Survey of the Major Prophets

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Well, good evening.
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We are continuing tonight in our survey of the Old Testament.
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And tonight is Lecture 5, Survey of the Major Prophets.
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Now I want to make a mention, there's a little bit of confusion in the syllabus.
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The syllabus says, read the introduction to the prophets, but it did not say to read the introduction to each of the major prophets.
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And if you didn't do that, that's fine.
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However, in the future, I'm going to clarify that, that it is best if you can read the introduction to each prophet as well.
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Next week, that is, is your biggest reading week.
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Next week is reading the introduction to all 12 of the minor prophets.
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Now, some of the introductions are relatively short, because the books are relatively short.
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But spend some time each day reading through, and you'll be able to get through it with no problem.
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But like I said, tonight we're going to be looking at the major prophets.
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This is Isaiah to Daniel.
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Now let's talk for a moment about the definition of a prophet.
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A prophet, by definition, is one who speaks for God.
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And typically, in the Old Testament, we would juxtapose this with the position of the priest.
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And the priest was one who speaks to God for men.
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So we would say one who speaks to God.
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And so the prophet represents God to man, and the priest represents man to God.
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There are a few folks in the Old Testament who function in the role of prophet and priest.
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We would say that Moses functioned as prophet and priest, in one sense.
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And there were a few others, but most specifically Moses.
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And then, of course, Jesus is called Christ.
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That is the Greek word, which is equivalent to the Hebrew word Messiah.
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And the word Messiah means anointed one.
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And the word, the reason why he is called the anointed one, is because he was prophet, priest, and king.
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Christ represents all three of those roles.
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Because all three, the prophet, the priest, and the king, were all three anointed by God for their role within the people of Israel.
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And Christ was prophet, priest, and king.
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So we call him the Messiah, or the anointed one.
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Prophetic voices go back to the earliest passages of Scripture.
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The Bible tells us that Enoch prophesied.
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Who was Enoch? The Enoch prior to Noah.
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The first time Enoch's name is mentioned, he is one of the descendants of Seth, remember? And it says that he walked with God.
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Hello, Frank.
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It says that he walked with God.
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And then in the book of Jude, verse 14, Jude's only one chapter, so Jude 1, 14, it says that Enoch prophesied.
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And so prophetic utterances go all the way back to prior to the flood, go all the way back to Enoch.
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Noah himself was called a preacher of righteousness.
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That's in 2 Peter 2, verse 5.
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That would mean that he functioned as a prophet.
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Yes, sir.
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That's right.
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Him and Elijah were the only two that did not die.
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And then, of course, so we have Enoch.
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We have Noah, who was a preacher of righteousness.
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We would say he was a prophet.
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There were other prophetic voices.
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The patriarchs spoke with a prophetic voice.
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Abraham, of course, spoke for God.
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Isaac and Jacob by just today, in fact, was preaching in Genesis 35, where Jacob is taking the people to Bethel.
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And he says, take and put away your false gods, purify yourself and change your clothes.
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And that was a threefold reference to repentance.
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Put away your false God, get rid of your idols, change your clothes.
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It was a picture of the new man.
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That's what your clothes represented, your condition.
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Think about when you were upset or something wrong tore your clothes, you know, it was representative condition and purifying yourself, get prepared to meet God.
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And so it was a picture of repentance.
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So that was a prophetic utterance.
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He was commanding them to do something on behalf of God.
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Moses, as I said before, was one who spoke for God.
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He was called a prophet.
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And there are many others down through the through the history books.
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But the the time that we would call the prophetic period would be would have begun with Samuel.
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So if you think about from a historical perspective.
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The prophetic period would have begun with Samuel.
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Around 1100, of course, we talked about Samuel a little bit last week in the history books, 1100 BC, Samuel, of course, God speaks to him and he speaks to the people.
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During this time, the priesthood had fallen into corruption.
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You'll remember the priest, the Eli, the priest and his sons, Hothni and Phineas, who had been corrupt.
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So the priesthood had fallen into corruption and the prophets therefore ministered through the age of the the the the kingdom of Saul, the kingdom of David, the kingdom of Solomon.
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But specifically in the divided kingdom, we see the prophets ministering to the people of God and they minister all the way up until 400 years before Christ.
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Then there is a time of silence and then we have the last Old Testament prophet.
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Who is the last Old Testament prophet? John the Baptist.
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John the Baptist was a prophet and he would still be in the he would still be considered an Old Testament prophet because it was prior to the coming of the New Testament with Christ.
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So the last Old Testament prophet is not in the Old Testament.
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He is in the New Testament.
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But that would be John.
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John would function in that role.
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And remember what he said, what they said, come in the spirit of who? Elijah comes in the spirit of the prophet.
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And what's interesting about that, just from a historical perspective, is we have two times in the Bible where there is a 400 year period of silence before a major introduction of new revelation.
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So from the time of Jacob to Moses, we have approximately four, I know there's more, but approximately 400 year period of silence.
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This is the time when Israel goes into slavery in Egypt.
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Right.
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And then we get to Malachi to Matthew and there's another 400 year period approximately.
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And both of these are periods of silence, which end with major revelatory change.
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The law comes through Moses.
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The Bible says grace and truth come through Jesus.
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And these are major changes in the revelatory or God's revelation to his people.
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So when we talk about the prophets or prophetic words, we're talking about all the way back to the beginning, there were prophets.
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But when we talk about the writing prophets, we're talking specifically about a very small scope of history, came on the scene during the divided kingdom, prophesied through the two kingdoms, through the exile, during the restoration.
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And they're broken down into two categories, the major prophets, which are four writers, five books, because we believe Lamentations written by Jeremiah.
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So four writers and five books.
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And then we have 12 minor prophets, which in the Hebrew Bible is one book.
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They call it the twelve.
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All right.
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So covering a lot tonight, covering those.
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The concept of prophecy, what prophets are, what they do, and then we're going to look at each one of the books in a little bit of detail.
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So let's look first, we're going to look at three things.
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We're going to look at the methods of the prophets or the methodology of the prophets.
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Then we're going to look at the classifications of the prophets.
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Then we're going to look at the themes.
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So let's look first at the methodology of the prophets.
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When people think of prophets, they often think fortune tellers, like think of like Nostradamus.
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People say Nostradamus was a prophet and they say that he prophesied many future events.
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Well, whether or not he got some things right, I mean, so did Back to the Future.
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So be careful if you start thinking.
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Yeah, I mean, honestly, Demolition Man got a lot of things right.
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If you want to start talking about predicting the future.
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George Orwell nailed it.
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You don't know who that is.
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He wrote about a dystopian future and we are headed in that direction.
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So the idea of being a fortune teller is not what the prophets were.
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Instead, I like this term.
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A scholar I was listening, I was actually listening to this yesterday, listening to him teach.
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He said that he said it's better to refer to prophets as covenant enforcers.
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Rather than fortune tellers, refer to them as covenant enforcers, because they were the ones who were coming to proclaim to the people the word of God.
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They were the preachers.
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They were the covenant enforcers.
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I'm going to go back a screen to this one.
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They did it in two ways.
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One was foretelling and the other was foretelling.
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Now, that second one may seem like it's kind of made up.
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Well, all words are made up, so don't get too upset.
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Foretelling is the forecasting of God's plan.
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So that is true.
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There is a sense in which they will tell about future events before they happen.
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However, there are times, many more times that the prophets were not foretelling future events, but rather they were proclaiming or foretelling the condition of Israel or condition of Judah.
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They were telling about what was wrong.
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They were giving an account of what was going on in the nation.
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So getting to this screen, there were tests for the prophets.
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The tests for the prophets were first, they had to have accuracy in their prediction.
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Deuteronomy 18, 20 to 22 says this, if a prophet says something's going to happen and it don't happen, then you don't need to fear that prophet because he ain't real.
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Now that's the Keith Standard Version.
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You can look it up yourself later and look at how it actually words it, but that's basically what it says.
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It says if the prophet says something's going to happen and it don't, then he ain't no prophet from God.
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Again, Keith Standard Version.
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But there is another way that they tested for prophets and this one's lesser known.
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But in Deuteronomy 13, it says that a prophet may come and make a prediction that comes true.
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And if he does, but he tells you to go after other gods, then he is still a false prophet.
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Because even if his prophecy is true, even if he says X is going to happen and X happens, but then he tells you to go after other gods, he's still a false prophet because he's not.
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And this is the way this is my words.
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First is accuracy of prediction.
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Second is agreement with revelation.
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If he comes and preaches something that doesn't agree with what God has already revealed about himself, he's a false prophet.
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Even if he's giving you predictions of the future, it doesn't matter because he must have agreement with what is already revealed.
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Now, I'll give you an example of how this works in our day.
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I want to introduce you to somebody if you don't already know him.
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There's a man by the name of Benny Hinn.
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You may not ever heard of this guy.
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I know he's not very popular.
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Benny Hinn is a self-proclaimed prophet.
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He says that God speaks to him and through him.
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And these are some claims that he made.
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I have these on recording.
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I actually was going to have them in the thing and let you listen to them, but it was a little hard to do.
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So I just typed them out.
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One, he claimed that God would destroy the homosexual community in the mid 90s.
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He said God's going to destroy the homosexuals in the 90s.
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Well, last I checked, we're not in the 90s.
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Still got homosexuals.
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He's 0 for 1.
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All right.
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Fidel Castro would die in the 90s.
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By the way, these are older prophecies.
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This is back in the 90s.
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Fidel Castro would die in the 90s and Cuba would be visited.
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Of God, well, Fidel Castro lived until just a few years ago, did not die in the 90s, and there was no revival in Cuba, so he's over to Jesus was going to physically appear in his meetings and be recorded.
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Now, I can't prove that didn't happen, but I'm still going to give him an 0 for 3 because I'm pretty sure it didn't happen.
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So these are just some of the things.
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And based upon Deuteronomy, based upon the basic claim of what Deuteronomy says, if somebody says something's going to happen, it don't happen.
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He's not a prophet of God.
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Based upon that, he is no prophet of God.
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Simple, right? And by the way, that that does away with a lot of prophets today.
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How about all these guys? Oh, yeah, Donald Trump's going to be the next president.
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And then he didn't get to be the president.
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And they come out.
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Well, he's going to be president after January 6th.
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Yeah, I didn't really work out either.
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Now they're oh, he'll be president again later.
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Well, why do you keep moving the goalposts? You know, if you're wrong, you're wrong.
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Why do you keep moving the goalposts? Because you're not a prophet, because God's not speaking to you because you're a liar.
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You need to repent before you go to hell.
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That's what needs to happen.
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And that's what happens.
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We got a lot of charlatans out there.
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But the method of the prophet is either to forecast the future and in that he must be absolutely correct.
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Or it is to proclaim truth to the people of God, of the condition that now is.
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And I would say that is how prophecy works today in the sense that if somebody asked me, what would you believe your gifting is? If you go through the gifts in Romans chapter 12, talks about seven different spiritual gifts.
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One of those gifts is prophecy.
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And I believe that's a gift that I possess.
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But I don't believe it's the gift of predicting the future.
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I believe prophecy today functions as preaching God's revealed word.
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And so that's that's how I believe that gift functions today.
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And so I believe the role of the preacher is in that sense a role of prophetic voice among God's people to proclaim God's word to God's people through the Bible.
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Yes.
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Yeah, but some would say some would say a prophetic utter using the term utterance is kind of a loaded word because a lot of charismatic leaning people will use that word to to say they're receiving revelation from God.
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So I just I just say the gift of prophecy.
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And more specifically, if you look at like our confession, are the 1646 confession that we use, it says the man given the gift of prophecy is to preach.
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But then after that, it says it says vis a vis preaching God's word.
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So it's like it specifically defines prophecy as preaching the word of God.
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Yeah.
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All right.
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So that's the methodology.
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Again, go back to methodology.
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The prophets is foretelling and foretelling.
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Number two, the classifications of the prophets.
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The two classifications are when did they prophesy and where? And under the wind, they either prophesied before the exile pre-exilic, during the exile or post-exile, post-exilic.
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And that one's actually fairly easy to remember.
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I'll give I think I've given to you this already, but I'll give it to you again.
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The only two that prophesied during the exile are Daniel and Ezekiel.
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And the only three that prophesied after were the last three of the Old Testament Testament.
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Hey, guys, Akira Malachi.
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Those are the last three of the Old Testament are the only three that prophesied after.
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So everybody else, including the major and minor prophets, are all pre-exilic.
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They all are.
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They're prophesying to the people of God in preparation for this exile.
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Now, where did they prophesy? Some of them prophesied to the northern kingdom.
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Some of them and the northern kingdom is also known as Israel.
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Some prophesied to the southern kingdom known as Judah, and some prophesied to the nations.
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Meaning the those nations who were.
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Coming against Israel and Judah.
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So here I'll give you these.
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You want to write them down? The northern kingdom prophets were Hosea, Amos and Jonah.
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Hosea, Amos and Jonah, those who prophesied to the nations were Nahum, Obadiah.
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And you could also apply Jonah there.
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You could say Jonah really prophesied to Nineveh, but he was a northern kingdom prophet.
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So you could say he was.
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You said that was the nations, right? Yeah, that was the nations.
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What's that now? The nations.
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Nahum, Obadiah and Jonah.
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Like I said, Jonah sort of fits in northern kingdom and the nations.
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All right.
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Now the southern kingdom is the rest.
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That's why I did it that way.
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You could do the northern kingdom is Hosea, Amos, Jonah.
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Nations is Nahum, Obadiah and Jonah.
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And then the southern kingdom is everybody else.
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Isaiah, Jeremiah, Joel, Micah, Habakkuk.
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So the southern kingdom is has a lot more prophetic voices.
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All right.
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And then, of course, the other way to classify them as major and minor, why do they classify major and minor? That's right.
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Length of the writing.
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That's really all it is.
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The length of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel and Daniel overwhelms the size of books like Obadiah and Amos and Jonah and all those which are which are just a few chapters.
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There are a few longer books in the minor prophets, but as far as writing is concerned, the major prophets are the first five.
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All right.
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So we've looked at the classifications.
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Now let's look at the themes.
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You can write these down if you want to.
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But always remember that you do get these notes.
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I email them to you.
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Hopefully you're getting those.
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The themes of the prophets are these one.
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There's only one God who created all things.
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That's a major theme among the prophets because they're always prophesying against idolatry.
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Idolatry is the idea that there are other gods.
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The second one, God is holy.
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That is a major theme among the prophets, that you're not dealing with a God who is flippant towards sin, but a God who is holy and righteous and unjust.
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God is sovereign.
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We see this in the prophets.
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Think about Jonah.
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Jonah didn't want to go.
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God said, you're going.
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Jonah said, well, I'm gonna go down to Spain and hop on a ship.
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And I know it's called Tarshish, but it's essentially Spain.
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I'm gonna go down to Tarshish, hop on a ship and didn't work.
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God put him on the first submarine ride, took him right back, spit him up on the shore, sent him to Nineveh.
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God gets what God wants.
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God is sovereign.
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In fact, the book of Daniel has one of the most powerful proclamations of God's sovereignty from the mouth of the king who was himself a pagan.
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After Nebuchadnezzar is forced to go out and eat grass like a ox and let his hair grow like the feathers of a bird and his fingernails like claws of a bird, after all that's done and he comes back to his right mind and somehow regains his throne, he says one of the most powerful proclamations about God's sovereignty.
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And ultimately it says God does what he wants in heaven and on earth.
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And who can say to him, you know, why have you done this? Or who can question the almighty? So God is sovereign.
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We also see God's mercy and grace on display.
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A lot of people think the God of the Old Testament was harsh and the God of the New Testament is gracious.
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Throughout the prophetic words, there are proclamations of God's grace and God's mercy over and over and over.
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All right, this continues next screen.
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God is good and concerned with justice.
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Now this is very important in several books, particularly books like Amos, where how the people are treated among the powerful in Israel and how Israel is the powerful or mistreating.
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Those who are powerless becomes an issue of justice and righteousness, and God calls them to repentance over that.
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We see reminders of God's law and his covenant.
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As I said earlier, they are covenant enforcers.
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They're reminding the people of God that they have broken God's covenant.
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Other themes are the exile and restoration.
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And then a major theme among all the prophets is the Messiah pointing forward to him who is to come.
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We're going to see some of those tonight.
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All right, well, that's our introduction.
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Now we're going to spend the rest of the class looking at each of these books.
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We'll look at Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, and Daniel.
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Let's look first at Isaiah.
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All right.
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Isaiah, salvation is of the Lord.
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The author of the book, as we believe, is Isaiah.
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And he is recognized as one of the greatest of Hebrew prophets.
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He's identified in chapter one, verse one, as the son of Amos.
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And his name means salvation is of the Lord.
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So that's where we get the sort of the tagline for his book.
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The word salvation occurs 26 times in this book alone.
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And in all the other books of the prophets, it only occurs seven times.
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So it gives you the theme of the book.
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Salvation is 26 times in the book of Isaiah, only seven times in all the rest of the prophets.
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And that theme unifies the whole book.
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Tradition says that Isaiah authored this book, but there is a debate among critical scholars about there being a, what is known as the Deutero-Isaiah or the second Isaiah.
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That being, they believe Isaiah is two books, that there was chapters one through 39 coming from one, chapters 40 to 66 coming through another.
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And it is true that there is a distinction when you read chapters one to 39 and then chapters 40 to 66, that there seems to be a distinction in writing, but that does not necessitate a different author.
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And here's something to consider.
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The New Testament quotes from both the one through 39 and 40 through 66 and points to both of them as being Isaiah.
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So again, if we trust the New Testament writers, which we should, then there's no reason to think that it all wasn't written by the same author.
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Also in the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are scrolls that were written before the time of Christ, the Dead Sea Scrolls have intact handwritten manuscripts and the largest of them is the Isaiah Scroll.
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It is on display in Israel.
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You can go and there's a room that is a circular room and they have the scroll opened up behind glass and you can look at it and walk around.
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And if you could read Hebrew, you could walk around and read it, but it's all there.
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It's not like one through 39 and then it stops, but it's the whole thing.
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It's huge.
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You can look it up online.
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Just look up Isaiah Scroll Museum and you'll see a picture.
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It literally is a round room with a glass, round glass to be able to see it all the way around.
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That's amazing.
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Isaiah's writing spans 66 chapters and has been called the Bible in miniature.
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Think about this.
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There are 39 chapters and then there are 27 chapters and there's a slight distinction between the first and the second.
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The Bible is two testaments.
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There are 39 Old Testament books and 26 New Testament or 27 New Testament books.
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And there's a slight distinction between those.
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Some make a big deal about that.
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And they say it's part of how it's fulfilled prophecy that it was 66 chapters and 27.
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But the problem with that is those chapters didn't come along until much, much later.
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And the division among chapters is something that is not original to Isaiah.
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To say that that has prophetic significance, I think is a little bit of a stretch, even though it's cool.
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We can't equate cool with absolutes.
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Just because something's cool doesn't mean it's absolute.
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And also remember this, the Hebrew Bible is different than the English Bible.
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So not in the sense of content, but as far as how things would be outlined.
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It is very, I think there's certainly some, like I said, there's a cool factor and an irony factor, but I wouldn't use it to put one of, some guys would say, and this proves the truth of the Bible.
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No, the Bible authenticates itself.
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We don't need these external sort of tricky authenticators.
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Like a lot, yeah, you'll see people do like numerology.
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Well, if you add up all the numbers of all the chapters and you divide it by 666 and then you times it times three, you'll end up with this number.
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And it's like, slow down, we don't need all that.
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And that's all I'm saying is we have to be careful.
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Isaiah preached, and by the way, I'm gonna get to these.
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I know I haven't mentioned these yet.
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I'm gonna get to those in just a second.
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I've got more notes than I had room for on the screen.
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Isaiah preached a message of judgment and salvation.
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He was outraged by idolatry and justice, unrighteousness and rebellion, and the arrogance and scandalous behavior of God's people are his focus.
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He truly does bring the hammer down on the prideful and the scandalous.
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He communicates God's anger.
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He warns of impending judgment.
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Judah was trusting in its military might and its political treaties, but unless they repented and relied on God, they would fall into destruction, which they did.
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Now, let's talk about the noteworthy passages.
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These are the ones I put up here.
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Probably the one that I, I don't wanna say I love it the most, love the whole word of God, but I love Isaiah 6.
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Isaiah 6 is the vision of Isaiah who saw the Lord high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple, and the seraphim were around him with the six wings.
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With two, they covered their face.
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With two, they covered their feet.
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With two, they flew.
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And they were around the throne of God, saying, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.
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The whole earth is filled with his glory.
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Remember this picture.
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Well, the reason why I think this is so important, one, it puts on display the holiness of God.
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Two, it gives us an intricate picture of the seraphim, who are God's holy worshiping angels created for that purpose.
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And it gives us an indication of the power and majesty of God.
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We talked about the throne room being filled with the veil, or the train of his robe.
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Kings had trains that indicated their status.
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You think about like a bride when she comes down the aisle, all the other ladies would have dresses on, but her dress has a train to indicate that she's the most important person.
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Well, God's train of his robe filled the temple.
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And there's so much imagery in this.
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But the other thing that I think is hugely important is that in the New Testament, in the book of John, John talks about this scene, and he says that Isaiah saw Jesus.
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That's an important passage, because the vision of the Lord is a vision of Christ.
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And when we get to class seven, two weeks from today, we're gonna look at Christ in the Old Testament.
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I'm gonna show you the John passage and how it connects to this in Isaiah six.
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It's in John 12, I remember the specific verse.
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But in two weeks, we're gonna look at that specific passage.
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But that's Isaiah's vision of the Lord.
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The second thing is in Isaiah 7, 14, it announces the virgin birth.
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I teach on this every Christmas, because there is some debate as to whether or not Isaiah intended for his word to be interpreted as virgin, because there are two Hebrew words, Alma and Bethula.
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Both of them can be translated as virgin.
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But one of them has a more general connotation.
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The other one has a more specific connotation.
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And because Isaiah uses the more general connotation, people think that he was being obscure.
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I don't think he was being obscure at all.
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I think he says specifically the virgin will give birth, behold, I will give a sign, the virgin will conceive and bear a son.
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I think the sign is the virgin birth.
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And of course, we see that with Jesus.
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And this is the way it's interpreted by Matthew.
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It's also the way that it's interpreted by the Septuagint writers.
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The Septuagint writers were 200 years before Christ.
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They translate his word into Greek, and they use the word Parthenos, which is the Greek word for virgin.
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So there's no doubt that at least the Septuagint writers believe that he was making an announcement about the virgin birth before Christ.
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All right, number three, the promised child announcement.
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Remember Isaiah 9, 6? Help me out, it just went out of my mind.
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For unto you a son is born, or unto us a son is born, unto us a son is given, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
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Now that is an interesting, I talk about this, I think I have my book on the Trinity, I talk about this, because of the distinction between a son being born and a son being given.
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Because those two phrases are a parallelism, but they're not a direct parallelism.
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Because if I say, your son has been born, then I indicate that that's how he came into the world.
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But if I indicate that your son has been given, it indicates that your son came from someone else, right? Or maybe from God, and that's typically, if I say, you've been given a son, I'm referring to God giving you a son, right? And that's the point.
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Unto us a son is born, okay, that's the physical.
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Unto us a son is given, that's God has given us his son.
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And in that, there's that dual meaning there.
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And so we have the promised child announcement in 9.6.
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And then of course Isaiah 53 is the passage about the suffering servant.
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Isaiah 53 is the passage that I love to point people to when they're having questions about the Bible's truthfulness because, and I've told this story before, but I'll make it quick.
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Lady came to church, sweet, nice lady.
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But afterwards she comes to me and she goes, I'm really having trouble believing the Bible and I need help.
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I said, okay, well, come in my office.
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And we sat down and we started talking.
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I was asking her questions about her background and what her objections were.
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And we went back and forth for a little while.
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And I said, well, can I just read you something? And I pulled out my Bible and I opened it up to Isaiah 53 and I began at the passage about the suffering servant.
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And I read the passage about the one who would come and our sin would be cast upon him and he would bear our iniquities.
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And I went and just went reading through that.
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And I said, who is this passage about? And she said, well, that's about Jesus.
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I said, yes, but this was written 700 years before Jesus was born.
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And it was like a light bulb came on.
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Oh, because this is one of the ways that the Bible, what we call self-authentication.
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It authenticates itself through prophetic utterance.
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The Bible says it's going to happen and it does.
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And it says it with great specificity.
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And so the suffering servant passage of Isaiah 53, certainly one of the important passages.
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There's a whole book on it by John MacArthur about that particular passage and how it's fulfilled in Christ.
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So you're interested in diving a little deeper.
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Any questions about Isaiah? Making good time tonight.
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Okay, well, let's move on.
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We move from Isaiah to Jeremiah.
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Jeremiah is sometimes referred to as the weeping prophet.
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The weeping prophet refers to, of course, the fact that he was a man who spoke a message of doom he had the courage to speak a message of doom, but he also had the compassion to weep in prayer for God's people.
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He began his ministry after the fall of the Northern kingdom.
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He warns of oncoming destruction if the Southern kingdom of Judah does not repent.
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So keep in mind these dates.
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In 722 BC, the Northern kingdom falls to Assyria and 586 BC, the Southern kingdom falls to Babylon.
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So Jeremiah, knowing this has occurred is now prophesying about this.
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So he prophesies between these two events.
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Read you a quick summary.
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Now I'm gonna give you a tool that I like.
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And I've actually talked to the guy who puts this website together.
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Are you guys familiar with the website GotQuestions? Now GotQuestions also has an accompanying online Bible commentary that's free to use.
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So if you're ever trying to study a passage and maybe having some difficulty and you're looking for a commentary, they have a GotQuestions has their own commentary.
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Now I don't agree with everything they say.
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I don't agree with anything.
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I don't agree with everything anybody says.
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There's nobody that I agree with 100%.
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I say that.
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But on GotQuestions, they often have book summaries that you can go and find that are really good and really helpful.
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So if you're looking for more information, well, here is the, I just wanna introduce this to you.
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I got this from GotQuestions, I wanna read it to you.
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The book of Jeremiah is primarily a message of judgment on Judah for rampant idolatry.
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After the death of King Josiah, the last righteous king, the nation of Judah had almost completely abandoned God and his commandments.
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Jeremiah compares Judah to a prostitute.
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God had promised that he would judge idolatry most severely.
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And Jeremiah was warning Judah that God's judgment was at hand.
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God had delivered Judah from destruction on countless occasions, but his mercy was at its end.
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Jeremiah records King Nebuchadnezzar conquering Judah and making it subject to him.
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And after further rebellion, God brought Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian armies back to destroy and desolate Judah and Jerusalem.
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Even in the most severe judgment, God promises the restoration of Judah back into the hand, excuse me, back into the land God had given to them.
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So again, he has the courage to speak, a message of judgment, doom, but he also has the compassion to weep for God's people in the midst of that.
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And so he really, honestly, in that sense, I would say Jeremiah demonstrates what a man of God should be, a man who is willing to proclaim difficult truth, but at the same time to do so in a way that is loving and compassionate towards the people.
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He's not happy in the sense of, he doesn't get his jollies in the judgment.
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It's like the two pastors, you probably heard this story, but I'll tell it anyway.
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There was a church that was looking for a pastor and they had two men that they were considering.
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And they came to the conclusion that the best way to decide was to let both men come one Sunday after the other and both preach.
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And then they would let the church decide after they both preached who they were going to choose.
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So the first man came the first week and he gave a rousing sermon, preached hard.
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And they said, okay.
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The next week, man came, rousing sermon, he preached hard.
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The committee met, decided to extend a call to the second preacher.
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Well, it came to the second preacher's attention that he was the one to receive the call.
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And it also came to his attention that he had preached the same text that the preacher before him had preached.
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So he gets the call to come and meet with the pulpit committee.
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And he comes to meet with the pulpit committee and he sits down and he says, I have to ask.
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I preached a hard message and the man before me preached a hard message.
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We both preached the same text.
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We both preached about hell.
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And you called me and you didn't call him.
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Why? And they said, it's easy.
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You preach like you didn't want us to go there.
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And really that's the man of God's responsibility to love the people of God and preach the truth as hard as it is with a heart of compassion for God's people.
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That's what Jeremiah was.
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He was a man of God and he was a preacher who had a compassionate heart towards God's people.
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Now, Jeremiah also brings a message of hope in the midst of destruction.
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God would save a remnant of his people.
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And that remnant would be established in a new covenant.
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And that new covenant is promised in Jeremiah 31, 31 to 34.
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And I wanna read it to you because this is the promise of Christ's covenant.
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Understand this.
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This is the Old Testament promise of what Jesus did the night he held up the bread.
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And he says, this bread, this cup is the new covenant in my blood.
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He is repeating the words of Jeremiah who said this.
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He said, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.
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Not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt.
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My covenant that they broke, though I was their husband declares the Lord.
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For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord.
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I will put my law within them.
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I will write it on their hearts and I will be their God and they shall be my people.
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No longer shall each one tell his neighbor and each one his brother saying, no, the Lord, for they shall all know me from the least of them until the greatest declares the Lord for I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more.
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Hear the promise of the new covenant, it's very important.
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The promise of the new covenant is this, that everyone who is in the new covenant will know the Lord.
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See, there were people in the Mosaic covenant.
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There were people in the Abrahamic covenant who did not know the Lord because they were brought in by birth.
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But the new covenant is a covenant of faith that comes by rebirth, comes through the changing of the heart and no one will have to say to the other, no, the Lord.
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You know, when I get up to preach to the church, I call everyone to repentance, but I don't call believers to re-believe.
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I call them to reaffirm their faith and to continue in their faith, but I don't tell them to know the Lord because they already know the Lord.
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If you're a believer, you know the Lord.
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Now I do call people to believe because I know there's people like kids and other things that don't know the Lord, but ultimately, when I'm in a room full of believers, I should be confident you know the Lord because we're all part of the new covenant.
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And to be part of the new covenant means we all know the Lord.
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That's part of the promise.
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Jeremiah 31, 31 to 34, made me want to preach it.
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Now I'm just thinking about taking a break from Genesis, maybe preach that one text.
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It's a beautiful text.
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And the reality is we live in the new covenant, y'all.
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This is the, it's not fully consummated yet because Christ's going to return and consummate all things, but we're in it.
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It began with his ascension and ends with his return.
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Yes.
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Yes, that's the message of hope Jeremiah gives them.
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He is going to, and this was, because think about it, they're about to go into Exodus and he's saying, God's going to make a new covenant with you.
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What's the promise in that? There's a hidden promise, and the hidden promise is you're not going to stay in exile forever.
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If God's got another covenant coming, you're coming out of exile.
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It's a promise of hope.
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It's a promise of restoration for the remnant.
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All right, let's look at Lamentations.
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We'll take our break.
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This is relatively short because this is also written by Jeremiah.
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This is a, a lamentation is a word of grief or a lament.
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You think about a cry.
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This is grieving over the destruction of Jerusalem.
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The book does not give its author, but tradition applies it to Jeremiah, and it makes perfect sense.
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It is a short cry of grief over the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple.
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When the Babylonians attacked Jerusalem, they destroyed the city and the temple, and many died in that attack.
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And though they had been warned that this was coming, they still could not believe destruction had befallen them.
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Don't you think that's like today? People are warned of God's judgment.
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Oh, God will not judge us.
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And that's, in fact, you guys probably are familiar with this passage in the Psalms that says, oh boy, what? I've been having a problem remembering things today.
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I don't know, in church this morning, didn't I have, I had a fit, couldn't come up with a word.
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I could not think of that word.
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But there's a passage in the Old Testament where the, well, I don't have it listed here.
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See, I didn't mess myself up.
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Could not believe destruction was coming.
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They just didn't think God was gonna bring judgment.
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There's a passage in the Old Testament that says, woe to those who say that God is not, or how does it go? It talks about the fool says in his heart, there's no God.
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Right, what is that? What is it, Psalm 14, one? Am I right? The fool has said in his heart, there's no God.
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Or maybe, but here's the point I wanna make about that passage.
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When it says the fool has said in his heart, there's no God.
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What the Hebrew actually says is the fool says in his heart, God will not.
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The idea is that God, it's not they're saying that God isn't there.
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They're saying that God isn't acting.
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14, one, right? The concept is that God's not going to act.
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That's what the fool says.
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You know, it takes a real fool's fool to say God ain't there.
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And there are those.
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But the reality is the idea that the person saying there is that God won't act.
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And the people, huh? Yeah, the people think God's just gonna keep being patient.
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God's gonna keep giving another chance.
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God's not ever gonna bring judgment.
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And the book of Lamentations is a wide eyed picture of God bringing judgment.
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In the book of Jude, I just preached this last Wednesday night.
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In the book of Jude, he gives three examples of God's judgment.
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He says the Lord let him out of Israel, or excuse me, let him out of Egypt and then destroyed him in the wilderness.
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He said there were angels who had authority and they fell and God consumed or consigned them to eternal darkness.
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And he said, and there was, there was a third one.
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What was the third one? You were here.
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Oh, he used the angels.
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He used the judgment and he used a different, there's a third one, Jude five to eight.
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But he uses three examples of God's will.
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Oh, Sodom and Gomorrah.
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He said, God is willing to judge.
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And if you don't believe God's willing to judge, just look at all the examples.
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He was willing to judge Israel in the wilderness.
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He was willing to judge the angels who sinned.
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He was willing to judge Sodom and Gomorrah.
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What makes you think you're getting off? You're outside of Christ.
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You have no hope of not being judged.
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That's the point.
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So anyway, though they had been warned, they still could not believe they were befalling this destruction.
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Lamentations is a cry of sorrow and repentance over national sin.
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It is also a prayer for forgiveness and restoration.
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And it has been noted that in this lament, we find a prefiguring of the pain of Christ as he lamented over Jerusalem.
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Remember, oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who killed the prophets and stoned those who were sent to you.
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How often I would have gathered your people together as a hen gathers her chicks, and yet you were unwilling.
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Jesus laments over Jerusalem.
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So that is the book of Lamentations.
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We're gonna now take our break a little early because we're gonna come back to Daniel and Ezekiel, and those are gonna take a few minutes.
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So let's take an early break.
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Yeah, Daniel.
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I always double record just in case this livestream dies.
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I like to have the recording so I can use my phone.
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All right, so we're gonna move on now to our last two books in the major prophets.
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And by the way, I'm getting to do more with the majors than I'll get to do with the minors next week because there's 12 of those.
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We're gonna hit them at a shot.
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So we won't be able to do as much with the minors, but I hope this is being helpful for you all.
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The book of Ezekiel is, interestingly enough, I believe it's about comforting God's people because it's written during the exile.
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And it says the author is Jeremiah.
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That's wrong.
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That's wrong on the screen.
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I'll try to change that before I send it out.
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That should say Ezekiel.
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I just copied and pasted the last screen and I made a mistake.
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So I apologize.
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But what's that? It happens.
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Cut and paste, yep.
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He is named in chapter one, verse three, Ezekiel, his name.
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So that's why we believe he wrote it.
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He was a contemporary of Jeremiah.
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So you could say author, Jeremiah's friend, Ezekiel.
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Just kidding, just kidding.
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He's also a contemporary of Daniel.
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He wrote during the Babylonian captivity of the Jews.
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And many people are familiar with Ezekiel's parts.
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But not much beyond that.
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And what I mean by that is you talk to them about Ezekiel, they'll say, well, I know about the vision of the wheel or the valley of dry bones, but that's about as far as it goes.
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Much of the book is symbolism and therefore it remains somewhat mysterious.
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And I will be quite honest, it is, much of it is mysterious.
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I'm not saying it can't be understood, but it is certainly not as straightforward as a book like Jeremiah, or excuse me, a book like Genesis or something like that, that's narrative.
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Because it's written in symbolic language, it's a little difficult.
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In fact, I don't know if you've seen recently, it's been a big funny thing online where people say, I want a real angel on my Christmas tree this year.
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I want it to look like a real angel.
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And they've got the wheels and the eyes.
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It looks like one of Ezekiel's angels.
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I was like, well, and I remember one time I was preaching.
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We used to preach on Sunday night, we'd do it in a fellowship hall.
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And it was Sunday night message.
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And I was talking about Ezekiel and some of the pictures that we have of angels in the Old Testament.
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And one of the ladies just got real mad with me.
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And this was back when I was young.
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And some of the older folks sometimes took great issue with everything I said.
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And she goes, well, I just don't like to think of angels like that.
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I like to think of angels like what looks like on my Christmas tree.
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And I said, well, you think whatever you want, but I want to know what the Bible says, you know? But she was very, very, very unhappy.
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You know, I like the way it would look on my Christmas tree.
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So I'm going to read again another summary from GotQuestions.
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Again, I've used these sometimes, they're very helpful.
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And this is what it says.
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Ezekiel, destined to begin his life's ministry as a priest at the age of 30, was uprooted from his homeland and marched off to Babylon at the age of 25.
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For five years, he languished in despair.
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And at the age of 30, a majestic vision of Yahweh's glory captivated his being in Babylon.
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The priest prophet discovered God was not confined to the narrow structures of Ezekiel's native land.
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Instead, he is a universal God who commands and controls persons and nations.
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In Babylon, God imparted to Ezekiel his word for his people.
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His call experience transformed Ezekiel.
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He became avidly devoted to God's word.
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He realized he had nothing personally to assist the captives in their bitter situation, but he was convinced God's word spoke to their condition and could give them victory in it.
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Ezekiel used various methods to convey God's word to his people.
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He used art and drawing a depiction of Jerusalem, symbolic actions and unusual conduct to secure attention.
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He cut his hair and beard to demonstrate what God would do to Jerusalem and its inhabitants.
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All of the things that are in the book are symbolic of what's going on.
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And he's giving them, trying at times to give them comfort.
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The unusual thing about Ezekiel is his emphasis on comforting God's people.
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As I've already said, he prophesied to the exiles a word of encouragement in the midst of captivity, like Jeremiah, Ezekiel promises gifts that would come as a result of the new covenant.
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Again, I point, Jeremiah points to the new covenant, so does Ezekiel.
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Remember both of them are, or Jeremiah's right before the exile, Ezekiel's in the exile.
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Both of them are looking forward to not just the restoration of Jerusalem, but the coming of the Messiah, the coming of this new covenant.
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And I'll give you the passage in Ezekiel.
56:28
Ezekiel 11, verses 17 to 20.
56:35
Ezekiel 11, verses 17 to 20.
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He says this, therefore say, speaking on behalf of God, he said, therefore say, thus says the Lord God, I will gather you from the peoples and assemble you out of the countries where you have been scattered and I will give you the land of Israel.
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And when they come there, they will remove from it all its detestable things and all its abominations.
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And I will give them one heart and a new spirit I will put within them.
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I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh.
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And they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them and they shall be my people and I will be their God.
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Now he doesn't say new covenant in there, but he's using the language of the new covenant.
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The removing of the heart of stone, the giving of the heart of flesh and that the people would walk in his statutes.
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That is the heart of the new covenant.
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Remember what Jeremiah says, they will know the law in their hearts and they will walk by that law because they will have it in their hearts.
57:44
Yes, sir.
57:45
It seems, and this could just be my head, but it seems to me that in that respect, Jeremiah and Ezekiel spoke to the promise of the Holy Spirit.
58:00
In that regard, yes.
58:01
Especially the taking out the heart of stone, putting the heart of flesh.
58:04
That's regeneration.
58:05
That's a picture of regeneration.
58:06
That's the gift and that is the gift, that is probably the biggest gift of the new covenant.
58:13
Well, that's the...
58:14
Well, the Messiah.
58:15
Yeah, I was gonna say the death of Christ, but in regard to what we receive, when we believe in Christ, we get the Holy Spirit who comes and lives within us.
58:25
Absolutely, yes.
58:26
And that's, again, it's part of the hope, part of the promise.
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That's why I say this is about comforting God's people.
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He's pointing them toward this greater promise that is to come.
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And so, like I said, the last thing, like Jeremiah, Ezekiel promises gifts that will accompany the new covenant.
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Now, as I said earlier, there's a lot in Jeremiah, or a lot in Ezekiel, I don't know that I could give you an answer to, but does anybody have any questions? It's tough, it's a tough book.
58:56
I have a friend who has spent a lot of time trying to decipher some of the symbolism.
59:05
And I spoke with him at a conference.
59:08
We were speaking on eschatology, which is end times, and I was giving an outline of what is known as preterism, which is the particular perspective, or partial preterism, which is a particular perspective on the book of Revelation.
59:21
And he was giving a speech on Ezekiel.
59:24
And I was, I just loved it.
59:26
I mean, I thought it was really great.
59:27
He talked about how the wheels and everything were actually very similar to some of the symbols that were used by the ancient pagans and how God was showing his power over their symbols.
59:40
Like he was showing his power over what they already understood, and that he was greater than that.
59:45
I thought it was kind of cool.
59:46
Like, if you think of like the 10 plagues in Egypt, each one of those plagues is a pointing out of their false gods, and it's showing the power of God over those gods.
59:57
So he kind of tied that in with Ezekiel.
59:59
So there's a lot in there, a lot, of course, to be studied, but ultimately Ezekiel's prophesying to the people of God during the exile, seeking to bring them comfort and promise of the new covenant.
01:00:12
All right, last one is the book of Daniel.
01:00:18
Now, got a lot to say on this last one, and not a whole lot of time to say it, but let's just quickly say this.
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The author, or rather the tagline I have here, Daniel is standing for God in a foreign land.
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The author is, we believe, Daniel, even though we're gonna talk about why some dispute that.
01:00:38
The book of Daniel consists of two main parts.
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The first six chapters are primarily narrative, and the second six chapters, chapter seven and 12 are primarily prophecy or prophetic.
01:00:53
So let's break that out a little further.
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Chapters one through six speak of Daniel being taken into captivity with the other people of Judah, and we are probably most familiar with those chapters, because if I mentioned Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, we know the story of the fiery furnace.
01:01:13
If I mentioned Daniel in the lion's den, we know the story of Daniel being commanded not to pray.
01:01:19
He prays anyway, gets put in the lion's den.
01:01:22
We're familiar with that narrative.
01:01:24
And of course, Jay already mentioned the handwriting on the wall, right? That's all in those first six chapters.
01:01:32
Now, the second six are primarily prophetic, and they include visions and dreams about future world events, and that is by far the most difficult portion to interpret, and many have used that section to come up with various understandings of history, especially in conjunction with the coming of Christ and the end times.
01:01:58
But it's part of that prophetic portion, is what I'm saying, I'm pointing forward.
01:02:13
There is so much, when you start listening to eschatology, guys who are into eschatology, guys who are in the end times, they try to tie Revelation and Daniel together to try to come up with timelines.
01:02:27
And when I was younger, there was a book that came out called 88 Reasons Jesus Is Gonna Return in 1988.
01:02:41
And look it up, you can still find it today.
01:02:43
88 Reasons Why Jesus Is Gonna Return in 1988.
01:02:47
Well, 1988 came, Jesus didn't return.
01:02:50
So the guy who wrote, huh? It was a fake Bible, it wasn't serious.
01:02:53
Yeah, amen.
01:02:55
But the guy changed it.
01:02:58
Well, I was off by one year, so now it's 89.
01:03:02
And he was wrong again.
01:03:04
And my point is, a lot of these prophetic passages, I'm not saying they can't be understood, I believe that they can be understood for what they are saying, but a lot of them, people will try to read so much into them, and try to produce from them ideas that line up with modern newspapers.
01:03:27
And this is honestly, back in the 80s, man, especially, well, even before the 80s, but people would read books like Daniel and Revelation in this hand, and they'd read the newspaper in this hand, and they were doing this.
01:03:39
They were comparing, you know, what's this book say? Well, what's the newspaper say? Russia's gonna attack this place.
01:03:46
And like right now, Russia's on the verge of going to war in Ukraine.
01:03:52
Boy, there's guys looking at their Bibles, looking at the newspaper, looking at their Bibles, looking at the internet, thinking that they're gonna predict something with the Bible.
01:04:02
Now, here's what I think this book tells us, the simple three-word sentence that Daniel reminds us.
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God rules all.
01:04:14
God rules all.
01:04:17
And one of the most amazing things about the book of Daniel is not what he prophesies about our end time.
01:04:24
And I do believe he does talk about the future because at the end of the book, he actually talks about the last days.
01:04:30
He talks about the righteous being raised and the wicked being punished.
01:04:33
I mean, I do believe he refers to that.
01:04:36
But the most amazing thing in the book of Daniel is not that, but rather the way that he outlines the kingdoms of men that were very specifically, accurately prophesied.
01:04:53
And I'll give you the example.
01:04:55
You'll remember that there was a dream by Nebuchadnezzar and the dream was of a statue.
01:05:05
And the statue was a statue of a man, remember, and he had feet with toes and all that.
01:05:10
And remember the head was a head of gold, right? And then he had the chest and arms of, what was it? I got it here.
01:05:20
Chest and arms of silver, right? And then you've got the belly and the thighs of bronze, right? And then you've got the feet of iron and, I'm sorry, the legs of iron, the legs of iron.
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And the feet of iron and clay.
01:05:43
So you got this statue of a man and each one of these represents a world power.
01:05:49
Now, remember, Daniel prophesied this, the dream is given to Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel prophesied what it means here.
01:05:59
This is when the prophecy took place, but this is what it prophesied.
01:06:04
It prophesied Babylon, the Medo-Persians, the Greeks and the Romans.
01:06:23
And that is the world powers that followed the life of Daniel.
01:06:30
And it follows that outline.
01:06:32
And we're given that, actually, we're given that in the book, it tells us that this is what's gonna happen.
01:06:40
It outlines this prophetic word for us.
01:06:43
And you said, well, what about this down here? You got the iron and clay.
01:06:47
Well, a lot of people think this is the time of the Messiah because it talks about the stone being cut out of the mountain and being sent to destroy the feet of iron and clay and that being the kingdom of who? Kingdom of the Messiah.
01:07:07
Right? Yes, yeah.
01:07:10
And so this is the pattern of the book.
01:07:15
This is the pattern of how he outlines everything.
01:07:19
And history tells us that that's actually what happened.
01:07:22
In fact, this is so accurate that modern scholars, and I have read this in so many books, modern scholars say Daniel couldn't possibly have written this because there's no way someone could prophesy so accurately the rise and fall of this many kingdoms in a row.
01:07:46
I remember one time I had a commentary and it explicitly said Daniel could not be the author.
01:07:54
Like I said, I've read it in several books, but I had a commentary.
01:07:56
I opened it up just to read a little bit about how I've introduced Daniel.
01:08:00
And it said, Daniel could not have written this because no one could know with this explicit specificity what was going to happen.
01:08:09
And the question, of course, from us who are, who I would hope, who are believers in the Bible's authenticity and inspiration, God can know what governments are gonna rise and fall, and God can have a purpose in the rising and falling of nations, and God is sovereign.
01:08:29
By the way, why does God know the future? Because he planned it.
01:08:35
That's exactly right.
01:08:36
See, a lot of people answer the question differently.
01:08:38
You say, how does God know the future? Well, he can see the future.
01:08:40
No, God determines the future.
01:08:43
God determines the rising and falling of nations.
01:08:46
It's not just that he sees what's gonna happen, he determines what's gonna happen.
01:08:51
The Bible says that every man that's in power is ultimately there by the hand of God, and he's either there as a blessing or a judgment, but he's there by the hand of God because God raises up nations and God raises up powers and God raises up men and women.
01:09:08
So if we say Daniel couldn't know this, we basically have to say we're disregarding the supernatural element of the Bible.
01:09:21
And if Daniel couldn't know this, how could Isaiah know about Jesus, right? One of the most profound passages in Daniel, in my opinion, comes in chapter 12.
01:09:32
I mentioned this already, but I wanna read it to you as, and this is the first two verses of Daniel 12.
01:09:39
Well, it says, verse one, Daniel 12, verse one, says, at that time shall arise Michael, the great prince who has charge of your people.
01:09:52
And there shall be a time of trouble such as never has been since there was a nation till that time.
01:09:59
But at that time, your people shall be delivered.
01:10:01
Everyone whose name shall be found written in the book.
01:10:04
Think of the book of Revelation, how it describes the book of life.
01:10:07
And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake.
01:10:11
That's first Thessalonians chapter four.
01:10:14
Those who are dead in Christ will rise.
01:10:16
Some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting content.
01:10:24
I've heard people say Old Testament doesn't give us a promise of heaven or a threat of hell.
01:10:32
And I would say it does right there.
01:10:34
Now it's not as clear as the New Testament.
01:10:37
The New Testament is very clear about heaven and hell.
01:10:38
When we get to our survey of the New Testament, we're gonna look at heaven and hell, what the Bible teaches about it.
01:10:43
But it is certainly clear in the Old Testament that there was a belief that there was coming a day of resurrection.
01:10:49
And on the day of resurrection, there would be those who will be raised to glory and those who would be raised to punishment.
01:10:58
That's the promise and the warning of the Bible regarding the end of life.
01:11:07
Something else, and we're almost out of time, so I won't spend too much time on it.
01:11:13
This passage references Michael.
01:11:16
Michael is the archangel, archangel Michael.
01:11:21
He is mentioned in the book of Jude as having wrestled over, or not wrestled, but contended for the body of Moses.
01:11:28
And that's from a book called the Testament of Moses, which is not a biblical book, but it's actually a biblical book.
01:11:33
And that story is drawn from that book.
01:11:35
So I just wanna point out that some people believe that Michael is the pre-incarnate Jesus.
01:11:45
In fact, that is believed by the Jehovah Witnesses, but others as well.
01:11:52
But even some Protestants have held that Michael is the representation of the pre-incarnate Jesus.
01:11:58
In fact, I think Spurgeon believed that.
01:12:00
I mean, Spurgeon wasn't right about everything, but Spurgeon was a good guy, but everybody makes mistakes.
01:12:08
Now, I'm just saying, I don't agree that Michael is a pre-incarnate.
01:12:11
I think Michael is seen as a distinct figure from Christ.
01:12:14
I do believe Christ is the angel of the Lord in Genesis 18 and in other passages of the Old Testament that reference the angel of the Lord and the Lord of hosts referenced in Joshua.
01:12:25
I do believe that's Jesus, a pre-incarnate Christ.
01:12:28
So if somebody said, well, I see Michael as the same figure, a pre-incarnate Christ, I don't see that as heretical.
01:12:34
I just don't think it's necessary, particularly by the fact that he is named, right? That he's named Michael as Gabriel is named Gabriel.
01:12:44
And we have only those as named angels.
01:12:47
I don't see as necessary identifying that as a pre-incarnate Christ.
01:12:52
However, if that's a position that is taught, I wouldn't get up and leave the room.
01:12:57
I would just graciously disagree.
01:13:00
But that is what we see here.
01:13:02
At that time shall arise Michael, the great prince.
01:13:05
And again, people say, well, that must be a representation of Christ.
01:13:08
I don't think so, but there are those who do.
01:13:11
And if you do, well, whatever.
01:13:15
But again, I oftentimes think about positions like that.
01:13:19
I think about who holds this position, sort of like the position of soul sleep.
01:13:22
Soul sleep is a debate about whether or not when you die, your soul goes to heaven or whether or not your soul goes into the ground.
01:13:30
It's also called psychopanechia.
01:13:32
Psychopanechia is the fancy term for the sleeping of the soul or the death of the soul.
01:13:39
And that is a debate that has been going on for a long time.
01:13:44
I hold the view that Calvin held, which is that it's not right.
01:13:47
I don't think soul sleep is correct.
01:13:49
But Luther held to a similar view of soul sleep.
01:13:52
But, so again, it's debatable.
01:13:56
But when I look at the groups that do hold it, the ones who hold to it the firmest are the Jehovah Witnesses, the Seventh-day Adventists, a lot of groups that have so many other things that just seem to be wrong.
01:14:07
And so when I see a position that is held by a lot of variant groups, but not held by a lot of solid groups, it makes me wonder why.
01:14:18
And that's the same way I sort of look at this whole Michael thing.
01:14:21
You don't see a lot of solid guys.
01:14:23
I know I mentioned Spurgeon, but I mean, you don't see a lot of solid guys who are arguing that Michael is Jesus.
01:14:29
All right, so just a little way of looking at things.
01:14:33
Any questions? All right, well, we are gonna end on time by God's grace.
01:14:38
Here's the last thing.
01:14:39
A common thread throughout the prophets, as I already said, three little words.
01:14:43
God rules all.
01:14:46
It is the Lord who determines the rising and falling of nations.
01:14:51
Now, we're not just talking about this with Daniel, but think back.
01:14:56
What is Isaiah and Jeremiah about? It's about the rising and falling of Israel and Judah.
01:15:02
It's about the destruction of Judah under the hands of the Babylonians.
01:15:05
It's about God's sovereignty over these things.
01:15:09
And so the thread that holds all of them together is God rules all.
01:15:13
Now, next week, next week, we're going to get into the minor prophets.
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We're gonna be looking at a lot in a very short amount of time.
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So drink your coffee and come ready.
01:15:27
Let's pray.
01:15:28
Father, I thank you for your word.
01:15:30
And I pray that it has been tonight better understood.
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And Lord, that you would use this time to draw us all closer to you as we seek to better understand your word and what's written in it.
01:15:42
In Christ's name, amen.
01:15:49
So you did talk about Daniel.