Wednesday, May 15, 2024 PM

Sunnyside Baptist Church

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And this evening we're going to talk about point number four in our introduction, the cumulative prophecy of Isaiah.

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And when you turn to Isaiah chapter one, you're going to see that the introduction to the book very clearly states who wrote it and that all of it was written by him.

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That seems to be a rather obvious thing to say, but Isaiah chapter one, verse one says, the vision of Isaiah, the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

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You'll notice the singularity of the word vision and the singularity of the author being

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Isaiah. It is fashionable in,

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I don't know, the last 200 years to take a look at Isaiah, scholars look at Isaiah, and just assume it wasn't one vision and it wasn't just Isaiah.

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Because you know, PhD's got it right. So they divide it up into various sections and they have a few reasons why they think that's compelling.

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But I came across a quote from an older scholar by the name of Archibald McCaig, which

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I think was a great name. He says, according to the old tradition, the prophet

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Isaiah was sawn in two, died as a martyr under Manasseh, sawn in two.

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Of the truth, the tradition we cannot be sure, but we know that one of the earliest feats of the higher criticism was to perform the like operation on his prophecy.

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We don't know if Isaiah really got sawn in half, but boy, they cut up Isaiah a lot. Isaiah is a very large book, 66 chapters as we have it, and it is filled with oracles, burdens, woes, promises, rebukes, proverbs, poems, parables, cartoons, riddles, signs, dreams, songs, and doxologies.

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But the whole thing is called the vision, it's all called one vision, and it was written by Isaiah.

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And so, because it's so large, sometimes it's difficult to wrap our heads around what's going on in the book.

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So sometimes it's, some people in their outlines of Isaiah, I noticed that they would give it about 20 different main points, and when you get to that level of main points, you don't really know what the main point is.

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And of course, others just propose it was in three different books originally and artificially stitched together, and we don't really know who wrote it, and so on.

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Usually Isaiah is doubted to be the singular author, or that it was written by the same

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Isaiah of history, for three reasons. One is the fact that Isaiah has prophecies in it that came true very accurately, and they say, well, that's not possible.

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Obviously, that's just a falsification, so they say, well, parts of it were written far after, or during the times of the prophecies themselves, which was debunked when they found

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Isaiah put together very well and very old in the Dessy's rules. And they also say, well, there's changes in style and vocabulary, which would be expected when you have a book that's 66 chapters long, talking about different topics, with such a variety of literature involved.

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They say, well, there's doctrinal shifts. Isaiah says one thing in here, and he says something else over here, and that generally comes from unbelieving scholars who don't know the gospel anyway.

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So it's confusing to them, but it wasn't to Jesus and the apostles.

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Isaiah is, 61 different passages in Isaiah are quoted over 85 different times in the

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Testament, and Jesus and the apostles quoted from all the different parts of Isaiah, from early

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Isaiah to late Isaiah, and they all said it was Isaiah. So I think it's just simpler to say

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Isaiah wrote it, and that Jesus and the apostles understood what they were saying, and the

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Holy Spirit is not a liar. But then again, I'm a fundamentalist, so. When we think about the outline of Isaiah, very often there's a big break in Isaiah right about here, because we read through chapters 1 through 35, a lot of different sermons filled with prophecies, visions, warnings, and so on.

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But then we come to a historical moment in chapters 36 through 39 that talk about the

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Assyrian siege of Jerusalem by the Assyrian king Sennacherib, and his spokesperson

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Rabshakeh, and we also hear about Hezekiah's folly, even though God extended his life,

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Hezekiah very foolishly boasted and bragged about all the wealth and good that was in Jerusalem to the

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Babylonian emissaries. And so we hear about that historical section, and then there's a very clear break between the end of chapter 39, 40, which famously starts off,

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Comfort, O comfort my people. Now I've divided it up in these three sections, which is not very original at all, but in chapters 1 through 35, we're going with this title,

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Sermons for a Difficult Present. Because the first 35 chapters deal with Isaiah speaking to his audience, whether they be kings or judges or other priests or prophets or just regular folks, and they're all living in the shadow of the

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Assyrian threat. Assyria is big, bad, they've got lots of money, they've hired standing mercenary armies who are incredibly cruel, they have a terrible reputation in the ancient

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Near East, and the entire time Isaiah is a prophet, everybody around him is just scared.

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They're just waiting for the Assyrian hordes to come and get them. It's like growing up in the 50s and the 60s and getting ready for the

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Russians. So this is the Assyrian threat, and Isaiah spends most of his time trying to help his audience to fear the

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Lord rather than to fear man. The Bible tells us that the fear of man is a snare, that the fear of death is slavery, and with the

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Assyrians, you'd be tempted to fear both man and death. And so Isaiah spends most of his time trying to convince the people that the

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Lord is powerful, the Lord is mighty, and he alone should be served and feared. And in the first 12 chapters, the

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Lord is presented as the true Redeemer, and in a future lesson we'll get more in detail about that section, because we're going to be eventually starting off with chapter 1, verses 1 through 9, and we're going to try to see how it fits within the first section.

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But a key verse for that first section would be chapter 12 and verse 2. So after everything is said throughout the first 12 chapters, and there's some significant things there, like Isaiah's call when he saw the

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Lord holy and lifted up in the throne room, the promises about Jesus that we celebrate at Christmas, the virgin will be with child, and all those promises are all there in the first 12 chapters, but chapter 12 and verse 2 does a great job of summing up the message of these first 12 chapters.

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And this is what the verse says, Behold, God is my salvation.

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I will trust and not be afraid, for YAH the

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LORD is my strength and song. He also has become my salvation.

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So you can hear that this is the promise that the people will stop being afraid of men, stop fearing death, and be utterly captivated with the

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Lord as their savior, as their strong provider. Now in chapters 13 through 23 there is a parade of nations that are all considered and brought before the attention of Isaiah's audience.

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And each nation is considered for their deeds, for their strength, for their role, what they are up to, what they do, and the entire parade is one judgment of God upon another.

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This nation is judged, that nation is judged, this nation is judged, that nation is judged. Which is a good reminder that even if a nation, even if a culture denies that God is

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God, that God is creator, that God is Lord and judge, that makes no difference.

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Remember that God does not believe in atheists, and He holds everybody accountable.

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And so in this section, chapter 13 and verse 11 is a good key verse which sums up the message.

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And there we read God saying this, I will punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity.

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I will halt the arrogance of the proud, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible.

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That is a good summary for everything that God says through His prophet

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Isaiah in those chapters. And then for the last part of this section, as we are considering sermons for a difficult present, is chapters 24 through 35 in which the

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Lord is shown as the true refuge. Now Judah was in a difficult position, watching their northern kingdom, their, you know, the northern kingdom of Israel, their relatives by Jacob, watching them and their kingdom go down the drain, how they were overwhelmed by Assyrian might, and nothing that they did could ever stop the

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Assyrians, and Judah gets real nervous, hey, we're next on the menu, and they were.

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So they had a real strong temptation to ally themselves with Egypt, and that just was the, that was the solution on the tip of everybody's tongue, well,

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Egypt will save us. You know, Pharaoh, he's got all these chariots, he's got these armies, and he's never been scared of the

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Assyrians, Egypt, Egypt is the solution. Everybody thought that that was the way to go.

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But of course, the problem is, once again, they were thinking first and thinking most about men, we've got a men problem, these men want to come kill us, and since they're thinking of men first and men most, they think of other men, well, we need our own, our own mercenary army, we need to make deals with Egypt, and Egypt will come up and Egypt will save us.

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But God spends a lot of time in these chapters telling them that Egypt is a false hope, and instead they ought to be hoping in Him.

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So chapter 26, and verse 4, is a good summary, and it says, trust in the

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Lord forever, for in Yah the Lord is everlasting strength,

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Egypt of course was temporary strength, and not to be trusted.

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So we move from the sermons for a difficult present into this middle section of Isaiah, and all of a sudden we have a whole lot of history, historical details, it appears that Isaiah was friends with the royal court, and that he had access that others did not, and so he became a royal historian, he was in a position to see it all happen behind the scenes, and he was able to write it all down.

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So here we have stories that shape history, because this was not simply details like a security camera, would record one event after the other, but Isaiah was writing things down in the light of God's promises, in light of the needs of God's people, being his covenant people, and so he was putting it into biblical categories.

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He was talking about the current events based on the word of God, giving the events biblical categories.

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And so in chapters 36 and 37, we have a theme of a

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Syrian night, and this is the story of Sennacherib and his armies that came, Rabshakeh mocking the

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God of Israel, and trying to demoralize the people within the walls of Jerusalem by shouting taunts and guarantees of the failure of their

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God, and Rabshakeh was speaking it in Hebrew, so that everybody in the city would know, and it was kind of psychological warfare, trying to break the morale of the people in the city, and of course

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Sennacherib was very confident. He had not had a failure yet. He had taken down city after city, nation after nation, he thought that his gods were more powerful than any other gods, and he thought that Yahweh was just some tribal

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God of the hills, and he was going to take him out too, but Sennacherib was unable to take

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Jerusalem, as the people of God humbled themselves, and God delivered them. While Sennacherib and his army were away from Jerusalem, trying to counter a possible threat in the lowlands,

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God sent one angel, and that one angel killed 185 ,000

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Assyrian mercenaries in one night, and after that, Sennacherib turned tail and went home, and his sons assassinated him.

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Well, two of them did, and then they ran, and two others took over. There is an archeological find, a big rock with a lot of writing on it, and Sennacherib boasted about all of the places that he took, and written on this artifact was his record of his encounter at Jerusalem, and although he had boasted time and time again about the places he had destroyed, about Jerusalem he wrote,

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I caged Hezekiah up in his city like a bird.

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That's it. That's all he could say. He didn't have anything else to say, because he couldn't take Jerusalem. He did not win the day.

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And so the Assyrian night passed very quickly, and Isaiah began to deal with Babylonian dawn, what was on the horizon.

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Of course, in the previous chapters, chapters 1 -35, there are promises about that coming judgment through the nation of Babylon, because that was going to be how

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Jerusalem fell, eventually during the time of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, but Isaiah did not live to see

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Babylonian dominance. He didn't live to see Babylon take over everything and become

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God's new instrument of judgment against the nations. He didn't get to see that. So he did get to see

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Babylonian emissaries come to Jerusalem and Hezekiah brag and boast and show off everything in Jerusalem so that the

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Babylonian emissaries could take an inventory of all the gold and silver and wonderful things and take it back so that sometime in the future they could come and take it all.

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And Isaiah showed the folly of all of this to Hezekiah.

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I want to read some passages from that section. In Isaiah 38 verses 5 -6, you have the grace extended to Hezekiah that his days would be prolonged, that he would get an extra 15 years to live.

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And it's in connection to the deliverance of the city from the Assyrians.

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So verse 5, go and tell Hezekiah, thus says the Lord, the God of David your father, I have heard your prayer,

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I have seen your tears, surely I will add to your days 15 years. I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria and I will defend this city.

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So there is a recognition of this, Hezekiah rejoices in the deliverance of God, but what does he do with this time of peace?

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What does he do with these opportunities that God has given to him? So notice in chapter 39 in verses 5 -8 the promise of what will happen because of Hezekiah's foolishness.

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Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, hear the word of the Lord of hosts, behold the days are coming when all that is in your house and what your fathers have accumulated until this day shall be carried to Babylon, nothing shall be left, says the

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Lord, and they shall take away some of your sons who will descend from you, whom you will beget, and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.

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So Hezekiah said to Isaiah, the word of the Lord which you have spoken is good, notice, for he said at least there will be peace and truth in my days.

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What do you think of that attitude? What do you think of that attitude? Where a generation especially blessed and delivered, granted extended life, doesn't care what's going to happen to the next generation.

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Well I don't care as long as there is peace in my time. That is a very foolish way for Hezekiah to wrap up his days, to not care and not have compassion and concern for what is yet to come.

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Isaiah chapters 40 -66 give us many sermons for a challenging future.

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There is a focus on Assyria in the first 35 chapters, really the first 37 chapters, but Babylon is referenced.

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Babylon is a factor to be thought about, to be considered, but the future of Babylon is brought much more into focus here in these latter chapters.

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But not just Babylon, also more than that. What is to become beyond that?

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The clear degradation, the clear deterioration of Judah as a nation.

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That their kingdom, and their people would grow less and less. That they would not have all of the trappings of kingdom and power that they once enjoyed.

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And what would it be like? There would be frustration, there would be concern, there would be worry about whether God's promises were true.

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And so throughout chapters 40 -66 there are many assurances to God's people that his promises would be kept, that his promises would not fail, although they would be concentrated in and brought about by a servant who would stand in their stead.

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And this is where we have many more messianic prophecies in this section.

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Now in chapters 40 -48, the supremacy of the

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Lord is emphasized. And in these chapters, idolatry is handled very severely.

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Idolatry is looked at from every which way, especially the manner in which

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Judah, who is called God's servant, lowercase s, servant, how his servant is so enthralled with idols.

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And these idols that have ears that do not hear, that have mouths that do not speak, that have eyes that cannot see.

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And God boasts and says, is there anyone as blind and deaf and dumb as my servant? Can you imagine him saying about that, saying about Judah, look at my servant, look how blind and deaf and dumb they are because they're so infatuated with idols.

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And so in these chapters there's a great deal of care taken to mock idols and to show how useless they are and then show how unique and powerful

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God is. There's no one like him. He controls everything, how he's worthy of worship, how idols are foolish.

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A key verse in this section is going to be, a key verses in here is chapter 44 and verses 6 -8.

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I know that you've heard this passage before. Thus says the

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Lord, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts. I am the first and I am the last.

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Besides me there is no God. And who can proclaim as I do? Then let him declare it and set it in order for me.

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Since I appoint the ancient people and the things that are coming and shall come, let them show these to me.

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Do not fear nor be afraid. Have I not told you from that time and declared it?

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You are my witnesses. Is there a God besides me? Indeed there is no other rock.

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I know not one. And so you can hear the irony even in this.

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When God says there is no other rock, what were their idols?

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This rock, that rock, the other rock? God says, no. You're trying to base your lives and build your lives upon these rocks but they're dead.

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I'm the rock you're to build your life on and there's no other. And then in chapters 49 through 55, the themes of the faithless servant and the theme of a needful faithful servant that is established in chapters 40 through 48 comes into very clear focus in chapters 49 through 55, the servant of the

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Lord. And this is really where Judah or that Israel as a servant is displaced in prophetic view with a capital

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S servant who takes up the entire mantle and role of Israel and showcases faithfulness.

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Remember in the scriptures where God says, you know, I desire faithfulness.

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I desire chesed rather than sacrifice. I need a covenantally faithful servant here and you aren't it.

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And so he showcases his servant in chapters 49 through 55.

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Of course that's in chapters 52 and 53 where we have those messianic servant, suffering servant songs that detail not only the crucifixion of Christ upon the cross, but the meaning of his atonement.

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But a key verse, key verses here is chapter 49 verses five and six.

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And now the Lord says, who formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring

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Jacob back to him so that Israel is gathered to him for I shall be glorious in the eyes of the

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Lord and my God shall be my strength. Indeed he says it is too small a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved ones of Israel.

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I will also give you as a light to the Gentiles that you should be my salvation to the ends of the earth.

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So we see very clear purpose stated for the servant, how that comes about.

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Of course you can see later on in the other chapters 52 and 53.

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The last section, last portion of Isaiah focuses on the salvation of the

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Lord and in its cosmic sense, how everything comes under the reign and redemption of the

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Messiah. And verses 17 and 18 of chapter 65 is a good summary there to let us know how big this salvation is.

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Isaiah 65, 17 and 18. For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth and the former shall not be remembered or come to mind, but be glad and rejoice forever in what

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I create. For behold, I create Jerusalem as a rejoicing and her people a joy.

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So it has already been stated throughout Isaiah that the heaven and earth that they knew would be passing away.

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God says, but I'm making a new one. They were already told that Jerusalem is passing away. He said, don't worry,

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I'm making a new one. It's helpful to remember that the temple itself was patterned as a microcosm of heaven and earth, as the entire creation represented in one building.

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And so when he says heaven and earth is passing away, he's talking about the undoing of their entire system.

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The old covenant is passing away. He's going to make a new one, a new way, a new mediator between heaven and earth is going to become very clear to them.

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And remember the apostles when Jesus told them in Matthew 24, not one stone will be left upon another.

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This temple is coming down. They said, well, that's it. That's the end of the world. And Jesus had to calm them down a little bit on that.

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Yes, the heavens and earth are passing away. He says, I'm making new things. Old things passed away. Behold, new things have come.

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So we hear all of those different themes in the book of Isaiah.

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This will be the overview outline that we're going to be working with as we go through Isaiah passage by passage.

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And so next time, as the Lord wills, we're going to move to the last point of our introduction and overview.

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And we're going to talk about the Christological panoply of Isaiah, which means the multiple ways in which

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Isaiah showcases the Messiah. So we're talking about 10 different ways that Isaiah talks about the

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Messiah. Someone once said that Isaiah shouldn't be called a prophetic writer.

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He should be called one of the gospel writers. It should be called the fifth gospel along with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, because he talked so much about Jesus Christ.