Ancient Faith Today Live - Isaiah 53 and PSA

Welcome to Ancient Faith Today Live. This is Father Tom Soka. I'm so glad that you're with us today. My greatest hope for you is that you had a fantastic first week of Lent. Maybe that doesn't sound right. Uh, Lent isn't supposed to be that way, but actually, it, it really is just so beautiful. It's, it's amazing, um, the refocusing of our spiritual lives, trying to, um, prepare ourselves for the Holy Pascha. There's really nothing like it. The first week is just off the charts. Beautiful. And now we're entering the second week. Uh, I hope that you were able to go to church on the Sunday of the Triumph of Orthodoxy. Again, such a magnificent, uh, uh, feast. And I was watching videos and seeing pictures from all over the country of the various churches that, uh, were having celebrations like on Saturday night or Sunday night. Here in Pittsburgh, we had a beautiful Panor Vasespers with, uh, hundreds and hundreds of people, and I had the privilege once again of directing the Panor Choir of Pittsburgh. Uh, they actually sang, uh, a, a new composition that I wrote for that, and it was really incredible. So, um, again, I hope that you're having a very good, uh, second week of Lent.

Um, and I, I want you to do one thing for today's show. Now, stay with me. Don't get, don't get, uh, discouraged here. I want you to get your Bible. I want you to get your Bible because we are going to have a little bit of, it's not a Bible study, but we're going to talk about Isaiah 53. We're going to talk about this doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement, which is, you know, always thrown up to Orthodox Christians. I mean, you hear Protestants say, "Oh, you know, Orthodox, they're, they're not even Christian because they don't believe in penal substitutionary atonement." Now, I did a show on penal substitutionary atonement. And I said, you know, it depends on what you mean by these particular, um, words, but we're going to look at the Old Testament, uh, with Isaiah 53, which is really like before that, Isaiah 52 and Isaiah 53. And we're going to talk about how do we as Orthodox Christians see what this Isaiah 53 says and how does that line up with the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement? Because you're going to be surprised if you have an Orthodox Study Bible and if you've ever read Isaiah 53, it's going to look very different than if you have like a New King James Version or a King James Version or an NIV, uh, or an ESV or, or NIV or whatever you have. It's going to look different. And that's important. You need to know this. This is honestly, this is really important because, uh, what people will say is, "Oh, well, you know, the church just doesn't believe that way. We believe in a different way." There's a reason for these things. Okay. And especially as we move into Holy Week, uh, near the end of Lent, you're going to hear a different emphasis as Orthodox Christians. For those of you that are new to the church, for those of you that are, uh, catechumens or you're inquirers or maybe you're coming into the church on Lazarus Saturday or Holy Saturday, the, the themes that you might have heard as a Western Christian, as a Roman Catholic or as, as a Protestant, especially like an evangelical Protestant, you, you're only going to hear slight notes of that. You're going to hear a different, um, emphasis when it comes to this, uh, freely offered sacrifice of Christ on the cross. And it's very important that you understand where this comes from. I, because if, if you don't know what happens is, uh, people will say, "Oh, well, that's just not our emphasis." Right? You hear that sometimes they say, "Well, the Orthodox, like, we emphasize something different." And I think that that doesn't do the, um, the issue justice. It, it doesn't really serve us well to say, "Well, we just don't emphasize that." It's, it's more complicated than that. It's, it's more important that we understand, you know, where did this idea come from of, um, how we express the sacrifice of Christ, how we express his offering, uh, to the Father. And we're going to look at all of that. This is really, really important. I think it's timely, too. Even though it's not Holy Week, we're still going to, uh, have to kind of deal with all of this. All right. So, get your Bibles and, um, join us in the YouTube live chat. You have, uh, YouTube.com/faith Ministries. Go to, um, go to facebook.com/ancientfaithministries and join us there. Give us your comments. Give us your feedback. Um, I see a lot of our friends on there. How nice to see you guys, uh, today. Yeah. Uh, let's see who is that. Uh, Slow Morrison, is that right? Slow Morrison 814 says, "Wow, Father Tom, I didn't know." So, I, you know, unfortunately, my, not this is about me, but I'm just going to answer the question here. So, my, my career in the church really began, I mean, I, you know, my father's a priest, uh, as a musician. So, I have two degrees from Duquesne University. I have a degree in music education and then a music, uh, composition and music theory and, um, but I ended up being a choir director and a youth coordinator and so forth and eventually became priest. So I've not really done much composing and I kind of have been getting that itch lately. So I'm, I'm, I'm back to doing that. So all right, here we go.

Um, let's go ahead and let's take a look at the first slide here. Um, we're going to look at some videos, too. For those of you that are familiar with John MacArthur, uh, you know, he, he passed away, I think about six months ago or so. Um, he is going to express this in, in the way that I need you to understand this because, you know, there is this, like, even I talk to some Protestants, I say, you know, this idea of how some people see God or how some people see Christ, like, this is how they see it. I say, "Oh, no, nobody believes that." I'm going to show you John MacArthur. I'm going to tell you exactly what he says, okay? Like, probably the most influential, uh, "Bible teacher" among Protestants, uh, in the world. So, oh, what happened to my [laughter] what happened to the text there? It says, uh, Isaiah 53 and penal substitutionary atonement, but the Y, it looks like Spanish. Uh, it's, it must be Lent. It's the purple demons, but I think you get the idea. Oh, it says my volume is low. Uh, guys in the booth or, I'm sorry, we have Mike and Matkrudi said my volume is pretty low, hard to hear. Maybe it's your mic gain setting. I don't know. I'm, I'm pretty there. So we'll check in the booth, but anybody else online, uh, in the chat, uh, the live chat, let us know if you can hear us okay. All right. So, um, we're talking about Isaiah 53 and penal substitutionary atonement. But really, what this is going to be about is this, especially in this text, because there's probably no text where this is more different. Um, you have what is called the Hebrew Masoretic text. All right. We're going to talk a little bit about that. We're not going to talk too much. We're just going to look at it. So again, th, this is, this is actually really important. If you have an Orthodox Study Bible, for instance, there's going to be a reason why in the Old Testament your Orthodox Study Bible reads differently than let's say your King James Version or your New King James Version. There's a reason why. Now, we can go through a lot of different things about the Masoretic versus the Septuagint. We, we don't want to get too far into the weeds of that. We want to talk about Isaiah 53. But the real question is, why are these texts so different? Okay? Like, why is there this discrepancy? Now, I, I'm not sure that I actually have the answer, but I am pointing out that they are very different, and that's what accounts, I believe, for Orthodoxy's particular emphasis on, I would say, healing. [snorts] Right? Uh, our, our emphasis in the church, uh, for us is about healing. You've probably heard this before. You've heard this metaphor to say the church is a hospital for sin-sick sinners. I'm sure you've heard that many times, right? The, the Eucharist, the sacraments, uh, the, all of the, the things they are medicine for our soul, right? They're medicine for our soul. And this idea of healing is part of this Isaiah 53 issue today. Okay. And in order for you to understand the, the difference in the way a, a Protestant might read Isaiah 53 and the way an Orthodox Christian reads Isaiah 53, it's going to be really stark to you. It's going to be kind of shocking, okay? But it has to do with this, this difference in the Hebrew text versus this Greek Septuagint, which is a Greek translation. So the second slide, um, is just a little intro to the prophet Isaiah. I know that you all know who he is. Uh, the prophet Isaiah lived 700 years before the Lord Jesus Christ. And by the way, during Lent, at the beginning of Great Lent, we read from, during Vespers, we read from Genesis and we read from Proverbs. But during the sixth hour, we read from the prophet Isaiah. And the prophet Isaiah is extremely important because there are so many, uh, so much of the prophecy regarding the Lord Jesus Christ, regarding the Messiah is in the, um, I, is, is in the prophet Isaiah. All right. I, I'm not sure. I think that slide is not coming up quite right. Uh, I, it's, it seems like it's oversized. So, uh, may want to try to resize that so that everybody online can see that. All right. So, he lived 700 years before Jesus and he prophesied for about 60 years through the reign of four different kings. And I, if any of you, um, know the, um, the, uh, like Isaiah chapter 6, Isaiah chapter 6 is really important. Okay. This is where you have this, uh, Isaiah's vision of heaven, the, the vision of where God is and he sees God enthroned and it says, you know, the, the temple was filled with smoke and there was a long train, uh, the train of his robes and then it says that the angels, the seraphim were flying around his throne singing to one another, "Holy, Holy, Holy." Well, that eventually is, um, taken up by the, um, John the Theologian who writes the book of Revelation. He also says this, right? He also sees this vision of God, um, in heaven surrounded by angels and they're singing, "Holy, Holy, Holy." Well, the prophet Isaiah also prophesied that the Jews were going to be taken into captivity and indeed they were. He prophesied that and that the temple would be rebuilt after it was destroyed. Um, eventually, like all the prophets, he was killed by the king, in this case, King Manasseh, uh, and the prophet Isaiah was sawn in two. Now, all of the Hebrew scriptures, just like the Christian scriptures, okay, just like the Christian scriptures, they were passed down orally, like from person to person, they would tell stories, but there were also written scriptures. Now, this is very important, very, very important. Look at slide number three because this is going to help you understand why the emphasis in Orthodoxy seems to be a little bit different when it comes to the, um, sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. Slide number three says this, that when the Hebrew scriptures were passed down from generation to generation, and of course, they had ways of copying the scriptures, right? One scribe, that was, those were the scribes. They were writing down the actual scriptures and in these scriptures, um, you know, from temple to temple, they had the Torah and then in the, in the, uh, both in the temple but also in the synagogues, they had copies of the Tanakh, right, uh, which were these other writings of from the five books and these would be copied from generation into generation, just like the Christian scriptures. However, now, this is the most fascinating part. Okay. What exists today of the Hebrew scriptures in Hebrew, okay, is what we call. So if you look in a Bible, like if you have the New King James Version, like I have a New King James Version here. This is like all New King James Version. If you look in there, the Hebrew is translated from the Old Testament is translated from the Hebrew scriptures. And specifically, just leave this slide up. Specifically, this is called the Masoretic Text. Okay, the Masoretic Text. Now, just stay with me. I know it's like, "Oh, this is boring." Now, this is really important. This is really important. The Masoretic text was a text that was codified from their existing text by Jews called the Masoretes between the 10th, the 7th and the 10th century, like 7 to 700 to 1,000 AD. AD after Jesus, anno Domini, right? The, after Jesus. Now, listen to what I'm saying. The Hebrew scriptures, the copies that they use today were codified between the seventh and the 10th century after Jesus, and the oldest surviving complete copy today, not a hundred years ago, but today, is called the Leningrad Codex and it dates from the 10th century AD after Jesus, anno Domini. All right. The, it's important to understand that, in other words, the, the copies of the Hebrew scriptures that we have right now, you don't have any original manuscripts, right, of the Old Testament, nor do we have the original manuscripts of the New Testament, but that's a different talk about that some other day. Now, two to 300 years, actually almost 400 years before Jesus. Okay? So we're going back to zero or 3 AD. Three to 400 years before Jesus, there was a Greek translation made of the Hebrew scriptures. So that's 1,400 years before the oldest copy of the Hebrew scriptures that exist today. Okay? 400 years before Jesus, they started translating. They started with the Torah, the first five books of Moses. And then eventually between the 3rd and the first century BC, stay with me. Okay, this is important. They translated the entire Old Testament, the entire Hebrew scriptures. Okay? And this Greek that was translated into Greek from the Hebrew. And today we call this the Septuagint. Now, the story of the Septuagint, you can go read that later, but we're just going to call it the Septuagint. It's of the 70. Okay? That's what it means. Of the 70. So, we're like 70 translators. Now, here's what's really fascinating. So the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, they actually are in a, in essence, older than the extant Hebrew scriptures today. In other words, the Hebrew scriptures today were compiled 10 centuries after Christ. Okay? Obviously, they were written before Christ, but they were compiled by people that really hated Christians. I mean, that's just the truth. This is called the Masoretic Text. And your English Bibles are based, the Old Testament are based on those Masoretic texts. Except for, except for the Orthodox Study Bible, which for the most part uses for the Old Testament, the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, which was done 400 years before Jesus, sometime between like the 4th century and the 1st century BC. And the oldest surviving copies that we have of the Greek translation of the Old Testament date from, get this, the 2nd century BC to the 4th century AD. In other words, the, the manuscripts that we have of the Greek Old Testament are older than the manuscripts that they have of the Hebrew Old Testament. Now, make of that what you will. But there's another important point here, and that is the New Testament. About 75% of the New Testament that quotes from the Old Testament, those Old Testament quotes are from the Septuagint and not necessarily the Hebrew scriptures, the Hebrew existing text that they have today. In other words, if you look, I'm gonna give you an example. If you look at Old Testament quotes in the New Testament, you go back to the Old Testament, you are going to, if you have an English Bible, at least 75% of the time, it's not going to match. It's going to be like, "What? What's going on here? Why when I look in the Old Testament, does it not match with what I'm reading of the Old Testament in the New Testament?" If you've never done that, do it. It's really important. Okay? And it's mind-blowing. Now, I'm going to give you an example. There's a bunch of examples, but I'm going to give you one example. Look at slide number four. [clears throat] Slide number four. And I put this one up because we're going to hear it right around Pascha. We're going to hear it in the sermon of St. John, but it really comes from the Old Testament, but St. Paul quotes it in 1 Corinthians 15. We all know this, right? What does it say? "O death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?" Right? 1 Corinthians 15:55. Well, 1 Corinthians 15:55, that little section, "O death, where's your sting? O Hades, where's your victory?" is from the Old Testament, Hosea 13:14. But look at this. Look at this slide. Or for those of you that are listening on podcast, I'm going to read it for you. The Masoretic text, for instance, the New King James Version doesn't say, "O death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?" What it says is, "O death, I will be your plagues. O grave, I will be your destruction." Doesn't say anything like, "O death, where's your sting? O Hades, where's your victory?" Now, it's kind of like that, but it's not that. Do you understand what I mean? The Hebrew extant version today of the Hebrew scriptures called the Masoretic text, when it's quoted, the Old Testament is quoted in the New Testament 75% of the time, they don't even use that. They use what is the Septuagint, the Greek version. So [snorts] that's a problem. Look at, I, I also quoted a Jewish translation of the Old Testament called the Tanakh. I mean, it's actually, it's called the Tanakh. Okay? I picked this one up. I love a good bargain. Two bucks. Two bucks for this. All right. So these are Jews that translated the Masoretic. And what did they translate it as? "Where, O death, are your plagues, your pestilence? Where, O Sheol?" You see? Now look at the Orthodox Study Bible of Hosea 13:14. If you have your Orthodox Study Bible, by the way, somebody asked me, "Where did you get that?" When the Orthodox Study Bible first came out several centuries ago, several decades ago, I, they had a special edition as in leather and I bought it. All right. The Orthodox Study Bible in Hosea 13:14 says, "Where is your penalty, O death? O Hades, where is your sting?" And the Breton Septuagint says the same thing. "Where is thy penalty, O death? Hades, oh Hades, where is thy sting?" You see? So here it is. You see this, um, this closeness of the Old Testament reflected in the New Testament through [snorts] the Septuagint and not the Hebrew scriptures. Now, this is a kind of little thing here, right? There's not much here. But when we get to Isaiah 53, which is actually like 52 to 53, you're going to see this. It, it's going to be crazy how different it is. And it is going to answer the question, why did we never have this doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement? Like, why did we never have that? And it's not because, well, I mean, well, it is. I mean, the theology is not reflected in how a Protestant would read the Masoretic text. My contention is, Protestants got this really, uh, strange doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement in the way that they express it. In the way that they express it. I'm not saying Jesus didn't die for us. I'm not saying that he didn't suffer. I'm not saying any of that. I'm not saying he didn't atone for our sins. Not saying that. What I'm saying is the way that it's expressed by some, and I'm going to play something for you right now. This is not our doctrine. All right. So, I'm going to, let's play the first video of John MacArthur. Now, this is going to blow your mind. When I tell people this, they think I'm lying. Okay? When I tell people this, I'm like, "Am I the only one that has ever heard John MacArthur say this?" And now the guy's dead, so I'm, I'm trying to be fair to him, but like, it's recorded and this has been out there for a long time. All right, play. I'm going somewhere with this. Play the first video of John MacArthur. Listen to this. You are not going to believe this. Listen carefully. Watch this. "What should you fear most? Or to put it another way, what is the greatest threat to your life? At what point should you do whatever can be done to secure yourself from that greatest of all threats? What is your greatest threat? Or to put it another way, who is your greatest enemy? Who is the most dangerous person you will ever encounter? Now, the greatest enemy you will ever encounter is not human." That narrows the choice. And some of you, no doubt, are thinking, well, he must be talking about the devil. Must be talking about Satan. No, Satan is not your greatest enemy. Not at all. Are you surprised to hear that? It's true. Your greatest enemy, deadliest enemy, most destructive enemy is actually God." Can you believe that? He said your greatest enemy, enemy is God. And that is where the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement kind of gets its, its, its bite. Your greatest enemy is God. Uh, Dan, uh, Hennis says, "Wow, God is our enemy. That's horrific." Yeah, it is. It's ridiculous. He said, "Our greatest enemy is God." Now, somebody say, "Oh, he's just trying to make a point." No, this is, he's not trying to make a point. He is expressing doctrine that flows right out of their soteriology and it flows out of their, um, their, their Christology because Christ doesn't come to renew fallen creation. Christ doesn't come to renew fallen creation. He comes to get blasted by his Father. And if you don't think that's what they believe, watch this next video. Video number two. Here it comes. Here it comes. Video number two. John MacArthur's going to follow up. It's a different video, but listen to this about what he believes about the purpose of Jesus and his relationship to his Father. "And we found that the answer to that is no. God doesn't come down to destroy the blasphemers and he doesn't come down to protect his son. And that is because of what it says in Isaiah 53:10, that it pleased the Lord to crush him, to put him to grief. It was the will of God that he be treated in this manner and that he be killed. We know why. That he might be a sacrifice for sin. That he might die in the place of sinners. That he might bear the curse for us. That he might bear the punishment for our sins. So God did not come down either to destroy the blasphemers or to protect his son. And you might think if you were listening when I read the section that we're going to look at tonight that God never came down because Jesus said, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' Is that an indication that God was not there? That God was not there to punish the blasphemers? He was not there to protect his son? He was not there at all? Well, the answer to that question is he was there. In the moment that Jesus said that, he was feeling the absence of God. But God was there. And God was there in a way that you would not suspect. As long as I have taught on this and looked at this, I have never really heard explained what I'm going to explain to you. Yes, God was there. And he was there not to punish the blasphemers and not to protect his son, but to punish his son. It is, he said, Jesus was sent so that he could be punished by God. He wasn't there to punish the blasphemers. He was there to punish Jesus." And Tempestus Rose said, "Isn't that a quote from Psalm 22?" Absolutely it is. He's quoting Psalm 22. But what he's doing, he said he said that Jesus was experiencing the absence of God. Can you imagine? Yeah, it's in Psalm 22. He was praying Psalm 22. He was fulfilling Psalm 22. Praying it on behalf of us who were separated from God. But Jesus was never separated from God. He was God. It's impossible. And, uh, who was it? Somebody said in here, um, KMY, uh, Y5Q says, "There's no way PSA ends up not splitting the Trinity." Yeah, that's right. That's what it does. It has the, the Trinity like collapsing in on itself. It's, it's just bizarre, this kind of perspective of it. You see? So, all right. What does this have to do with Isaiah 53? Well, he quoted that it was God's will to crush him, right? So, we're going to look at this and we're just going to get a little tiny introduction here, uh, to this whole Isaiah thing because you should read this, okay? Like, it doesn't do you any good if you are talking about this online and you've never actually read this, okay? Don't talk about PSA and don't talk about, you know, this doctrine and that doctrine. You just got to, you have to read the scriptures to understand this. Okay. Look at slide number five. Slide number five says this, that in Isaiah, in these, uh, chapters in Isaiah, like from 42 to 53, you have what are called the four servant songs. Okay. Now, the four servant songs, I, it's, it's important because when you see this icon that usually is brought out during the first week of Lent, uh, and, and then or the last week of Lent, this icon of extreme humility, right? This icon is really expressing these songs sung by the servant. So Isaiah 42 kind of introduces the purpose of this servant, this eventually suffering servant. And then the second song, Isaiah 49, talks about, um, the, the, the life of and the purpose of the servant. Then in Isaiah 50, it talks about how this servant is going to be obedient and faithful. All right. And he, he doesn't pull away from God. And then the fourth song is the one we're going to talk about. Okay. The fourth song is this. And again, if you have your Bible, look at it. I am gonna have the text here, but this is really important because we're going to look at the Masoretic Hebrew text. And then we're going to look at the Septuagint text. It's going to blow your mind how different it is. This is crazy. So Isaiah 52:13 to Isaiah 53:12. And by the way, because sometimes it can kind of get screwed up, uh, between the Septuagint, um, English versions and the Masoretic, the numbering is the same in, in these chapters in Isaiah. Okay. All right. So stay with me because there's a little bit of reading here. And we're going to do this. We're going to read that whole text and I want you to kind of get the, get the vibe of the reading. I want you to hear certain words that are coming out. We're going to read it from the Hebrew, the Masoretic text, and then we're going to read it from the Septuagint translation. And you're, it's, it's like I'm reading two different things. You're not going to believe this. Okay? Then we're going to compare some verses and then we're going to look at a way that we can actually read the Masoretic text without like ripping our hair out to understand. Maybe we're reading this wrong. Maybe the emphasis on this is just, it's not, it's not that the text is wrong, it's that it's not being read correctly. Okay? All right. So slide number six. Now, slide number six and slide number seven is the Hebrew Masoretic text. Okay. And again, for us Orthodox Christians, this is important. This is really important. I'm not trying to shoot down the Masoretic text here, but I'm saying if you don't read it correctly and you don't read it in light of the Septuagint, then it's not, it's, it's going to lead you astray. This is really what it is. All right. Here's the Masoretic text. So, this is like the New King James Version. It's from the Hebrew, the extant Masoretic text that was compiled in the, like the 10th century by Jews. Okay. And the really, the only copies that we have are from the, like the 8th, 9th, 10th century. That's it, except for a few of the, like their scrolls, um, from the, um, Qumran caves. Okay. All right. [clears throat] "Behold, my servant shall deal prudently. He shall be exalted and extolled and be very high. Just as many were astonished at you, so his visage was marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men, so shall he sprinkle many nations. Kings shall shut their mouths at him. For what had not been told them, they shall see, and what they had not heard, they shall consider. Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness. And when we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected by men. A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid as it were our faces from him. He was despised and we did not esteem him. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed." Next slide. This is a continuation of the Hebrew. "All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way. And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and he was afflicted. Yet he opened not his mouth. He was led as a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before its shears is silent. So he opened not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment. And who will declare his generation? For he was cut off from the land of the living. For the transgressions of my people he was stricken. And they made his grave with the wicked, but with the rich at his death, because he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him. He has put him to grief. When you make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed. He shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall see the labor of his soul and be satisfied. By his knowledge, my righteous servant shall justify many, for he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore, I will divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide, divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul unto death, and he was numbered with the transgressors, and he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors." All right? So normally, that entire passage is read as one long kind of prophetic soliloquy. Okay, one long prophetic soliloquy. And the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, the Hebrew scriptures, reads again as one long soliloquy, but listen to the different emphasis and we're going to compare them. But listen to how it doesn't emphasize the punishment, but it emphasizes healing. Listen to this slide number eight. This is now the Greek Septuagint. This is what's in your Orthodox Study Bible. It's right from the Orthodox Study Bible. "Behold, my servant shall have wisdom, and he shall be exalted and glorified exceedingly. Just as many shall be astonished at you, so your form and glory shall be dishonored by men. Thus many nations shall marvel at him, and kings shall shut their mouth, because they to whom no report was brought concerning him shall see. And they who did not hear shall understand. O Lord, who has believed our report? And to whom was the arm of the Lord revealed? We proclaimed his presence as a child, as a root in a thirsty land. He had no form or glory, and we saw him, and he had no form or beauty. But in comparison to all men, his form was lacking in honor. He was a man in suffering and knew how to bear sickness. His face was turned away and he was dishonored and not esteemed. He bears our sins and suffers for us. Yet we considered him to be in pain, suffering, and ill treatment. But he was wounded because of our lawlessness and became sick because of our sins. The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his bruise we are healed." Slide nine. "All we like sheep have gone astray. Man has gone astray in his way, and the Lord deliver him over for our sins. Although he was ill-treated, he opened not his mouth. He was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb is silent before his shears, so he opens not his mouth. In his humiliation, his judgment was taken away. And who will declare his generation? For his life is taken from the earth, and because of the lawlessness of my people, he was led to death. I will appoint evil men for his burial and rich men for his death. Because he committed no lawlessness, nor was deceit found in his mouth. The Lord wishes to cleanse him of his wound. And if you give an offering for sin, your soul shall see a long-lived seed. The Lord wishes to take away the pain of his soul, to show him light, to form him with understanding, and to pronounce righteousness, the righteous one who serves many well. And he shall bear their sins. Therefore, he shall inherit many, and will divide, divide the spoil with the strong, because his soul was delivered over to death. He was considered among the lawless, and he bore the sins of many, and was delivered over because of their sins." Okay. Now look at, we're going to look at a couple of verses here. Look at slide number 10. We're going to compare the Hebrew Masoretic text to the Greek Septuagint text. This translation. Okay, look at what it says. This is Isaiah 53:3. First, you'll see it on the left, the Hebrew Masoretic text. So, in an, like an English Bible, like the New King James Version, it says, "He is despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and we hid, as it were, our faces from him. He was despised and we did not esteem him. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted." Now look at the, look at the Orthodox Study Bible text. Do you see what's missing? "But in comparison to all men, his form was lacking in honor. He was a man in suffering and knew how to bear sickness. His face was turned away and he was dishonored and not esteemed. He bears our sins and suffers for us. Yet we considered him to be in pain, suffering, and ill treatment." Do you notice what's missing? There's no, it doesn't say "smitten by God." Doesn't say that. It's very curious. Here's another example. Slide number 11. And this is the big one. This is like what penal substitutionary atonement is really built on is are these verses. Look at slide number 11. This is Isaiah 53:10. First in the Hebrew Masoretic, and then in the Greek Septuagint. Hebrew Masoretic: "Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him. He has put him to grief. When you make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed. He shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall see the labor of his soul and be satisfied. By his knowledge, my righteous servant shall justify many, for he shall bear their iniquities." Okay, so notice verse 10. "Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him. He has put him to grief." Look at this. Look at the Greek Septuagint. "Now the Lord wishes to cleanse him of his wound. And if you give him an offering for sin, your soul shall see a long-lived seed. The Lord wishes to take away the pain of his soul, to show him light, to form him with understanding, and to pronounce righteous the righteous one who serves many well. And he shall bear their sins." So the question is, like, why is this different? Now, we can say, as of course many say, like, "Well, the, the Septuagint is a, a thought-for-thought translation, right? Maybe they didn't know Hebrew very well and so they're, they're reading the Hebrew and they said, 'Well, it's kind of like this, right?'" However, look at this. Where is this mentioning of "Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him?" What it says is, "The Lord wishes to cleanse him of his wound." And here, as we know, at the root of this is this word, hilasterion. Hilasterion. Hilasterion can be translated in several different ways. Hilasterion can be seen as a propitiatory sacrifice, as in, um, appeasement, but it can also be, it is the term for the mercy seat. The mercy seat on which Moses first, uh, Moses sprinkles the, the blood on the people and then eventually, as the, the mercy seat is used, built by the, the, the people of Israel and used in the tabernacle, again, everything is cleansed by that sprinkling. This is the way that we see hilasterion. Hilasterion is cleansing. Cleansing, not the propitiation like a, um, a, a pagan god needs to be appeased, but rather the cleansing action of the sacrifice. And that's why this is very important. So you see here in slide number 12, I have a little graphic. So in the slide, the, the bottom right-hand corner, this is meant to show Job. And you remember Job's three friends. Job's three friends, they were hammering him. When Job had everything taken away, what happened was [clears throat] Job lost everything. He lost his riches. He lost all his animals. He lost his children. He lost his health. His wife tells him, "Curse God and die." And his friends come to him and they say, "Job, this is what I think happened. You didn't do this. You didn't do that." The other friend says, "Well, you didn't do this. You didn't do that." And the other friend says, "You didn't do this. You didn't do that." But Job is steady in his faithfulness and he says, "The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord." And the reason that I bring up Job here is that this is an, this is an example of a kind of dialogue that happens between people who are saying things that aren't true. Now, when you read Job, if you don't read it with that kind of dialogue, if you don't understand what's going on, you might think that everything that his friends say are true. You might think that what the friends are saying to Job is true, but it's like, it's not true. They're wrong. But somebody might say, "But it's in the Bible." Well, yeah, it is in the Bible. So is "Crucify him! Crucify him!" This kind of dialogue might be, might be, didn't say it is, might be a way of reading Isaiah 52 and 53 in the Masoretic text. For instance, what if the prophet Isaiah is proclaiming to them about this suffering servant, but the crowd is answering the prophet back to them, saying something contrary, or justifying themselves, or blaming the suffering servant? Is that possible? Instead of reading it as I said, as one long soliloquy, like it's written in the Greek Septuagint, it's one long soliloquy. The prophet is saying, "Here's the suffering servant." But you don't hear anything in Isaiah 53 about God crushing him. You don't hear that at all. So the question is, is it possible to read the Hebrew Masoretic text to see that it is aligned with our, um, the expression of our services, the doctrine that is expressed in our services and in our theology in a way that is commensurate also with the Greek Septuagint? So look at slide number 13. So slide number 13 and slide number 14 is where I have it kind of split up. Now again, the question is, is, is this the only way to read it? No. But it's one way to, um, harmonize what we see as the, um, way in which the Septuagint expresses the suffering servant. So what you're going to see in slide number 13 and slide number 14, and then we're going to wrap it up, is you're going to have the prophet is going to speak about the suffering servant, and then the crowd is going to answer, and they're going to kind of throw it back to him and they're going to say, "No, like this, what you're saying is not the truth. What God was doing was sort of like he was punishing the suffering servant, not us, not us, not we Israelites. This was just God getting back at the suffering servant because he deserved it." Just look at this. So the prophet says in Isaiah 52:13, "Behold, my servant shall deal prudently. He shall be exalted and extolled and be very high, just as many were astonished at you. So his visage was marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men." So he shall sprinkle many nations, like cleanse them. Kings shall shut their mouths at him. For what had not been told them, they shall see, and what they had not heard, they shall consider. Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness. And when we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid as it were our faces from him. He was despised and we did not esteem him. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows." But the crowd answers, "Isaiah says, 'Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. It was him. He, he was doing it. Not our grief, not our sorrows. He was stricken.'" And then the prophet says, "But he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon him. And by his stripes we are healed." Next slide. 14. "All we like sheep have gone astray. And and we've turned everyone to his own way." But the crowd answers the prophet and says, "And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed. He was afflicted." And then the prophet says, "Yet he opened not his mouth. He was led as a lamb to the slaughter. As a sheep before its shears is silent, so he opened not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment." And then the crowd answers, "And who will declare his generation? For he was cut off from the land of the living? For the transgression of my people? He was stricken and they made his grave with the wicked." In other words, he was bad. And then the prophet says, "But with the rich at his death, because he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth." But the people answered, "Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him. He has put him to grief." And the prophet answers, "When you make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed. He shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall see the labor of his soul and be satisfied. By his knowledge, my righteous servant shall justify many, for he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore, I will divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide, divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul unto death. And he was numbered with the transgressors, and he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors." Okay? So somehow we have to, we have to, um, look at the Septuagint and say, "How do we make sense of both of these things?" We can't just wave our hands and say, "Well, the Fathers, I saw it in the, the, the chat, the Fathers taught PSA." They didn't teach that PSA. They did not teach what John MacArthur taught. They didn't. When, when the Fathers talk about wrath, there's nowhere in the Fathers where it says God punished Jesus. There's nowhere in the Fathers where it says that that God punished Jesus. Those who are, who are, um, insistent that PSA is a, um, is a Patristic doctrine are misunderstanding some of these words and the tone in which the, the hymnography is sung. I am not saying that there isn't substitutionary action. I, I've never said that there is. Uh, Athanasius speaks about him being our substitute. But, you know, the way in which this is expressed in the Fathers is not the way that, um, that it is expressed by modern Protestants. It's not. And so we have to somehow, um, look at the, the Septuagint rendering of Isaiah 52 and 53 and we have to look at the Masoretic text and say, "Like, what's going on there? Why is it so different?" And one possibility, one possibility is to say that the Masoretic text might be expressing a kind of dialogue between the prophet and the people.

who are basically pushing back and saying, "No, it was him. He he was being killed because of him. God did that, buried him with the with the uh wicked. God put him to grief and it was it was pleasing to the Lord to bruise him. But you don't have that language in the Septuagent. So, you know, this is important. It's important that we kind of try to harmonize these things and to listen to the himnography especially during Holy Week that we listen to the himnography and you will be hardpressed. You will find little pieces here and there, but you will be hardpressed to hear a theme, a theme of God pouring out his wrath on his son, punishing his son. And that's very important.

Our faith is expressed in our himynography. It It's not expressed online on X. That's not where we get our doctrine from. We get our doctrine from the scriptures and we get our doctrine expressed especially in those early fathers. those early fathers. And in the himnography is where our doctrine about the crucifixion, the redemption of humanity is codified. That's where it is. And and so we have to be very careful here. And I'm not even saying that, you know, these last two slides about like maybe it's too um it's like a dialogue between the prophet and you know the this could be it. I know there are other theories like the the Jews just they just you know put all kinds of things in. They took all kinds of things out. I I think we know that there are different manuscript traditions. There's even different Septuagent manuscript traditions. We know that. Okay. But let's not believe something that is not expressed lurggically by our church. I know about the um like the the the uh St. John Kersostam's sermon uh on ascension that's like one place and and one can look at that very differently than just say it is an affirmation of penal substitutionary time. It it's it's we have to be careful not to u define hilastion as the propitiatory action right satisfying uh like an angry god satisfying um uh an appeasing appeasing god right that his justice must be um avenged, right? This is this is not always expressed through our services in that way. So I'm asking you to look at these things carefully and to be weary of you know anything that kind of puts God in a in this kind of box that says you know he has to act this way because of this verse that says you know it was the will of the Lord to crush him. Um it doesn't even exist in the Septuagent. Okay.

All right. Very good. Well, that was fun. Lot of stuff going on in there. Okay. Hey, go to church on Wednesday evenings. It's important, right? During the great Lent, we have these especially Wednesday evening presifides because this is our food to get us through the week, to get us through our fasting. So, I want you to make sure that you are uh going to church, you're being kind to one another, uh you are praying and fasting, uh and and there's so many people that are coming into the church. It's crazy. Have you seen all the stuff online about like these people are baptized and you know 50 more catechumans here and 20 more catechumans there? It's unbelievable. It's amazing. God is amazing. And he's doing all of this even though we don't deserve this at all. Like none of us, none of our parishes deserve this. Don't take any pride in this. Be humble. Be amazed by God's grace. God's gracious um forbearance and love for us by bringing all of these people in. Okay.

All right. Would you please uh like this show if you did? If you didn't like it, that's okay. It's fine. We get another chance next week. But if you liked it, hit the like button. Share it out. uh let them let them know, hey, Tuesday evening, come back five o'clock Eastern, 2 PM uh Pacific time. You know, we have a good discussion. Uh we're going to talk about all kinds of things. There's all kinds of things coming up. And it's not always going to be like a long study. It's going to be uh other social things, too. Uh pray for the Middle East. Pray for the Middle East. Man, it's it's I don't know. It's um it's I I know that it's something that you know was bound to happen and um but we still have to pray. Okay, we have to pray for peace. All right, that's our show for tonight. Remember to like us on Facebook at facebook.com/ancientfaith today. Share our program after that's posted. Give us your feedback, comments. I know you guys have been writing me. I really appreciate it. Really, really do appreciate it. I owe you some responses. like it's just the first week of Lent. It's impossible. And join us next Tuesday evening for another edition of Ancient Faith Today Live. Good night everybody. Heat up here.