Wednesday, May 22, 2024 PM

Chapter nine, so we're going to get started tonight. We're going to try to finish up our two-and-a-half months' worth of introduction on the book of Isaiah, and the last point of our introduction is the Christological panoply of Isaiah, meaning here is an array, a beautiful array of pictures of Jesus Christ throughout the book of Isaiah.

It's been said by the older divines that Isaiah was the fifth gospel. It just came a little early. Don't call Isaiah a prophet, call him a gospel writer, because there is so much information about Jesus in this Old Testament book, and we want to talk about some of the ways in which Christ is revealed here.

So we're going to begin with what we'll call direct messianic prophecies. Of course, there are a lot of those in the book of Isaiah, but one such example is in Isaiah chapter nine. So notice the way that it begins in verses one and two.

It says, Nevertheless, the gloom will not be upon her who is distressed, as when at first he lightly esteemed the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, and afterward more heavily oppressed her by the way of the sea beyond the Jordan in Galilee of the Gentiles.

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light, those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death. Upon them a light has shined. So when we read that, what comes to mind? Light shining in Galilee of the Gentiles.

What comes to mind, do you think, in the New Testament? Well, this first chapter of John, a light shining, and what was that? That was Jesus Christ coming forward and preaching the truth, shedding light wherever he went, talking about the scriptures.

In Matthew chapter four, he began to preach in Galilee, where his ministry was focused, and Matthew says this was to fulfill, and then Matthew quotes this particular passage out of Isaiah chapter nine.

Jesus of Nazareth, being the Christ, the Son of the living God, preaching around the towns he knew best there in Galilee, Matthew says this was to fulfill what Isaiah the prophet.

Wrote.

And of course, looking unto Christ and his arrival and his timing, verse seven of Isaiah nine says, of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end upon the throne of David and over his kingdom.

To order it and establish it with judgment and justice from that time forward, even forever, the zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this. So from early Matthew to early Acts, when Peter preaches and he says, Jesus Christ ascended to the right hand of the Father, is the fulfillment of Isaiah chapter nine, verse seven.

So direct messianic prophecies, a one-to-one connection, very helpful when you're reading through the New Testament and one of the New Testament writers says something like, okay, what just happened?

This was to fulfill, and then they fill you in, and usually your Bible will have a footnote and a cross-reference, and then you can go read it for yourself. And I always find it helpful to read the surrounding context as well.

Sometimes the New Testament authors will just quote half the verse, but they're not taking it out of context. The Holy Spirit is not taking the Bible out of context. So take the time to read the broader section around that fulfilled passage.

It'll be enriching to you. There's also something that we might call indirect messianic prophecies being fulfilled, and an example of that is Isaiah seven, not too far away from where you are there in chapter.

Nine.

But in Isaiah chapter seven, we have a famous verse there in verse 14, and I want to try to flesh it out a little bit for you, kind of give you the situation where this comes.

Up.

So verse 14, we hear Isaiah say, "...therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.". Now, what a beautiful verse, and you're going to find it on Christmas cards, it's going to be on some part of the Nativity somewhere, it'll be in your Christmas decorations hanging.

Up.

And it's usually received as, God is giving me a sign. No, he's not. He's not giving you a sign at all. He's giving a wicked, rebellious king by the name of Ahaz a sign. See, in the first two verses of Isaiah seven, there's a problem brewing north of Jerusalem and Judah.

And we read, "...now it came to pass in the days of Ahaz, the son of Jotham.". Ahaz was one of those bad kings. "...and the son of Uzziah, the king of Judah, that resin king of Syria, and Pekah, the son of Ramaliah, king of Israel, went up to Jerusalem to make war against it, but could not prevail against it.

So it was told to the house of David, saying, "...Syria's forces are deployed in Ephraim. So his heart and the heart of his people were moved, as the trees of the woods are moved.

With the wind.".

I know this never happens to you when you hear bad news that you're tossed to and fro, but it happened to the king of Jerusalem. He heard that troops from Syria had allied with the troops of Israel, the northern kingdom, and they were coming to take out the southern kingdom.

And the king was frightened. He was scared. He was just convinced that it was over. You know, he's Denethor on the battlements, despairing. But God sends the prophet to Ahaz to give him strength, to give him confidence.

And in verse 10, "...Moreover, the Lord spoke again to Ahaz...". Now, after he said that this whole thing's going to fail, you're not going to die, Jerusalem's.

Going to continue.

"...Moreover, the Lord spoke again to Ahaz, saying, Ask a sign for yourself from the Lord your God. Ask it either in the depth or in the height above.". Why is he saying that? It's like, how are you going to know that what the prophet has said is true?

Well, ask for a sign, and we'll show you some amazing miracle, and then you'll know for sure that this word is true. But Ahaz says, "...I will not ask, nor will I test the Lord.". The Lord just told you to ask for a sign, and you say, I won't.

I'm not going to test the Lord. Well, you're testing the Lord by not obeying him, by not asking for the sign. And so, because he didn't ask for a sign, God provided one. Verse 13,. "...Then he said, Here now, O house of David, is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will you weary my God also?".

And then comes verse 14. So, Isaiah says to wicked old King Ahaz, here's the sign. Now, moving on past verse 14, we hear that the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, shall call his name Emmanuel. Hold on to that, Emmanuel.

Verse 15,. "...Curds and honey he shall eat, that he may know to refuse the evil and choose the.

Good.

For before the child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land that you dread will be forsaken by both her kings.". The land you dread.

What is that?

It is Israel and Syria. They will be forsaken by both their kings. So, their whole alliance is going to completely fail. The Lord will bring the king of Assyria, the big, bad, doomsday nation of Assyria, is going to come upon all these people and take out Pekah and Rezin.

So, God says, there's a child that's going to be born, and his name's going to be Emmanuel, and before he gets too old, the king of Assyria is going to do all these amazing things and take out your enemies for you.

And also threaten you, by the way, but, I mean, you're going to have bigger things to worry about than Israel and Syria, because Assyria is going to be a threat like you've not even ever seen before. Now, usually, when we get Isaiah 714, and we have that on our Christmas cards, we're not thinking about the Assyrian invasion, are we?

Because Assyria was long destroyed, long past, before Jesus was born, wasn't he? And yet, we're told in the New Testament, this was to fulfill what was said by the prophet, you shall call his name Emmanuel, virgin, conceived, and was with child.

Interesting thing about the passage, verse 14, there is a technical Hebrew word for virgin, and it's not used here. Young woman is used here, and of course, it often is used in the context to talk about a virgin, and so it could definitely mean that, but it also could mean just young woman.

Well, Isaiah was young, and he was married to a young woman, a young bride, and she gave birth to a son. Now, this happens in chapter 8, notice verses 1 through 4. Moreover, the Lord said to me, take a large scroll, and write on it with a man's pen concerning Meher Shalohashbaz, longest word in the Bible, no wonder they needed a long scroll.

And I will take for myself faithful witnesses to record Uriah the priest and Zechariah the son of Jeborakiah. Then I went to the prophetess, and she conceived and bore a son. Then the Lord said to me, call his name Meher Shalohashbaz, for before the child shall have knowledge to cry, my father and my mother, the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria will be taken away before the king of Assyria.

And a little bit later on, he says in verse 8, he will pass, of the king of Assyria, he will pass through Judah, he will overflow in Passover, he will reach up to the neck, and the stretching out of his wings will fill the breadth of your land, O Emmanuel.

Okay?

Meaning that the prophecy was given and fulfilled in a short amount of time, and in Isaiah's own lifetime, but that wasn't all the water that was in the sponge.

You understand?

The prophecy was given, the sponge was filled up with water, and lo and behold, right on time, Isaiah's second-born son, Meher Shalohashbaz, grew up a little bit before he was but five years old, the king of Assyria did exactly what God said he would, according to the sign that he gave back in chapter 7.

So water was squeezed out of the sponge, but not all of it. The prophecy came true, but not every bit of it, because when we come to the New Testament, we find out that its ultimate meaning, its ultimate fulfillment, was in Jesus Christ.

So that would be an example of an indirect Messianic prophecy. It appears to be about Isaiah's second-born son, but also it's about Jesus Christ. So you're going to find things like that happening throughout the Bible.

That might be a little annoying to you, but that's just how it happens sometimes. It keeps you on your toes. Also, we have Messianic appearances, where Jesus simply shows up. Now, we find that in Isaiah chapter 6, Isaiah chapter 6.

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above it stood seraphim, each one had six wings, with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.

And one cried to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. And the posts of the doors were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house.

Was filled with smoke.

So I said, Woe is me, for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips, and dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. Well, see, there's nothing in there that says that's Jesus of Nazareth.

Well, of course, Jesus hasn't been born yet, but who are we looking at? 1 Timothy 6, verse 16 says that God dwells in unapproachable light. No man has seen God, nor can man see God. John 1, 18 clarifies that no one has seen God at any time, but the only begotten in the bosom of the Father, he has explained him.

There is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. When Abram sees God, when Moses sees God face to face, when Joshua hangs out with God face to face, when the angel of the Lord shows up, and it's actually the Lord shows up and people think they're going to die because they've seen God and they don't die, time and time again, who is this who is showing up and revealing God in a glorious though understandable way, getting face to face with people?

Who is that? Well, it's the second person of the Trinity. It's Christ. The fancy word for it is theophany, God showing up and making an appearance, but to be more clear, it's a Christophany, it's Christ showing up in a way that we're communicating with God now.

All of a sudden, Abram's serving him supper. How did that happen? The same thing with Isaiah here. So, we see Christ just appearing, showing up. Also, we have types. It's a biblical word, types, antitype.

These mean pictures and connecting pictures. It comes from the Greek word tupos, which simply has the idea of if you take a coin, take a coin, and on the coin is whose image is on the coin, Jesus asked, well, it was Caesar.

It was Caesar.

If you take the coin and you press it into some wet clay, it's very smooth, and you press into wet clay and you take it out, you see an image of Caesar indented into the clay off the coin. That's called type and antitype.

That's the idea in the Greek. So, what you have is you have pictures in the scriptures that are types, and then you come into the New Testament and you say, oh, that was Jesus Christ. For example, Paul says the rock that the water came out of, where Israel's going through the wilderness and they're getting water from a rock, he says the rock was Christ.

Many such examples, the Passover lamb, John says when Jesus died, they did not break a single one of his bones, and normally they would break the legs of those dying on the cross for a swifter death, but when they came to Jesus, he was already dead, so they didn't break his legs, and then John says this was to fulfill, and he quotes a passage about what you're supposed to do to the Passover lamb after it's dead.

That's the thing about Jesus of Nazareth there. Oh, wait, it's a type. He's the fulfillment of the Passover lamb. So there's messianic types. When we read through different books of the Bible, there's a focus maybe on Adam, maybe on Isaac, maybe on David as a type of the Messiah, but for Isaiah, he tends to focus on the entirety of the people of Israel as a type of Christ.

Of course, the most famous example is when you get into Isaiah chapters 40 through 55, and Isaiah constantly talks about Israel as a servant, lowercase s, servant, and says, well, you know, here's my servant, and my servant was supposed to do this, and my servant was supposed to do that, but they didn't do any of it, and they're blind, and they're dumb, and they're idolatrous, and I'm tired of them, and then later on, we hear the same prophet talking about the servant who succeeds, and who wins the day, and is always faithful, and this is the capital s, servant, Jesus Christ.

In this sense, he's the fulfillment of Israel as a whole people, but another example is in Isaiah chapter 5, and in Isaiah 5 and verse 1, it says, now let me sing to my well-beloved. By the way, God's a special name for the son of David.

Remember that God gave a prophecy to David that he would have a son, that son would reign upon the throne, and he was careful to specify which son it was, because David had a lot of sons, and he specified Solomon, Sholomon, the man of peace.

But he also said, name the child, God said, name the child Jedidiah for my sake, which means beloved, my beloved, and so here, God says, now let me sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved regarding his vineyard.

My well-beloved has a vineyard on a very fruitful hill. He dug it up and cleared out its stones and planted it with the choicest vine. He built a tower in its midst, and he also made a winepress in it.

So he expected it to bring forth good grapes, but it brought forth wild grapes. And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge please between me and my vineyard. What more could have been done to my vineyard that I have not done in it?

Why then, when I expected it to bring forth good grapes, did it not? And now please let me tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will take away its hedge, and it shall be burned, and break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down.

I will lay it waste. It shall not be pruned or dug, but there shall come up briars and thorns. I will also command the clouds that they rain no more rain on it. For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are his pleasant plant.

The men of Judah are what? The very plant itself, the vine. He looked for justice, but behold, oppression, for righteousness, but behold, a cry for help. So here he is, he plants this vineyard with this pleasant plant, this vine, and says, okay, I'm looking for fruit.

And what does he get? He doesn't get the fruit. So he's like, well, it's time to hack and slash and burn. Now, who was it who said, I am the vine and you are the branches?

Remember that?

Jesus said that in John chapter 15. He said, I am the vine, you are the branches. Now he's speaking at a moment in time where everybody's trying to figure out what in the world he's on about. The way in which he's reading the Old Testament is different.

It's not like the scribes and pharisees. It's like he has all authority in and of himself. And he says, I am the true vine. Who was the original vine that didn't do what it was supposed to do?

Oh, that was Judah.

That was Israel. He says, I am the true vine, and my father is the vine dresser. And remember the complaint back in Isaiah 5. What am I supposed to do with this terrible vineyard? What am I supposed to do with this awful vine?

So Jesus comes and says, I am the true vine. My father is the vine dresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away. Now who is he talking about? He's not talking about low-performance Christians.

As sometimes this gets preached and everybody gets saved all over again because everyone feels like, I'm one of those that are going to get burned. Jesus is not talking about low-performance Christians.

Well, if you don't meet your quota, we're going to chop you off and send you off to the burn pile. Jesus is taking up the language from Isaiah 5 and he's saying, now I am the vine, meaning I'm the fulfillment of Israel.

And the way that you bear fruit is by being in me. Now you can't say to me, he's addressing his audience, you can't say to me, oh, we're of Abraham our father. You can't say, I am Israel.

You can't say that.

He said, because you have to be in me if you're going to bear fruit and if you don't bear fruit, then away you go. So he's not talking about low-performance Christians, he's talking about the transition between the Old and New Covenants.

So in the New Covenant, it's are you in Christ? The Old Covenant, are you in Israel or are you outside the camp? In the New Covenant, are you in Christ or are you outside of Christ? And that's the question in the New Covenant, because he's the fulfillment of that type.

Also types can be, of course, events and institutions and throughout Isaiah, there's a huge concern about worship that is false. They were just going through the motions, offer up incense here and a lamb there, but they weren't really thinking about what it all meant.

They were just kind of checking the box and going on. There's a lot in Isaiah about the inethicacy of the sacrifice. They just didn't work on their own. The people needed to be seeing the shadow of Christ and holding fast to him by faith, but they were not.

And, of course, Jesus is the fulfillment of that sacrificial system. So that's another way he's a fulfillment of a type. And there are references to Christ in Isaiah that just kind of get brought up offhandedly in the New Testament.

One example is in Isaiah chapter 11. So notice that most of these references are within the first 12 chapters. That's going to be our focus next time we have opportunity, is to look at the first 12 chapters, which is the first little section of Isaiah, and see how that fits together.

And then we'll look at the first five chapters and how those fit together, and then dive in eventually. So Isaiah 11, it's very interesting, verses 1 and 2, says, "...there shall come forth a rod from the stem of Jesse, and a branch at Nassir shall grow out of his roots.".

So when Jesus grew up in Nassireth, Branchtown, it's like, well, hey, that was the fulfillment of Isaiah chapter 11, verse 1. "...the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.".

So the sevenfold Spirit rests upon Christ when he builds the church with a sevenfold Spirit, as we talked about Sunday morning. In Isaiah, same chapter, and look down at verse 10. "...in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, who will stand as a banner to the people, for the Gentiles shall seek him, and his resting place shall be glorious.".

So which is it? Is he a branch from Jesse, or is he the root of Jesse? Yes, because he's descendant from David. So he's descendant from Jesse and David and so on, but also he's the root. He's the root.

It's like that question Jesus asked the Sadducees from Psalm 110. If the Messiah is David's son, how come David calls him Lord? And they're like, okay, we're done. We're not going to ask you any more questions.

So not only is he the branch, but he's also the root, and it's a root of an olive tree far bigger in the New Covenant than in the Old. And you can read about that in Romans chapter 11. But we also get to know Jesus from his titles, and a great passage for that is in Isaiah chapter 9 and verse 6.

And just think about these titles that are used of Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah. "...For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government will be upon his shoulder. His name will also be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.".

So we have Child, Son, Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, sevenfold description. The titles of Christ. And there's many other titles as well that we could look at in Isaiah, but this is one where they're all very much consolidated together.

And we could also think about Messianic teaching. So one of the constant challenges for us is to read our Old Testament the way that Jesus and the apostles read the Old Testament. And one of those examples comes in Isaiah chapter 61.

We remember the story of Jesus going to his hometown synagogue in Luke chapter 4. And if you think about it, pray for Brother Dean Tucker. He's going back to his hometown childhood church, First Baptist Hydro.

He's going to preach there a couple of weeks. He says he hopes he can preach there two weeks. They may not let him back the second week. He's concerned about that. But, you know, as Jesus says in the proverb, a prophet is not without honor except in his hometown.

So Jesus goes home, and they're like, oh, welcome, Jesus, why don't you get up and you do the scripture reading and do a little teaching of your own. So he does that, and he takes up this passage from Isaiah 61, verses 1 through 3.

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings.

To the poor.

He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, to console those who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the Spirit of heaviness, that they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified.

And you keep on reading, it's just more and more good news in that passage. Now Jesus stands up and says, this, today, this has been fulfilled in your hearing. It's very much the same thing that he's been saying in other places, where he's, you know, the time is at hand, the kingdom of heaven has come, repent and believe in the gospel.

How in the world has the kingdom come so near? How is it at hand? How has it arrived? It's arrived because the king has arrived. And that's what he's saying here when he reads Isaiah. The age of the Messiah has arrived.

Because I'm here. They didn't like that very much. They violently did not like that. And, but Jesus looks at passages like this in Isaiah and says, this was about me. And in time, I showed up, you know, Luke chapter four, this is how Isaiah is getting fulfilled.

Also, we see the mess, the Messiah's suffering. One of the most famous passages in all of Isaiah is Isaiah chapter 52, verse 13 through chapter 53, verse 12. A mighty hymn of five stanzas. And it was a few years ago, preached through that passage.

Each set of three verses has an aspect on the glory of Christ in his atoning work, in his work of saving sinners. And talk about the Christological panoply of Isaiah without mentioning this passage, which is the passage above all other passages in Isaiah that talk about Jesus Christ.

And finally, we get the Messianic timeline in Isaiah. In general, Isaiah focuses on the first fall of Jerusalem, along with the judgment of all the nations, including Babylon. And just as much like Jeremiah.

But the comfort in Isaiah is the same comfort that's offered in Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Daniel, that there's something farther out. There's something beyond just coming back from exile. There's even better things ahead.

And in Isaiah, he keeps talking about a new heaven and a new earth, a new city of Zion, a new mountain of Zion, a new kingdom, new, new, new, new, all the way through Isaiah. It's constantly the hope, the comfort that is offered.

And when we, we don't have time to read it, but Isaiah chapter 65, verse 17, through the end of the book, all along through the last portion of Isaiah, you're hearing about the end of the sacrificial system.

Don't need that anymore. We're going to stop that. You hear about the loss of temple locality, that the temple is not going to be in one place anymore where you have to go, you know, get on a bus or fly a plane or get on a camel or donkey.

You have to go someplace particular to find that temple. It's going to be over and done with. And, and also, lots of things are said about how the Gentiles are no longer going to be.

Far away.

They're going to be close up in person. All the Gentiles are coming in. And these, these three themes signal that there's going to, there's, there's a new covenant on the horizon. It's not going to be like the old covenant.

It's going to be something new. It's going to be grand. It's going to be better. And, it's an interesting metaphor that we have in Isaiah, and I'm, I want you to read Isaiah 66 verse 7 is all we have time to look at tonight, but there's a, there's a metaphor in Isaiah that has to do with labor pains.

Now, I, I heard that things went very well for Hannah, which we were very thankful for very quick. Did not, did not draw out the labor. So we were very happy about that. But labor pains, especially in Isaiah, that described the travails of the destruction of a nation, the destruction of a nation, and it's seen as the, the, the labor pains in this, in the destruction of a nation, the fall of a nation is seen as the, the beginnings of something new.

What comes after it? What comes, what comes next after these labor pains, a child is born or the next empire is here.

Okay.

So that's the metaphor that they would use. And in cities, capital cities were often spoken of in the feminine as a, as a, as a mother or as a daughter. So sometimes the city is called a mother and sometimes she's a daughter.

In this case, the daughter of, the daughter of Zion is Jerusalem. Jerusalem rests upon the mountain Zion. So the daughter of Zion is Jerusalem. And we hear in Isaiah in the latter chapters that Zion is barren.

She is sad because she is barren and she's in need of children. Of course, all along we've been learning that this covenant people is just no good. They're, they're completely rebellious and they need to be replaced.

But when we get to chapter 66 and verse 7, we hear some, a word of, a word of comfort in a way. Verse 7 says, before she was in labor, she gave birth. Before her pain came, she delivered a male child.

Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things? Shall, shall the earth be made to give birth in one day? Or shall a nation be born at once? For as soon as Zion was in labor, she gave birth to her children.

Okay, just to put this in context, moving along in the prophetic metaphors and stories of Isaiah, the whole time Zion's been barren and she's, you know, you know, this is terrible and I'm in a bad situation.

And then Isaiah says this, this, this new covenant, this, this brand new thing that's going to happen, it's going to begin before the labor. The new covenant, the child, the, the son, the male child, the child that we've been talking about the whole book of Isaiah, he shows up before the labor pains.

Well, that's strange. That's not the way it's supposed to happen. But remember that Jesus Christ came, he was born and he died and was raised from the dead and brought about the new covenant in his blood, established the new creation and his resurrection before the labor pains came that he talked about in Matthew 24, which was the overthrow of Jerusalem and the destruction of Jerusalem and the passing away of the old covenant.

You see, Isaiah says the male child was born before the labor pains, which is why Jesus says that the travails of Jerusalem in Matthew 24 are labor pains, the beginning of labor pains. So he's, he's winking at Isaiah.

So, so we, no matter where we're going to be in Isaiah, we're going to be talking about Christ. There's a, there's a, a, a panoply, a plethora of ways that he is revealed to us in the book. All right, that finishes our introduction of Isaiah.

All right.

Any questions or thoughts as we close? All right, let's close with a word of prayer. Father, we thank you for the time that you've given us. I thank you for the, the joys of praying together and, and bearing one another's burdens and bringing that to your attention and knowing that you care for us so we do not have to be anxious.

And Lord, we pray that you would bless our fellowship and watch over us until we gather.

Again.

In Jesus name we pray.

Amen.