Sunday, April 28, 2024 PM

Isaiah and Micah as Contemporary Prophets

Let's turn to Isaiah chapter 1 and we are going to finish up our look of the contemporary prophets, the prophets who were preaching at the same time as Isaiah and consider what were the similar themes that we find in these books of the Bible so that we can tell what the major issues were in Israel and Judah.

And so the last contemporary prophet that we're studying is Micah. We started with Amos and we also looked at Hosea. Now Amos came a little bit earlier than Isaiah and had a very small overlap. Hosea was focused mainly on the northern kingdom and Isaiah was primarily looking at the southern kingdom though there's very similar themes and issues going on there.

And lastly we've been looking at Micah and considering how Micah brings a word of judgment against covenant breakers but at the very heart of his message, the very middle of the book of Micah, we have very strong hope-filled passages that point forward to the Messiah and the new covenant.

Well that's where we left off and now we're going to take a look at Micah and Isaiah and how they echo one another. It was said that Micah was a man of the fields having come from Moresheth of Gath, that old Philistine haunt, that he was a man of the fields and that Isaiah was a man of the schools.

Isaiah was very educated and as Dwight was sharing with me he was a man who appreciated music and song as Dwight has been doing an extracurricular study on Isaiah's focus on music and singing. And so we find that there is a difference between the two men, a difference in their credentials, a difference in their giftings.

Micah wrote a relatively short work compared to Isaiah's very impressive tome but God used them both and there's a lot of similarity in the things that they say. So if you'll read with me Isaiah chapter 1 verses 1 2 and then we're going to go to Micah and read Micah chapter 1 verses 1 2 and I wonder if you'll be able to see the similarities.

So Isaiah chapter 1 verses 1 2. 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. Hear O heavens and give ear O earth for the Lord has spoken I have nourished and brought up children and they have rebelled against me.

And now Micah chapter 1 verses 1 2. The word of the Lord that came to Micah of Moresheth in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah kings of Judah which he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem. Hear all you peoples listen O earth and all that is in it let the Lord God be a witness against you the Lord from his holy temple.

So you can hear a similarity between the introductions of Isaiah and Micah not only in the time frames that they identify and the focus on the kings who are currently serving but also there's a calling of a witness against the people of Judah.

There's a calling of a witness against the people of God because of their covenant breaking. So in addition to these introductory themes we also have new covenant hopes that sound very very similar. So in Isaiah chapter 2 in Isaiah chapter 2 in verses 2 through 4 we're going to look at that passage and we're also going to look at Micah chapter 4 verses 1 through 3.

So we'll start in Isaiah 2 verses 2 through 4 and then we'll look at Micah 4 1 through 3. Isaiah 2 verse 2 now it shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established on the top of the mountains and shall be exalted above the hills and all nations shall flow to it.

Many people shall come and say come and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways and we will walk in his paths. For out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem he shall judge between the nations and rebuke many peoples.

They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation. Neither shall they learn war anymore. So I say it speaks of the latter days.

We're going to know what those days are. We just hang on to you read Daniel and Daniel tells you what those days are. It's the latter days of the Old Covenant. The same latter days last days that the Apostles talked about that were in their time.

And in the last days of the Old Covenant what was established the New Covenant in which Mount Zion is big enough for all the nations to come. And what happens when all the nations who have been living all of their life trying to cut each other's throat ends up in Mount Zion coming to Christ.

What happens when those who were blood enemies come together in Christ. What do they do. Well they beat their swords and their spears into plowshares and pruning hooks. And they work together and labor together in the harvest.

Don't they. There's peace on Mount Zion all right. There's peace at Mount Zion as we come together in the Lord. That's very positive very encouraging look at what's to come in the Messiah. But Micah also has this theme.

So in Micah chapter 4 verses 1 through 3 you'll hear something very similar. Now it shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established on the top of the mountains and shall be exalted above the hills.

If we're for trying to grab the the scene of the metaphor somehow this mountain is put up on top of the other mountains like a giant building block experiment from one of my sons. And they just build it really tall mountains upon mountains the hills upon the hill upon the hills.

And everybody is flowing to it. They're all going up from all these different nations. The hills and the mountains remember are very important geographical landmarks. Right. The mountains were a very important boundaries and landmarks of the various nations.

Everybody knew whose mountains were whose and they were the boundaries of the nations. But now there's a mountain that's taller than all the other nations. And then the nations from all of their mountains are going up Mount Zion.

That's the that's the picture. The prophetic metaphor that's being established. Verse 2 says many nations shall come and say come let us go up to the mountain of the Lord to the house of the God of Jacob.

He will teach us his ways and we shall walk in his paths. For out of Zion the law should go forth and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem he shall judge between many peoples and rebuke strong nations afar off.

They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation. Neither shall they learn war anymore. So I was saying I think that Isaiah and Micah spent some time together and here is the very same message that God was proclaiming through Isaiah to the city.

He proclaims through Micah to the villages. And so everybody is hearing the same hope the same picture considering what it is going to be like where everything is heading now both Isaiah and Micah are also relentless in their mockery of idols.

That's that's a pretty major theme in the book of Isaiah as he finds new and interesting ways to make fun of idols and idolaters and idol makers. But this is a theme that is shared with Micah. Micah also has an antipathy against idols and those who make them.

So in Isaiah chapter 2 and Isaiah chapter 2 and verse 8 there is a there's a description of what the problem is with the house of Jacob. I'll back up to verse 6 for the context. Speaking to Jacob Isaiah says you have forsaken.

Speaking of the Lord says you have forsaken your people the house of Jacob because they are filled with Eastern ways not the ways that they had learned but with the ways of others. So God has forsaken his people.

Why. Because they are soothsayers like the Philistines. They are pleased with the children of foreigners. Their land is also full of silver and gold. There is no end to their treasures. Their land is also full of horses and there is no end to their chariots.

Oh they have a strong military and a roaring economy. God must really love them. Actually he's forsaken them. Why. Because verse 8 their land is also full of idols. They worship the work of their own hands that which their own fingers have made people bow down and each man humbles himself.

Therefore do not forgive them. That's pretty harsh. What about Micah. Micah says much the same in Micah chapter 5. Micah chapter. Micah chapter 5. And we'll begin in verse 12. Oh let's go back to verse 10.

This is even better. And it shall be in that day says the Lord that I will cut off your horses from your midst and destroy your chariots. Isaiah says they're full of horses and chariots. Well God says in Micah 5 I'm going to destroy those things.

Verse 11 I will cut off the cities of your land and throw down all your strongholds. I will cut off sorceries from your hand. Then you shall have no soothsayers. Right. We just heard that from Isaiah 2 about the soothsayers.

Now verse 13 your carved images I will also cut off and your sacred pillars from your midst. You shall no more worship the work of your hands. I will pluck your wooden images from your midst. Thus I will destroy your cities and I will execute vengeance in anger and fury on the nations that have not heard.

So Isaiah and Micah using much the same same list talking about the same issues bringing to the fore the problems that the people were not worshiping the Lord. They were trusting in themselves and their ability to make idols trusting in themselves and their ability to have a large army and good chariots.

But they were not trusting in the Lord and fearing the Lord. They were fearing men. They were not fearing the Lord. And both Isaiah and Micah condemn the injustice that comes from the covenant breakers.

And they use irony and they use stories to deal with that. So in Isaiah chapter 5. Isaiah chapter 5 is a good example as God is talking about his disappointing vineyard just for context sake. In Isaiah 5 God begins to describe his his vineyard.

How carefully he constructed it how well he tends to it. How much investment he made in this vineyard. And then he says what should have I expected should have expected good grapes. A good vine with good grapes.

But what happened. It was a wild fine with wild grapes sour and terrible. After all that work after all that investment what happened when God describes Israel as a vineyard and and looks at the the quality of the vine and is very disappointed in it.

We should not be surprised to find Jesus in the Gospel of John saying I am the vine. Right Jesus I am the vine the true vine. That's right I am the true vine. And then begins to talk about whether whether or not the branches are in him.

And if the branches aren't in him then they're not a they're not a part of the vine. They have no life in them and they're going to be burnt up. So what Jesus is saying in John. In John he is saying that based on this prophetic metaphor here in Isaiah 5.

But concerning the vineyard God says in verse 6. I will lay it waste. It shall not be pruned or dug but there shall come up briars and thorns. I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain on it.

For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel and the men of Judah are his pleasant plant. You see that he says that the people he says the people are the plant the people are the vine.

So when Jesus comes and says I am the vine then he's saying I am the people of God. The question in the old covenant was are you in Israel. The question the new covenant is are you in Christ. That's that's the way in which Jesus interprets the scriptures.

Verse 7 continues. He looked for justice but behold oppression for righteousness but behold a cry for help woe to those who join house to house they add field to field till there is no place where they may dwell alone in the midst of the land.

In my hearing the Lord of hosts said truly many houses shall be desolate great and beautiful ones without inhabitant. For ten acres of vineyard shall yield one bath and a homer of seed shall yield one.

Ifa. If you don't know the if you don't know the Old Testament measurements just know that's a really bad return on your investment. Micah says something very similar in Micah chapter 2 verses 1 through 4.

In Isaiah it was talking about joining house to house and field to field. People who were just grabbing as much property as they could from other people and then of course not abiding by the Sabbath laws or the year of Jubilee and so on.

As covenant breakers they were. They were acting unjustly towards their neighbors. In Micah chapter 2 verses 1 through 4 it says woe to those who devise iniquity and work out evil on their beds at morning light.

They practice it because it is in the power of their hand. They covet fields and take them by violence also houses and seize them. So they oppress a man at his house a man and his inheritance. That's what exactly Isaiah was talking about.

Therefore thus says the Lord behold against this family I am devising disaster from which you cannot remove your necks nor shall you walk haughtily for this is an evil time. In that day one shall take up a proverb against you a lament a lament with a bitter lamentation saying we are utterly destroyed is changed the heritage of my people how he has removed it from me to a turncoat.

He has divided our fields. So both Isaiah and Micah talking about the covenant curses the judgments of God upon covenant breakers. And this is what is looming before Isaiah's audience. And Isaiah was very clear about what was going to happen because of their continued covenant breaking.

Now this is where the the first section of Isaiah talks about the the Assyrians as God's instrument of judgment in the present. But then the second half of Isaiah points towards Babylon as God's instrument of judgment in the future that is going to finish out his judgment against his people.

So Isaiah his contemporaries Micah Hosea and Amos they had a lot of a lot of prophets a lot of wealth as you might consider it in the word of the Lord. These people living at this time had a lot of blessing to hear from the Lord so clearly from so many witnesses and of course they were to be accountable to what they heard.

Covenant Places in Isaiah: Jerusalem, Zion, the Temple, Judah, and the Earth

Now moving forward past the chronological periods of Isaiah we're not going to spend as much time on the following points. But the background for Isaiah I think is important trying to interpret the Bible correctly.

Location. Location location. We're trying to remember what it was historically what was going on at this point in the revelation of God in the Bible and then trying to put that into the context of early Isaiah the earlier Kings.

While Israel still a nation there are certain things that are said that are not the same type of significance as later on there's and then suddenly the northern kingdom is gone and now we're getting into the latter Kings like Hezekiah and so we need to know what is going on to make sense of Isaiah.

One thing I think will help us make sense of Isaiah is the the covenantal places of Isaiah because in Isaiah the first verse which of course has the whole book in a sense the the significance of the book is embedded here in verse 1 when we read that the vision of Isaiah the son of Amos which you saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem Judah and Jerusalem we would certainly think of them as places but we're also going to be thinking about them as people very often as you read through the book you're going to be reading place names but they're also referring to people all at the same time.

And one of the reasons why that that is is because these are covenantal places and the people that live there are identified by these places and responsible in certain ways. Now reading through Isaiah there are certain places that are very important in Isaiah's writings.

I would say there's four of them and we'll talk more about them next time. But the first one is Jerusalem and also along with the word Jerusalem is Mount Zion they are interchangeable they stand together as synonyms.

They can stand alone each one by themselves. But Jerusalem and Mount Zion appear well over 100 times in the book of Isaiah. There's a great interest in Jerusalem and Mount Zion also the temple now the actual term temple is not as common as the expression the Lord's house but either way it's a very vital interest again remember Isaiah's vision in the house of the Lord.

The land or the land of Judah is also very important and referred to again and again either the coming judgment or the evidence of idols or so on. And then also the earth just the whole earth everything is referred to and that's just and these are just the terms.

There are other ways in which God refers to these places and he will use metaphors to describe them so but altogether Jerusalem or Mount Zion which is one the temple the land of Judah and the earth together altogether they show up about 250 times in the book of Isaiah.

And always God is concerned about the people living there what goes on there and his his his expectations and his plans. Now all four of those locations are biblically related to each other. They are covenantally related to one another.

And Isaiah preaches God's judgment upon each one of those locations each one of those places but also preaches of the restoration of all those places. So he proclaims both he proclaims both. And that can cause some confusion.

I think when you're reading through Isaiah at one point you're hearing about you know how there's just going to be this wonderful place of Jerusalem and Mount Zion how everything is going well. And a couple of chapters later Jerusalem and Zion are getting just trashed.

They're getting destroyed and judged and then back again. Oh now it's being restored. And you just well which is it God. Well what are you. What are you up to. And the the key to understanding that is the promises of Christ.

It is not that God destroys and then recreates and blesses you know 15 times. But we have a variety of messages and sermons in the book of Isaiah. And when when we think about the promises which Christ fulfills we see that the old the old Jerusalem Mount Zion the old temple the old house of the Lord the old land the the old earth are all judged.

They're all judged. Their sins are listed. The sentences is giving is given and then the judgment comes. And yet all of them are also described as new as new. The old is judged and the old is eclipsed by the glory of the new.

The new Jerusalem the new Zion the new land the new temple the new earth are all scenes of transcendent glory. I think the entire the collection of Isaiah's sermons show that the latter the latter Jerusalem or the latter covenantal places they outshine the former but in a form of glory called fulfillment.

It's fulfillment. The fulfillment is very important word in the Bible. We often talk about how the new fulfills the old. We often talk about that but in order to I think communicate that well we also should say this.

The old is satisfied in the new and that's what that means. The old is satisfied in the new. There's not something lacking that the old says. Well that's not a satisfying fulfillment. But no actually it is a satisfying fulfillment.

So together we're going to look at those examples coming up. We'll survey those covenantal places in Isaiah when they come under judgment and see a variety of those passages and the reasons why. And then we'll walk through the new expressions of those covenantal places and see how they are brought about in Christ.

Okay any questions or thoughts as we close. Yes yeah I think so because we're going to be talking about we're going to be talking about Jerusalem we're talking about the temple we're talking about the land and we're talking about the earth.

So this will be all those all those types of themes. And so I think what we need to do is read in Isaiah and say all the scriptures. But in Isaiah we'll be looking at what does the God say about those places.

And of course we understand that God is just and he's keeping his promises when he judges the covenant breakers by bringing judgment on those places. But then the real question is how does God say that those places get restored.

In what way do they get restored. In what way are his promises kept. And for that we have to look in Isaiah again and see how those are described. Not only that but thank God we don't only have Isaiah.

What's very important is to see the ways in which Jesus and his apostles take up the book of Isaiah which they do awful a lot and how they interpret Isaiah what they have to say about it. Because that's going to be what needs to form our expectations and inform our hopes.

So that's the goal. I would say that Micah gleaned off of Isaiah because Isaiah was older. Yeah he was. He was older. I think he would be about 20 years Micah senior. And if Isaiah has a position where people are listening to him.

Yeah it's a question. Remember how the often the the prophets are addressing the kings. Okay. But they'll also address princes and judges and elders and officials. They may preach at the men of the countryside or the women.

They might have different focuses but Isaiah is very very centralized in Jerusalem with his proclamations and his concerns and in Micah tends to be more out and about so I think it's more of a a way in which the the word is being disseminated to the countryside.

Yes I would say I would not necessarily a type but I would say an analogy. An analogy I think would be probably Paul was as educated as Isaiah was. You know that kind of level of writing and that ability to to build those concepts.

In a way I would say that Peter and Micah be more similar. And an analogy Peters Peters Greek and turn a phrase is not nearly as polished as Paul or or Luke who's an expert in Greek. But the but Micah would be kind of like the the the tradesmen out preaching versus the the polished trained rabbi like Paul was all right.

Well let's close by singing the doxology together.