Wednesday, March 20, 2024 PM

The Prophets, Their Authority, and Their Message

Introduction to the book of Isaiah and we're taking the time to think about what are prophets as they are revealed to us in the Old Testament. What is a prophet? This is going to be helpful to think about that when we begin to read and study the various messages, the oracles, the burdens, the parables, the visions that Isaiah has.

What goes on here? How are we to understand the importance of what Isaiah is seeing and how it is that he is communicating, where his priorities are, what kind of authority does he have as a prophet and so forth?

So in Isaiah chapter 1 and verse 1 we read, "...the vision of Isaiah, the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Isaiah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah kings of Judah.". And so Isaiah sees a vision.

This is the prerogative of the Old Testament prophets. They were called seers and the idea of being a prophet was that the message of God welled up within them and they could not keep it down. They could not shut it up.

They had to proclaim the words of God to the people of God and Isaiah was very much like the other prophets in that he came seemingly out of nowhere. Nobody expects a prophet to show up and start preaching.

He is a special minister of God coming in to speak to priest and king and people about their covenant obligations, how they are to live given the revelation of God. We often have the prophets starting things off by saying, "...thus says the Lord.".

Sometimes they're just repeating things that were said a long time ago. Sometimes they're saying something new, but in any case the contents of their message are our concern right now. We've thought about the the names of the prophets.

We've thought about the nature of the prophets and now we're going to think about the content of their message. When we read the prophets, anyone from Samuel and Moses all the way to Ezekiel and Daniel, they are concerned about the covenants that God has made.

The covenants that God made with creation, with Noah. The covenant that God made with Abraham, the promised seed Isaac, and those promises about a dynasty and a land. And also the covenant that God made with Israel at Sinai, the obligations that the Israelites had to live in a certain way.

And then the covenant that God made with David because there's a king coming. And so the prophets would preach about the covenants and as they would, they would also give expression to their major concerns.

You can't swing a dead cat of a prophetic book without hitting one of these three I's. Idolatry, immorality, or injustice. They are always talking about those three things and more often than not they talk about the immorality and they talk about the injustice as very much connected to the idolatry.

And those are their major concerns. And those are their major concerns because that's where the people were breaking covenant. That's where they were not fulfilling their covenant obligations is in those three I's.

And then as they dealt with their concerns based upon the covenants, time and again in the prophets we see them pointing ahead to the one who would come to fulfill all these covenant obligations. The one who would set to rest all of the controversies and put things right that had gone so wrong.

And so also the content of the prophets will have to do with Christ. And these all these three are all going to be very much related but we're going to start talking about the prophets and their relationship to the covenants.

Creation, the Image of God, and the Covenant Pattern

Before we can talk about the covenants we've got to talk about creation. When God made everything he had a pattern that he went about doing that. He spoke things into existence in an orderly fashion and evening and morning were the first day and the second day and the third day.

And we're told that God through the space of six days created all things speaking them into existence and then on the seventh day he rested. And as he created everything by the by the proclamation of his word, by the power of his word, he said this is good, this is good, this is good.

And when he got to man he said this is very good. When he wanted to create the fish in the sea he would he spoke to the waters and said bring forth teeming fishes. And when God wanted to make the beast of the earth he spoke to the girth, he spoke to the ground and said let there be teeming wildlife and and trees coming up out of the ground.

And when it came to making man he spoke to himself. He said let us make man in our image. And all of a sudden there's something just different. Everything just pauses and everything slows down and there's a great deal of focus on how God made man.

And in fact that's what Genesis 2 is all about. When we get to day 6 in Genesis 1 we know there's something awfully special about mankind because God says let us make man in our image according to our own likeness.

And so he made them male and female. He created them and then he blessed them and he told them to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. Gave them a task and a role and a position that no other creature had.

And then all of chapter 2 is showcasing how special God's relationship with man really is. And so this is just emphasized again and again and again. So when we listen to the prophets preaching very often they're just saying things that were there from the very beginning.

There is an appeal to some of the things that the prophets say about relating to God, about loving him supremely, about relating to one another that we are to love each other rightly, treat each other rightly.

Some of the things the prophets say about idols really tickles our funny bone. You know about how the man chops down the tree, uses half the wood to cook himself a meal and uses the other half of that same tree to build an idol to bow down before and worship.

And you know what a foolish use of creation that you would become enthralled with something created rather than the creator. And we are reminded throughout the prophets about how we're to steward that which God has given to us faithfully.

So as you're reading through the prophets you're going to you're going to connect and relate to some of the things that they say. Oh yeah I should love God the most and I should worship him alone. And then you'll see oh yes and I should treat others justly and rightly and I should not cheat others and I should not take advantage of people in in difficult situations and manipulate them for my own profit and really yeah I connect with that.

And I should care for the things that God has given to me but I shouldn't idolize them. And we can immediately sense a connection to the messages of the prophets. Because all they're dealing with when they're talking about the covenants, they're dealing with the image of God, the image of God recapitulated, talked about again, put focus when God makes covenants he puts the focus back on what does it mean that he has made us in his image.

So in the very beginning God says love me supremely, we obey God, listen to him, he tells us how we're supposed to live, he gets to say you can eat of these trees but not this tree, everything's about who God is.

And then we're to treat one another rightly, love each other rightly, steward the creation responsibly, and every single covenant that God made deals with that. Every single one of them deals with that.

Noah, the Flood, and the Preservation of Creation

I'll tell it in another way. Think about Noah. What did God do for Noah? All right, saved him, all right. He put Noah and his family inside the ark and then put them on dry ground on a refreshed, renewed creation, didn't he?

And God had instructions for Noah, didn't he? Build the boat this way, not that way. And here's how you're gonna provide for the animals. And then when you get out of the boat here's some more instructions about how to treat one another and how you're going to take care of the world that I have made.

So with Noah you see God's people in God's place, blessed by God's rule. You see it? God's people in God's place, blessed by God's rule. Same thing with Abraham. Come to a place that I will show you, I'm gonna give you this great big land and you're gonna be a great big family and you're gonna bless all the families of the earth.

Well there's God's people in God's place, blessed under God's rule, right? This is the way Graham Goldsworthy tells the story of the Bible over and over again. Same thing with the children of Israel. What was their big deal?

Trying to get to the what? To the promised land, right? So go to the promised land, it's flowing with milk and honey, there's all sorts of wonderful things there for you to enjoy to the glory of God. By the way, have no other gods before you except for me alone, right?

So there's God's people in God's place, blessed under God's rule. Okay, same thing with the king. The king was going to be leading the people and he's supposed to be on the throne but he's not the one who's in charge of everything God is, right?

So the king is in the place that God has provided for him, blessed under God's rule. Where do we first see that pattern? We saw it all the way back at creation. Every single covenant that God makes is in the pattern of what started back in the created order.

Adam and Eve in God's place, blessed under God's rule. So when the reason why covenants come around is because of the fall. We see Adam and Eve, everything's going fine, but then what do they do? They defy God's Word.

They defy God's Word, don't they? So not so long after they defy God's Word, God begins to make covenants. And let's think about this for a moment. The first time that God makes a covenant is with Noah.

Let's look in Genesis chapter 6 and let's see the problem going on. Okay, let's see the problem going on. Genesis chapter 6, when God starts talking to Noah, he's not making a covenant with him right away.

But he is talking to Noah about the problems that are going on. Yes? No, there's nothing when God is dealing with Adam and Eve, even after the fall, even when he's giving promises and he gives them skins to cover their naked shame and so forth.

Although there are some elements there that Bible scholars will look back and say, hey, that kind of looks like a covenant. God never calls it that. And if there was a covenant with Adam, God would have said so to them, just like he did with Noah, just like he did with Abraham, just like he did with Israel, just like he did with David.

All these very, very important covenants are a reflection of something that was going on back then in the garden. Okay, so the first time we have the the term used is in Genesis with Noah. We don't have it being used about Adam back in the garden.

There was no need to establish a covenant with Adam and Eve in the garden because he made them in his image and everything was perfect. The purpose of the biblical covenants is something that looks back at that which needs to be restored.

We're going to restore things the way they need to be. There's no point in God saying to Adam and Eve when everything is going right, here's how we're going to fix what went wrong. Nothing's gone wrong.

Okay, when he deals with Noah and Abraham and Moses and David, he's in the process of restoring things that have been lost as well as looking forward to that which is to come. So we'll take a look at some of those patterns, but notice that in chapter 6 I want us to think about what has been lost.

Okay, that's the point. The covenant is going to respond to that which has been lost. So in Genesis chapter 6, he says, Now it came to pass when men began to multiply on the face of the earth and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God, that the daughters of men, they were beautiful and they took wise for themselves of all whom they chose.

There's two lines that we've already read from chapter 4 and chapter 5. There are those who were of Cain and those who were of Seth, and here we find that those who were from Seth and Enosh, those who were calling upon the name of the Lord, that these sons of God who knew who God was and were called to worship him, saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful, they took wise for themselves of all whom they chose.

Meaning that polygamy is taking place, right? They're just taking whoever they want, however they want. It's sexual chaos. Okay, so what does God say? And the Lord said, My spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh, yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.

So God puts a time frame on this. It was by his spirit that he gave life to man and now he says, count down 120 years and we're going to finish this. I'm not going to strive, my spirit shall not strive with man forever, and so a hundred and twenty years.

That's all we're going to get. So this is bad news, okay? When we first checked in with Adam and Eve in the garden, things were looking great. It was very good. Now it's very bad, okay? Verse 4, there were giants on the earth in those days and also afterward, when the sons of God came into the daughters of men and they bore children to them, these were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.

Hebrew is nephilim, which simply means feller. No, not like the old-timer feller, but one who fells, okay? Somebody who cuts people down. In the Old Testament, in Hebrew, when that word is used in its various forms, it's about cutting people down in violence, okay?

Later on, Nimrod, who had an empire in Babylon, was the start of his empire. He was a feller. He went around killing people. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord, but he hunted people and he cut them down in order to establish his empire.

Verse 5, then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and so he was and he was grieved in his heart.

So the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

So what is the problem? What is the problem? Adam and Eve sinned. They're cast out of the Garden of Eden, and we see this chain of death in chapter 5, where we get ten generations, and each one says, and he died, and he died, and he died, and he died.

Things are getting worse and worse until Lamech, the son of Methuselah, names his son Noah because he wants comfort, he wants rest, he's hoping that his son will be that promised seed from Genesis 3 15.

What's the problem in chapter 6? Well, it's sexual immorality in the form of polygamy, and there's violence everywhere. People are just getting killed all over the place. The sexual revolution always brings mass killings.

Always. Didn't the French Revolution? It's done so in the cities in our own country today. Don't cheer feminism, don't cheer sexual revolution. Look what we have now. Violence everywhere. Is God surprised?

No. It's all the way back here in Genesis chapter 6. What follows sexual revolution? Bloody revolution. People dying all over the place, and this pattern goes again and again and again throughout the scriptures.

The Noahic Covenant, Grace, and Capital Punishment

So how does God resolve it? He says to Noah, I'm gonna make my covenant with you, okay? He says, I'm gonna make my covenant with you, and here's what we're going to do. You are going to make a boat, and you're gonna cover it with pitch, and it's gonna be big enough to have everything you need, and here's how you're going to go in.

How do you go inside the ark? It's a very simple formula. No, even two by two. Two by two. Two by two. Noah had how many wives? One. He had three sons. How many wives did each one of his son have? One.

So they went in two by two, didn't they? Now in the animal kingdom, if you've done any kind of zoology, you recognize that that's not really how the animals work, right? But God's gonna make a point, and he sends the animals in how?

Two by two by two by two. Why? What's the first problem? Polygamy is everywhere, and God says we're gonna put a stop to that, so everybody goes in the ark is gonna be two by two. Even the animals are gonna be two by two, okay?

And then after the flood is complete, and God washes the face of the earth and gets rid of all the violence and the whole messed-up system, and Noah and his sons come out of the ark, and they build an altar to sacrifice the Lord, and God forges a covenant with them there at the end of chapter 8 into the beginning of chapter 9.

What is the big instruction that he gives them? Something new for them to do that they've not done before. Capital punishment, right? Because that was the second problem, wasn't it? People are killing each other all over the place, and the violence was spreading and spreading, and nobody was able to stop the violent spread of people just getting killed everywhere.

So the first problem was polygamy. God solves that. It's two by two. Second problem was people are getting killed everywhere. We're gonna put a stop to that using what? Capital punishment. There at the beginning of chapter 9.

And here's the overarching problem. Look at the sinfulness of man. Look how sinful man is. His every intent of the thought of his heart is only evil continually, chapter 6 says. And in chapter 8, we read that in verse 21, the Lord smelled the soothing aroma that Noah built an altar for the Lord.

And the Lord said in his heart, I will never again curse the ground for man's sake. Although the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth, nor will I destroy every living thing as I have done.

God says, I'm not going to destroy every living thing again. Why not? They deserve it because God is merciful. God is showing grace. God's making a covenant. What does he say? Verse 22, while the earth remains, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, and day and night shall not cease.

And so God blessed Noah, chapter 9, verse 1, and his sons and said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. And that sounds familiar. That's from Genesis chapter 1. That's the creation mandate.

What is God saying? God is saying, even though sin has come into the world, even though there's violence everywhere, even though the heart of man is evil, yet God says, we're going to keep this going.

I am going to preserve the earth and the people in the earth and the creatures. We're going to keep the seasons going. And God makes a covenant with Noah and creation. I want to jump down just a little bit.

Verse 8, then God spoke to Noah and his sons with him saying, and as for me, behold, I establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you. Who here is a descendant from Noah? Everybody in the room.

Everybody in the room is a descendant from Noah. So God made a covenant with Noah and his descendants after him. That means us, right? The old song, Father Abraham had many sons. It should be Father Noah.

Father Noah had way more many sons than Abraham did, okay? And every living creature. So he makes his covenant with the descendants of Noah and with every living creature that is with you. The birds and cattle, every beast of the earth with you, all that go out of the ark, every beast of the earth.

Thus I establish my covenant with you. Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood. Never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth. And then he gives the sign of the covenant, which is the rainbow, and so on.

Now why look at that? What was at stake? What was at stake was the utter end of all those who were made in God's image. It was pretty high stakes. God looked upon the heart of man, the condition of man, and he said, enough of this, 120 years, countdown, doomsday, everybody's gonna get wiped out.

But then God has mercy, has grace upon Noah, makes a covenant with Noah and all his descendants and all of the created order and says, by God's own mercy, he will preserve the earth. And so what does Jesus say?

He says that God, be like sons of your father, because your heavenly Father sends rain on who? The just and the unjust. And he causes his son to shine on who? The just and unjust. And you know what happens when it rains and then the sun hits the rain?

What happens? Rainbow. Jesus is preaching the Noahic covenant in the Sermon on the Mount. You see that? God is the one who is keeping this going, and he is showing his graciousness and his mercy, and Jesus is saying, rather than go after your enemies and cut them down at the knees, be like sons of your heavenly Father and show mercy and grace to those who are wicked and oppose you.

You see what he does there? He takes the Noahic covenant and then makes it make sense in his own gospel. This is the first time we hear that God says to a man made in his image, I'm gonna make my covenant with you and your descendants after you.

We're gonna hear it again with Abraham and also with the Israelites at Mount Sinai and also with David and his descendants. But as I was telling the story earlier from Graham Goldsworthy, God's people in God's place blessed under God's rule.

This is not a repetition in the Bible that's kind of like cycles of history. Things just keep going around and around and around, and similar things just happen to happen. It's not that kind of cycle.

These things that we're identifying are re-expressions of the image of God being restored in the light of Christ to come. And so what we have is progression. There's progression. It's not just spinning your tires going around in circles, okay?

There's actual progression here. At the very beginning is the largest scope possible outside of just being made in God's image in the first place. It's a covenant with all of creation reaffirming the creation mandate.

Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. We're going to stick with this plan. Although, because of sin and wickedness, we're going to add some elements here to make sure that we're not going to go down into the havoc of killing everybody again.

So you have the Noahic covenant, and so the blessing is for all of Noah's descendants. That's going to be a hard sell. When Noah's descendants rebel against God on the plains of Shinar and end up with different languages and thus different cultures and different ethics, and they go off into different corners of the earth, now who's going to tell them the truth of God?

And how are all these disparate families with such different cultures ever going to be able to be blessed by their one creator? How is it that people that are so different from one another will ever be able to know the blessings of God?

Abraham, Israel, David, and the Progression of the Covenants

God makes a covenant with Abraham. It says, in your seed, all the families of the earth will be blessed. Oh, that's how. Okay, that's how. So he makes a covenant with Abraham. And so your seed, okay, well, we got to pay attention to the seed of Abraham now.

And who was that? Well, the promised son was Isaac, not Ishmael. It was Isaac, and it was Jacob, not Esau, and it was Judah, not Reuben, and so on. And we keep on tracking down. But then God speaks to the descendants of Abraham.

The nation of Israel makes a covenant with them and says, here's how you're going to live together as a group, showcasing my glory to all the nations. All the nations are to be blessed with the seed of Abraham.

Thus, Israel, as the seed of Abraham, is going to be saying to all the nations, here's who the one true God is, here's who the one true God is. But their efforts are diffused, and they're kind of all over the place.

They have trouble with idolatry. Have you ever read the book of Judges? It's terrible. And then God sends them a king, a man of his own heart, David, with whom he makes a covenant. It says, your descendants will reign in an everlasting throne in Jerusalem.

And so this beginning of the covenants where God made it with Noah, and it's this big huge thing, progressively gets deeper, richer, and more concentrated, until now the attention is all down on the one man, David.

Not just David, but no, the Son of David. And when you get to the New Testament, you keep on reading about the Son of David, the Son of David, the Son of David, the Son of David. Who is it? It's Christ.

It's Christ who brings in the new covenant. So the reason why I think it's important to acknowledge that when we're thinking about the prophets, and the content that they are preaching, is quite simply, well, what are the three laws of real estate?

Location, location, location. That's also the way we're supposed to read the Bible. So if I'm in the middle of Leviticus, what's the concern? The covenant that God made with Israel, and how they're going to live it out.

What's the covenant about? It's about loving God supremely, living others rightly, and stewarding the creation faithfully. Why is that? Because that's how God made us in his image. What's the hope that we have for that image to be restored?

It's the one to whom all these sacrifices, and feast days, and rituals are pointing to. It's Christ. So I just did location, location, location. So when we think about what the prophets are saying, and we hear about Isaiah preaching to the people, and he's making comments about how they're not doing right over here, and how they should change the way over here, the temptation is going to be, because we feel some sort of connection immediately, oh yeah, I should love God the most.

Oh yeah, I should treat others rightly. Oh yeah, I should be a faithful steward of what God has given to me. The temptation is to just immediately grab whatever's in Isaiah, and apply it immediately to our lives.

And we're going to forget some crucial steps. First of all, what were the covenant concerns? How do those covenant concerns develop out of who we are made in the image of God, and how is that fulfilled ultimately in Christ?

So when we work our way through Isaiah, we're not going to be doing a one-to-one correspondence treatment of the text to our own current situation. Does that make sense? We want to try to walk through the path that is given to us in the scriptures to make a right application.

Otherwise, we might end up doing some weird things. There was a group living out in West Tennessee who felt very much compelled to follow all manner of feast days and dietary laws because, well, it was in the Bible.

And obviously nobody else is doing it, so we're the real Church of God, right? But they weren't interpreting it in light of who Christ is, how the covenants are ultimately fulfilled in him. To this day, a very popular thing for folks to do is to open the Bible to a major prophet or a minor prophet and find something in there about justice, okay, and immediately apply it to American society, and forget that there was a covenant in place, that there were concerns that the Israelites had that we don't naturally, instinctively understand, and not even a concern about how these things are fulfilled in Christ, right?

So that's why we talk about this at this junction. So next time, Sunday night, what we're going to do is we're going to start working through the prophets and their concerns. A survey of what the prophets have to say about idolatry, what they have to say about immorality, and what they have to say about injustice, all right?

So that's the plan. All right, let's close with a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for the time you've given to us. I pray that it's been helpful. Lord, we thank you that your word is true and trustworthy, and I thank you that, Father, you speak to us everywhere in your word by your Spirit of your Son that we may give him glory.

We pray these things in his name, amen.