then the second half of the sentence, Jesus's second coming and his reigning as a king. And if you're Jewish and you don't have or accept the books of the New Testament as from God, it looks like Jesus can't be Messiah because he didn't do the second half of half the verses. He did the suffering servant thing. They'll all agree to that. But he didn't do the reigning king thing. And as a result, it doesn't look like he fulfills the need to be, you know, the checklist of Messiah. Does that make sense to you? You all understand that? So, let's say I have a sentence at the second part of Isaiah and it says, "And he will come and he will be summarily killed and it won't be his own fault, but he'll be killed. He'll be brutally and viciously killed before he takes up the reign and reigns over the nations. And then what'll happen is you'll get out of that an interpretation that he physically comes, is physically killed, will physically return, and physically reign over the nations." That would be mine. There'll be the spiritualized one. He physically comes, he's physically killed, but he spiritually reigns over the nations in the hearts of people. That would be the common view today, the majority view. And then there'd be a third view. He physically comes, he's physically killed, he reigns over people. And the physically comes and physically kills. And the "him" is the nation of Israel, not the Messiah. For a lot of Jews, Messiah, the suffering servant, is actually the Jewish people because he gets beat up. If you're Jewish, that's how you think. We got beat up here, then we got beat up there, then we were killed, then our. But see, in, if you didn't believe in resurrection, how could you be killed and then live again? Very simple. In your children. And that's the way they chart the book. So people are reading Isaiah 53 and they're not seeing what you see there. They're not seeing Jesus behind every rock. They are seeing a whole different story. So for the second half of Isaiah, one of the things we have to do is split up the messianic views. And one of the things you're going to do is see you're going to see that Isaiah sometimes is the suffering servant himself. Sometimes Messiah is the suffering servant. Sometimes the people are the suffering servant. Now, isn't that confusing? You, you often can't tell who he's talking about. And as if Isaiah stood alone as the only prophetic book, we would be utterly confused with any chart. It is impossible to make a simple chart out of Isaiah. However, you've already been with Joel and seen an end times Day of the Lord chart. You've already seen how Hosea contributed to that. You've already seen how Micah contributed to that. You've already played out what Jesus said about it in Matthew. So, by the time you get to Isaiah, you're coming into this with some background. And that should help you to start going, "Wait a minute, that half of the sentence goes here, and that half goes there." But you can only do that if you have the background of the other prophets. Again, let me just reiterate what the problem with studying the Bible is. The only way you're going to get the verses right is to have the context of the whole thing. And the only way you're going to understand the whole thing is to have gone through all the pieces. So, there you are chasing your tail through life trying to get it right. But you also have the Holy Spirit, which is helpful. Yes. For which we would just give up and go home if we didn't have.

Okay. Um, let me turn this a minute and give you a sixth thing that I think is terribly important. And that is this. For the Christian, the book of Isaiah is extremely important. James Smith wrote that in his book. For the Christian, the book of Isaiah is extremely important. 47 chapters of this book were directly quoted or alluded to by Christ and the apostles. What I said there was 47 different chapters out of 66 are mentioned in the New Testament, alluded to or quoted from. Why is that important? If you unravel the historicity of this book, you unravel the New Testament. And the problem is every secular school you will take Bible from, and many Christian, in quotes, schools you will take Bible from in this country, will systematically tell you that Isaiah didn't write these things. They weren't prophetic. They were done much later. And what they're doing is hacking away at the New Testament. And, and to, to make my point very clear, um, when you get to, where is it? John 12, twice, Jesus, uh, refers to passages right out of Isaiah. And if you take apart those passages that are in, uh, let me see if I can give you the exact quote on that. John 12:38-40 quotes Isaiah 6:10 and Isaiah 53:11. Now, okay, let me do it this way. Uh, John 12:38-40 quotes two different passages. One of the passages is in Isaiah 6:10. I think you'll catch on to what I'm doing here. The other one is in Isaiah 53. What is it? 11? 53:11. And, and here's the reason that it's important. There are many schools in which you will learn. The first part of Isaiah was called Book One, and the second part was Deutero-Isaiah, a different Isaiah from a different time period. So if you hack away at the historicity of this, you just took away the words of Jesus. You just said he, he preached things from texts that weren't true, or didn't, weren't reliable, or weren't what they said they were. Okay? And here's the problem. The problem is that when you hack away at the bottom of this, you create a problem for all of the Bible. 47 of 66 chapters. Are you kidding me? This is one of the best-covered reviews in the New Testament. So, here's what you can say with great authority as an evangelical Christian who believes in the historicity of the text. The early church believed in it. The apostles believed in it. Jesus said he believed it. When somebody looks at you and goes, "Well, Jonah's just a story." Then ask why Jesus didn't think so. Why did he say, "Just like what happened to Jonah"? Well, if nothing happened to Jonah, what's the point of what he's saying? So, the issue is, there's a very important reason why, even though scholars dispute the historicity of the narrative and all of that, you destroy Isaiah, you destroyed John's gospel. That's what you just did.

Now, the common thing I want you to know about the book is that God is called the Holy One of Israel. You'll see that 12 times in the first 39 chapters and 14 times in the second half, in the 40 to 66. And if you add 12 and 14, you get 26. 26. 26 times in the book, you'll see the Holy One of Israel, the distinct one of the sons of Jacob. And what you should understand about that is that this book is going to lean heavily into this is what Israel has done, meaning the people, that's the north and the south. This is what the Jewish people have done. This is how that sin will have its effect on the whole world, and how that sin will turn out to be a coldness for them, a redemption for Gentiles, and an eventual millennial kingdom for for all of us.

So I want you to see the seventh thing is that these are cyclical prophecies. Cyclical prophecies mean that they're just organized in groups. Don't expect anything in Isaiah to be in any sort of chronological order. Don't expect that. And expect that these cyclical things are are organized in a way that the, there are eight scrolls. And this is what I want you to know about. So we're going to take some time to look at the eight scrolls. If you get this much, one hour of introduction to Isaiah clears up a whole lot. It really does. Because the eight scrolls are in two segments. So we're going to put two long boxes, and these are for the two segments. This will be one. This will be 39. 40. This will be 66. So we're going to call these condemnations. And you understand that whenever somebody makes a chart, they're making it simpler than it really, really is. There are some really wonderful consolations in this condemnation section. There's also some condemnations in the consolation section. However, just for the purpose of understanding the general grouping, if you want to know about good stuff, if you want to know about bad stuff. Okay. Now within this, there are five and then three sets of documents. And we're going to call each of these scrolls. And we'll use the format of Roman numerals for the scrolls, just as we did in places like Genesis. If I were you, my Bible would be marked that way. I would be marking scroll one. And I would be thinking about the book not as the book of Isaiah, but as the library of collections of the life, work, short stories, and prophecies of Isaiah put together in eight scrolls. And within those eight scrolls, there are many segments. So we're going to learn about a song set that's stuck right in the middle of them. Okay.

Now, guys, you can get lost in the complexity of all of this. Here's the reason I'm doing this. I'm doing this so you can put it down in your notes, and you probably will spend little time in the rest of your Christian life on this. However, I think it's important if you were asked to do a Bible study in chapters 36 to 39, which falls as scroll five, and it is the historical interlude, as the history of the Assyrians attacking Jerusalem at Jerusalem. And this is under what king? This is Hezekiah on his knees, on his face, begging God. I think it's important if you were asked to do a Bible study on one of the worst days ever experienced by God's people, you could do a Bible study and say, "I want to talk to you about an event that happened." Now, it comes from the book of Isaiah. Isaiah is broken into two parts. And within those parts, there are collections of scrolls. The first 12 chapters, for instance, are Judah and Jerusalem and God's indictment against them. In what chapter of the first 12 is Isaiah called to be a prophet? What should be, what seems like it should be chapter one? Oh, woe is me. I've seen the Lord. Yes. And that would be where? Six. Six. So his call is in six. There's an indictment for five chapters that we're going to study shortly. And it's a, it's a, I think it's a very personal investigation into what happens when my heart gets cold toward God. And I want you to see it that way. But it's also a national indictment of God against Judah and Jerusalem. And then in chapter six, it's, and God got a hold of me. And this is how God brought his message to me. I saw the Lord through my tears over Uzziah's death. I cried, and here he was. And I saw him, and then I wept because woe is me, I'm a man undone. And then God called me and said, "Uh, whom shall I send? Who will go for us?" "Here am I. Send me." And, okay, I want you to go. But as you preach, you're going to preach and they're not going to listen. You're going to have a great ministry. People are going to say, "Man, you are such a problem." Virtually nobody likes what you preach. That will be your legacy. That's chapter 6. And then 7 through 12, he'll go into 7, 8, 9. The story of who? What was 7-9? You already know this story. You don't know him as Maher-shalal-hash-baz. You know him as Jesus. No, no, no, no, no. You don't know him as Jesus because Jesus and Maher-shalal-hash-baz are 700 years apart. But you do know that they carry the same title. God is on our side. Immanuel. It's the story of Immanuel. You are looking at me like you do not remember this. You do recall doing this, right? You were in class, we talked about 7, 8, 9, 10. Okay, 7, 8, 9. And then 10 through 12, he'll pick up his indictments again. So, what we've got are a series of indictments in 1-5, then his call, then the Immanuel story in seven, and I guess I should put 7-9. And then when we get to chapter 10, we'll play out the rest of the judgments, 10, 11, and 12. All right.

In 13, he picks up the second scroll. That scroll goes from 13 to 23. And that scroll is about other nations, but the other nations as they affected the Jewish people. In other words, he'll start with Babylon. He'll talk about the Babylonians, and he'll talk about them in relationship to exile and in relationship to how they affected the Jewish people. It's not every nation on earth. It's nations that affected the Jewish people that were prophesied against in general. Will it have a positive or a negative tone? Negative. It'll have a pretty negative tone. And in fact, you're going to find that, um, it's, it's a pretty tough thing. If you really like, um, movies like Apocalypse Now, you'll like 24 to 27. 24 to 27 is Isaiah's apocalypse. What's an apocalypse? Here we are all dutifully writing it down, but does anyone know what it is? Yeah, it has the sense of doomsday. It's the pummeling of the earth, that kind of thing. In other words, there'll be some colorful language in in 24 to 27 as he sort of draws out that sin really gets under God's skin. These are some of the, um, sparkier things that Isaiah had to say. They'll show up in 24 to 27. And again, I'm not saying he started here, then he went here, and then he went here. I'm not saying that. I'm saying the collection includes, here's some pretty snipy, sparky, blow-up-the-earth type messages. Let's put them in scroll number three. And that's what, that's what you'll find. So they're sort of gathered topically somewhat. They may be 20 years apart, but they're really cool and they say stuff. And so, so somebody will put them together. All right.

28 to 35 is an important section, but it's one that I think you don't often hear preached from because this is the fall of the northern kingdom. And this is things that relate specifically to, um, the fall of the northern kingdom, Israel. And the reason it's important is because at that time, it details some of God's indictment against the, the people of Ephraim, the people of the north. And we've already seen some significant statements about this. Somebody remind me, who are contemporaries of Isaiah? Okay. Hosea is. And so we see some things in the contemporary of Hosea. Who else? Micah. Who is like you? Micah. And we also see some of this here. Uh, anybody give us another one? The other one is Amos. And so when you look at these other prophets, you see some of what you see in that section in particular. In fact, sometimes they will cross-quote one another. Apparently, some messages were even picked up in song. People were singing about coming judgment. There were hymns. They were getting together. What? Oh, we're going to die. Yes, we're going to die. We're going to die. Yes, we're going to die. And it was like it became a popular rhythm and blues section of, you know, I feel bad, I'm going to die, and everybody was kind of into, well, actually, you'll see Micah and Isaiah will cross-quote each other because they're popular statements. Okay.

Now, we said that the end of the first half, the end of the real pummeling ends with this historical situation, sometimes called a historical interlude, intermission. So some people have three boxes: condemnations, intermission, consolations. I don't do it that way. I stick it this way because it's, it's just easier. The other thing is it's easy to remember because there are 39 books in the Hebrew scriptures, 66 books in the total, and this looks like a mini of the Bible. And that's, it's one of the ways I remember it. Okay, you got to, you know, you go for what you can, you know, small mind. Uh, all right. So, any questions about what the purpose of this part is? Somebody tell me in a statement, a summary statement, what's the whole idea of 1 to 39 in a quick swipe? If I don't, you change this, happen. If you don't change, this is going to happen. And you're not going to change, and this is going to happen. Thus says the Lord. Saw the end. Already know what it looks like. But I'm giving you an opportunity to change. Not that you'll listen to me, cuz you know you don't listen. But you know that kind of thing. All right.

Now, when you get to 40 to 48, the next scroll, we're going to spend more time in the second half than we do in the first, admittedly. Um, but 40 to 48 is a whole, it starts off with a very famous set of lines that became part of the classical music repertoire of most of you who learned singing in any classical format. "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people," says the Lord. Uh, because it comes from Handel's work. Um, and obviously Handel took it from the Bible, so let's not get that wrong. Handel wrote it and then Isaiah copied it. We're not saying that. Okay. This is comfort, and it's the comfort of the exiles. "Behold your God." It's, it has to do with the return that's coming. It has to do with God's desire to comfort those who have been, uh, removed from their place. And then there's a very, very, this is the part that if you spend any time in this book at all as a Christian, almost surely it's in book 7. Book 7 begins in chapter 49 and goes to 55. 49 to 55 is probably the clearest messianic document in the, in the Hebrew scriptures. I'm going to call the messianic docs. It is, in fact, God's servant Messiah. However, I find this, this set of passages that include a series of songs to be some of the most poetic read. Okay, this is impressionism on the Messiah. This is cubism, or this is the Picasso version of it. Things are not all shaped. The cows don't look like cows. They look like other things. And if you look long enough, you can see a cow. But you sort of have to, I'm not picking on God's word. It's wonderful, but it's poetry. And poetry doesn't have the conciseness. Listen. Hannah says to me, "Can you give me the directions to get to the institute from here? I need to drive from here to the institute." And I give it to her. Let me give you a poem. A poem is not what she's looking for when she's looking for directions. Poetry will get you to Panera, okay? Or Starbucks. But beyond that, you're going to be totally lost. Okay? So the problem is, I'm not criticizing the value of this book. The documents are great. I'm trying to say that if you're, uh, if you're a, "Give me the straight scoop on what happens next," this is not your section of scripture. And conversely, lots of weird stuff gets cited from here. Why? Because it's poetry. And some people will look at poetry and take the license to make the images into real things. If you want to find the foundation of most false doctrine in the church, it's somebody taking a metaphor, simile, or image and turning it into a doctrine. You will see it a thousand times over. We'll cover that later on, maybe.

And then finally, the end of this, 56 to 66, is a series of admonitions to obey. This is kind of the stately look, you're going to want to do this the right way. It's kind of a, um, it's less heavy-handed than is in the first half. And it's almost like some of these probably came from this time back here, but they grouped them because they were a little bit more hopeful, or a little bit nicer, or a little bit more, um, tactful. Not all of them, but most of them fall into that category. So, what we're going to see is some very important things. Now, I want to go back and focus on that one that has become so all-fired important to us because messianic statements are much more, uh, profound. One song is found in this part. One song in 42. One song of Messiah, 42:1-7. But the rest of the songs of Messiah are found here in the, in book 7. We have one of them found in book 6, the rest of them in book 7. The second one is found in 49:3-7, roughly. You'll see, you'll understand when we look at them. Um, the next one is found in 50, and I, I'm specifically looking at 4 to 10, although I'll look at all the verses around it when we get there. And the last one is found in 52 and 53. These are the songs of Messiah. How many of you know something of Isaiah 53? Because of Christmas cards, it might be one of the only parts of Isaiah you've actually looked at intensely before you were in this class. How Isaiah 53, um, "He was bruised for our transgressions, chastised for our iniquities, by his stripes we are healed." All kinds of, again, "by his stripes we are healed" created an entire revolution in the, in one segment of the church that decided that Jesus died for your diseases, and in his death, all the penalty of disease was removed. That is the common teaching in much of the charismatic movement today. Not criticizing him. I'm just stating what is. Jesus either did or didn't die for the consequences of all your sin. He either did or he didn't. He either did or didn't die for the physical consequences of your sin. And, uh, we'll discuss that when we get to that section.

Okay. One of the phrases as we close and head toward a, um, an end for our little introduction is "eved" is the word for servant. The servant of Yahweh is a phrase that you will see. Eved, servant, becomes the subject of there are a variety of servants in the messianic passages. So sometimes Isaiah will say, "As the servant of Yahweh, I went out and preached." Who's he talking about? It sounds like he's talking about himself. And then, "The servant of Yahweh was beaten and crucified." Who would you make that? Jesus was not Isaiah because he goes on to the next page. It's somebody else, and we'll see that as a suffering servant. And the people have become the servant of Yahweh. Who would you make that? What people? Context will be the Jewish people. So the servant, the servant of Yahweh, is actually three different distinct things, and one of them is Isaiah, or a prophet if he's speaking of another. One of them is Israel as a people collectively, and one of them is Messiah. And sometimes it's more than one. Sometimes when Isaiah is speaking and says, "Who has believed our report?" that will show up in the New Testament and be the early church, the message of Jesus. So, not everything is limited to what it is. That's what makes the poetic value of Isaiah so beautiful, rich, and confusing all at the same time. Okay?

So, we're going to do a detailed study this week, and we're going to try to take apart what we know about Messiah based on this. Some of this is going to blow past you, and you're going to go, "Wow, that is way more complicated than what I wanted to know." But the point is that while you're here in this book for the one time in your year to take apart God's word, I'm going to take advantage of your time and say we need to be very, very careful to look at this book thoroughly. Can I mention to you that there are a whole bunch of prophets that were seers or, um, verbal prophets? I counted, uh, Nathan, Ahijah, a thousand prophets in 1 Samuel, Jehu, uh, Elijah, Elisha, Obed, Shemaiah, Athaliah, Hananiah, Jahaziel, Hoda. I got a whole list of people that were seers and speakers, but witnesses of God that weren't writing things down. Imagine that. Some of them are using the written itinerant ministry of people like Micah or Hosea, or like Isaiah, to preach their message. So, in other words, it wouldn't be wrong for a prophet or prophetess to take out a scroll of something they wrote down that they got from the school of the prophets that came from Isaiah, or came from Hosea, or came from Micah. Okay? So these resources become early resources.