Isaiah 1:1 - Welcome to Isaiah

Alright, let's take our Bible and turn over to the book of Isaiah.

Or for those of you who are from England, the book of Isaiah.

And if you're looking for Isaiah chapter 1 in the Pew Bible, which you'll find in front of you, you can find it there on page 600.

Isaiah 1 · chapter mention

600.

We're beginning today a study through the book of Isaiah, which I think will take us about a year and a half to go through totally.

Less time than it took us to go through Matthew, even though it's a longer book.

Many, many Christians and non-Christians alike have some familiarity with the book of Isaiah.

The hymn that we sang just a little bit ago, holy, holy, holy, is derived from words found in Isaiah chapter 6, where it says just that: Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of armies.

Isaiah 6 · chapter mention

His glory fills the whole earth.

And anyone who's attended, say, Handel's Messiah, or heard a Christmas cantata, or even listened closely to some Christmas carols, or joined in a Christmas evening, a Christmas Eve service, or Christmas Day service, would have come into contact with Isaiah 7, for instance, or Isaiah 9, and those passages that figure prominently in the birth of Jesus Christ.

And then there's Good Friday services and communion Sunday services, where you probably would have heard something out of Isaiah chapter 53, but he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our iniquities.

Isaiah 53 · chapter mention

The punishment of our peace was upon him, and we're healed by his wounds.

Now, those passages are very important passages, but they're only snapshots of this glorious book that deserves more attention than we often give it.

To limit our exposure to the book of Isaiah to those few verses, chapter 7 and 9, and 53 and chapter 6, would be like turning away the invitation from Charles III to spend a whole week with him as he gives you a personal tour of Windsor Castle or Buckingham Palace or one of his other residences.

And forgoing all of that in order to read a couple paragraphs from a wiki article on Windsor Castle.

You could certainly learn some things from by scanning a wiki article, but you'd grab no sense of the wonder, the splendor, the majesty, the expanse of the palaces unless you were there.

Perhaps you've read the book of Isaiah and you've gotten into it a little ways, eager at the early stage, but then all of a sudden swamped and wondering, where am I?

Don't feel bad.

A lot of people have exactly that kind of experience.

Listen to John Calvin.

He said, Nobody will be so raw and ignorant as not to get some benefit out of reading Isaiah, yet perhaps you will understand one out of every ten verses.

He said we ought to accept eagerly and readily those things that are clear in which God has revealed his mind.

And interestingly, he says this, and it's proper to pass by those things which are still obscure to us until a clear light shines.

But then he goes on to say this.

But if we are not wearied by reading, the final result will be that that constant use will make us familiar with Isaiah, and then we'll learn more and more about it.

Perhaps you've resonated with the one out of ten understanding of Isaiah that Calvin first talked about.

Well, I welcome you into this journey.

Welcome into the journey that we're going to go through here, the book of Isaiah.

And don't just be satisfied to show up on Sunday morning saying, What's going to be in Isaiah this morning?

Open it up when you go home.

Read it and reread it.

As we go through it week by week, pray that God would give you an understanding of his word.

The parts of Scripture that aren't yet open to you, those nine out of the ten you don't yet know.

Pray that God would give you an understanding so that you might grasp the full revelation of his word.

And it's my prayer that you will gain the splendor and the majesty and the wonder and the expanse that is found in the book of Isaiah.

Isaiah is a great book.

Its theology is sweeping.

It takes us from creation to the new creation.

It takes us into the wonder of all that God has done and his great plan of redemption.

Brings us from the utter ruin of sinful humanity to the glorious splendor of the new heavens and the new earth.

Listen to what someone said about it.

Said it was the most theologically significant book in the Old Testament.

Another one said, of all the books of the Old Testament, Isaiah is the richest.

Someone said, from ancient times, Isaiah has been considered the greatest of the Old Testament prophets.

But it's not just narrowed to the Old Testament.

66 direct quotations of Isaiah are found in the New Testament.

And if you were to count the illusions to say nothing to the echoes, you would find nearly a hundred references to Isaiah in the New Testament.

Twenty of the 27 books of the New Testament quote Isaiah directly.

Isaiah is woven like this gold fabric into the glorious dress of the New Testament.

One of the main contributions of the book of Isaiah is to enforce and enlarge upon us the understanding of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

As we are well aware, the New Testament presents the Lord Jesus Christ as its theme, and Isaiah presents the Lord Jesus Christ as its ultimate theme.

Just for a moment, it's here in Isaiah where the glories of the Davidic Messiah and the shame of the suffering servant are woven together to help us understand who Jesus Christ is.

So much so that Isaiah has been declared to be the fifth evangelist, and Isaiah the book declared to be the fifth gospel.

That's how much it speaks of Jesus Christ.

So this morning, as we get an introduction to it, I want to introduce it to us by way of what we might call in some investigative ways our five friends who, what, when, where, why, and how, right?

So we're going to skip off one of those and double up on one of those.

But that will be our form as we go through this and introduce ourselves to this book that will be our friend for the next several months.

Isaiah, what is it?

What?

Well, it's a prophecy.

And the way our English Old Testament is structured, Isaiah introduces us into a grouping of books that are called the prophets, the major and the minor prophets.

And it runs all the way to the end of the Old Testament to the book of Malachi.

It doesn't mean that prophecy begins with Isaiah.

There are prophecies earlier than this, as far back as Moses and even before then.

That predictive element is all over the scriptures.

But these books are grouped together in major and minor prophets.

Well, these prophets, what do they do?

Well, the prophets are people who speak for God.

They speak for God.

They're his messengers, God's mouthpieces.

They speak his word directly into the ears and minds and hearts of people over the ages.

They say what God once said.

And the major reason you see that, or the major way you see that, is they often preface their remarks by saying, Thus says the Lord.

They're speaking on his behalf.

They're telling the people of Israel exactly what God wants them to know.

A lot of times when you think of prophets, you think of people who are sort of foretelling the future also, but that's not the main focus of the prophets.

The main focus of the prophets are to speak to their present generation about situations that they're going through, so that they might think and act and relate differently about God and their life and their situation.

And when they do talk about the future, it's not so you can just simply sit back and muse over what might be, but rather that you would see something about that that changes the way you live your life today.

It's not to leave us gazing off into the future, but to be ordered a different way according to God's word now.

Well, the prophets also had ears.

They listened to God's word before they could speak it.

They were instruments and agents of Him.

And when we talk about the prophets being inspired, we speak about that inspiration as something different than maybe an inspired musician or an inspired poet or an inspired communicator in some way with eloquence and choice of words.

We don't think of them like great painters.

They're not inspired in that way.

What we're talking about is that God has communicated to them exactly what he once said.

So they have ears to hear that.

Peter says that.

He said, Know this, no prophecy of Scripture comes from the prophet's private interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by the will of man.

Instead, men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

There's also another aspect about these prophets, as we consider what we're about to look at, is that they also felt what God feels, if I can put it that way.

Listen to Isaiah in chapter 40, and we read from that chapter, but a little deeper into it.

Listen to the emotion that's found in these verses.

Do you not know, Isaiah says?

Have you not heard?

The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the whole earth.

He never becomes faint or weary.

There's no limit to his understanding.

He gives strength to the faint.

He strengthens the powerless.

But those who trust in the Lord will renew their strength.

They will soar on wings like eagles.

They will run and not become weary.

They will walk and not faint.

Can you feel the encouragement of those verses?

The emotion that fuels those words?

That's Isaiah speaking with emotion and delight about a God who brings solace and assurance in a time of trouble.

Isaiah's hope stood as a beacon to people in despair and darkness, to let them know that the despair in the darkness wasn't the end of their life, that there was a future in God if they trusted him.

And it brings us the same sort of understanding that we can have comfort and encouragement and be reminded that God's promises are going to be fulfilled no matter how dark or difficult or despairing our moments are.

So these prophets didn't just speak a message.

They didn't just listen to a message, they felt it, and so shall we.

These prophets help us through their emotions to understand more of our God, a God who loves and longs for people, a God who is angry at sin and evil, a God who will stand against injustice and cruelty, a God who is compassionate and cares for the poor, the needy, and the vulnerable, a God who is grieved when he's rejected, a God who is filled with joy when people and his creation turn to him.

These are all emotional words that help us understand him better.

Everything that's part of who we are gives us a way to connect with the God who has made us.

These prophets also saw things from God's point of view.

We call them seers sometimes in the Old Testament.

They're given that term.

And sometimes they could actually see things that other people couldn't see.

But it means more than that.

It means that these men were able to also interpret events from God's point of view.

And boy, don't we need that sometimes, right?

We look at things and we've got our understanding, we've got our perspectives, but to be able to have someone interject who sees the whole scope of it all from beginning to end in every detail, that's our God.

And He's giving us an understanding of life and eternity in ways that we, in our little narrowedness and blindness and even sinfulness, don't know.

This is the what?

The book of Isaiah is a prophecy.

Now, who?

Who is Isaiah?

Well, Isaiah is called the Prince of the Prophets.

And not simply because of the grandeur of his writings, some rabbis actually thought that he was the brother of King Amaziah.

So he was literally perhaps a prince.

We don't know that.

That's conjecture, but that's some of the thinking that people have.

He's mentioned seven times as a son of Amos.

We know that he was married and his wife was called a prophetess, and they had two sons.

We don't know a whole lot more about him.

His name, Yesha Yahu, means Yahweh's salvation, or it could be interpreted as Yahweh is salvation, or the salvation of Yahweh.

And we should hear in Yesha Yahu some similarities to someone whose name was Yeshua, God saves.

So when did he write?

When you think of Isaiah and the rest of the prophets that run all the way to Malachi, in relationship to the history of the people of Israel, you realize that they only spoke into a slim little bit of time.

If you go from the beginning of the people of Israel to, say, Malachi, you're looking at about 1,500 years of expanse.

Isaiah and the rest of the prophets spoke into about 300 years of time.

A small sliver of the whole history of the people of Israel.

And if you wonder why so many prophets were sort of pushed into this little time frame, it's because they were turbulent years.

David the king, Solomon his son, coming into Rehoboam, who failed to listen to the wiser men and listen to the more foolish men.

And because of that, ten of the tribes of the twelve rebelled and started their own breakaway group of Israel, and leaving two of them behind.

And the battles between those two and the degradation of their society and of their worship of God are detailed in some of the historical books and are spoken about throughout these prophecies.

They spoke into that time frame.

Some of them speaking to the northern tribes, those ten breakaway tribes of which they called Israel and sometimes Ephraim.

They spoke in and talked to them that if they didn't turn to the Lord in faithful trust, that there would be a coming day of judgment.

And it eventually happened in 721 when those ten tribes were taken away by Assyria.

To the southern two, some of the other prophets spoke: Micah and Zephaniah and Habakkuk and Isaiah and Jeremiah.

And they spoke to Judah and told them that they too were facing judgment and condemnation that would end in exile had they did not turn to the Lord in trust.

And just like the northern tribes in 721 and 587 BC, as a culmination of other small movements, Jerusalem was captured, and the people were carried off in exile to Babylon.

Isaiah speaks into that time frame before the exile happens.

He speaks at the pinnacle of the time of the Assyrians.

And in Isaiah chapter 1 and verse 1, just have a look at it for a second, we learn this.

Isaiah 1 · chapter mention

We just read four.

Well, there's one more, Manasseh.

His name's not mentioned here in the first verse, but we know that in the book of Isaiah, Sennacherib's assassination is mentioned.

And so that assassination happened during the reign of Manasseh.

So we know that he ministered into the reign of Manasseh.

And that brings us to the end of Isaiah's life.

Jewish tradition tells us that Isaiah was martyred during the time of Manasseh the king by being stuffed into a hollow log and then sawn in half.

That's how his life ended.

The writer of the book of Hebrews alludes to that.

When it talks about in that hall of faith we call Isaiah 11, in verse 37 it says, They were stoned, they were sawn asunder.

Perhaps alluding to Isaiah and his martyrdom.

They died by the sword, they wandered about in sheepskins, goatskins, destitute, afflicted, mistreated.

The world was not worthy of them.

Why?

We talked about the what and the who and the when.

Now let's talk about the why.

When Isaiah began his ministry, Judah is his focus, as you can see here.

He talks about Judah and Jerusalem in verse 1.

He talks about the kings of Judah here.

That's his major focus.

Judah, when Isaiah begins his ministry, during the end of the time of Uzziah's reign, it was a sad shadow itself back when David and Solomon were reigning.

But it still had had a season of prosperity and peace under Uzziah.

It was a refreshing breathe, breath of fresh air.

But the good times were almost gone.

And the people could tell that there was impending doom around them.

Judah in the late eighth century was crumbling.

And Isaiah spoke into a people who were teetering on the edge economically.

They were being bullied by geopolitical powers all around them.

And they were rotting from the inside out by their syncretism, their injustice, and their formalistic religion.

Is that you, John?

No?

We got it.

There we go.

Isaiah spoke to those people in trouble.

He spoke to people that were facing all kinds of peril in every way they could look.

They couldn't look to the religious leaders and find help.

They couldn't look to their kings and find help.

They couldn't look to their um economic power bases and find help.

They couldn't look to other nations and find help.

Isaiah spoke to them and talked about trusting the living God, looking to them in their dependence, and he would care for them.

Judah and Uzziah never again, after Uzziah never begin became an independent state.

For the rest of the reigns of the kings that you read about in verse 1, they were all subservient vassals to overdominating powers outside of them.

They were serving at the pleasure of the Assyrian overlords all the way through Isaiah's ministry.

And when Babylon put them to an end, it seemed like the end of the Davidic dynasty until Matthew's gospel opens up and speaks about a Jesus who is the son of David.

And so these people lived in a pivotal time.

They lived in a threatening world.

Do we not live in a pivotal time in a threatening world?

Of course we do.

The crisis that they were facing was the rise of the Assyrian Empire to the east.

And these four kings show just how mixed their responses were.

As Isaiah called them to trust in the living God, they began to show a deeper trust in themselves and their allies.

You can read about it in 2 Kings.

But this Assyrian threat was real and it was dangerous.

And the people had to decide: would they trust a God to save them, or would they trust themselves and their own strategies to be their deliverance?

You'll hear a lot about that as we go through the book of Isaiah.

Now, how does Isaiah pan out?

We've talked about the what, the who, the when, and the why.

Now, we're going to talk about the how and skip the where.

I think we can understand where that is.

Let's just scan the 66 chapters that are the book of Isaiah.

The first 39 chapters primarily have us in view of this pre-exile time during Assyria's strength.

The first 39 chapters of Isaiah, Assyria is the dominant world power.

And that crisis in Judah and Jerusalem is centers upon two of the kings.

Chapters 7 to 12, you have Ahaz, who is tested but fails, and begins to trust human schemes and ill-advised alliances with other nations instead of trusting the living God.

And then in chapters 36 to 39, we learn of another king, Hezekiah, who is also in a time of crisis with a different emperor over Assyria.

But the same question: would he trust God or would he try to find a way forward through his own scheming?

Hezekiah almost yields to the counsel of his cabinet, but in his despair turns to the living God.

And we find an example of one with failing heart but trusting soul.

And in between these two sections of chapter 7 to 12 and this 36 to 39, inside of it are oracles to the nations as God speaks to the peoples around about their behavior and their impending doom.

But as a lesson to the kings and to the people, will you trust God or will you fall under the same condemnation as the other nations that are falling?

In the middle of all of that, God peppers into the book of Isaiah these statements that there is going to be a rising king out of the line of David that's not like these kings of David, who's actually going to be just and trusting, who's going to be bringing forth victory.

And we read, Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government will be upon his shoulders, and his reign is not going to end.

These words are thrown in there to help us see that the present scene is not all there is to know about.

Isaiah projects his voice into the future and doesn't speak about the future, but does something no other book in the Old Testament does, or New Testament for that matter.

He doesn't just speak about the future, he speaks to the future.

He speaks to the people of God as if they were already torn from the land of promise and already put into exile in Babylon.

This is what chapters 40 and 45 to 55 do.

No other book of the Bible does this.

And what will God tell these future people who have sinned so dramatically that they've been ripped from the land of promise and are called not my people?

How can they, these persistently sinful people, hear anything other than judgment or expect anything but other than abandonment from God?

Well, that's the wonder of these chapters.

Because the words that come in sweep in with these words.

Comfort.

Comfort, my people.

Salvation of God will come.

His determinations of grace are not going to be thwarted by your sin.

He is going to fulfill his promises, and he's going to bring his people into the fullness of his mercies.

What a wonder this is.

Salvation would come through the suffering of a servant, that Isaiah 40 to 55 talk about.

That servant, though he suffers, will be victorious.

And his victory will not only save the people of Judah, his victory will be so grand and glorious that it will be the hope of all the nations.

And that word will spread everywhere.

And Isaiah 52, 7 says, How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of the herald who proclaims peace, who brings news of good things, who proclaims salvation, who says, To Zion, your God reigns.

Now, if you know your New Testament, you know where that came from.

That is the very verse that talks about the gospel proclamation of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, found in the book of Romans.

Isaiah 1 to 39, pre-exile.

Isaiah 40 to 55, projecting to a people in exile, in the future.

Chapters 56 to 66 have as their focus people settled back in the land after the exile.

People who are having their temple being rebuilt.

Isaiah's stretching into the future for sure.

Listen to Isaiah 66.

This is what the Lord says.

Heaven is my throne and earth is my footstool.

Where could you possibly build a house for me?

And where would my resting place be?

My hand made all these things, and so they came into being.

This is the Lord's declaration.

So where will God's temple be?

He tells us, I will look favorably on this kind of person, one who is humble and submissive in spirit and trembles at my word.

The projection of a temple of God that will reside not in stone in a place, but in people in their hearts, where the true worshipers will not worship on this mountain or that mountain, but will be the people who worship in spirit and in truth.

And they reach even beyond them.

And this message of this coming king, this international king who's going to bring judgment and salvation, and that this lead agent is going to be a messenger, that God is going to empower to declare the good news that he is breaking in and establishing his kingdom.

And Isaiah speaks about this one who comes.

And this is how it begins.

The Spirit of the Lord God is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.

Those are the very words that Jesus spoke at the beginning of his public ministry.

Isaiah speaks to pre-exile Israel, in exile Israel, and post-exile Israel, and brings them warnings and comfort and promises of a better day.

Of a better day.

So let me double up on the how for a second.

We talked about Isaiah, what it was, who he is, we talked about when it was, we talked about how.

But I also want to talk about how we understand Isaiah a little better.

And I just want to give you a little insight that I think will help you and carry you through all of our study of Isaiah.

And the way to understand Isaiah is to scan the horizon.

The horizon is the farthest part that we can see as we open up our eyes to the very edges of what is out there.

For those of us in New York, that's like across the street.

But if you go to Montana, it's quite a far ways away.

The distance depends on how high we are from ground level, right?

You know, you're on the ground and you can see that far.

But if you went up in a hot air balloon, you could see further.

And if you went even way further up, you could prove to every flat earther that they're just wrong, because you can see the curvature of the earth.

Well, the distance depends on how high you go.

And so when we read Isaiah, we have to look to the horizons.

We have to see that Isaiah is speaking to those on the ground in their life experience.

He's speaking a little bit higher to talk about those in future days a little bit further, and yet he brings us up even a little higher and shows us even further yet of even a new day and a new creation.

He takes us beyond the scope of the present.

He takes us even beyond the scope of human history.

He brings us into the eternities to show us our God and his glorious plan in the new heaven and the new earth.

And so when you read Isaiah, remember that there are three horizons to look at.

There's the first horizon of the people in Isaiah's day, things that would be accomplished in their lifetime, or perhaps in Old Testament history.

And then realize that there are things that Isaiah talks about that could never be fulfilled in their day that talk about something beyond that, that can be only found in Jesus Christ and the coming of the Son of God to this earth to deliver.

And so you see in horizon level two, you see messages of the coming of the Messiah and the entrance of the kingdom of the gospel.

But then there are other things that project even beyond that as you rise up to a third pinnacle and you see a third horizon, and you find out that there are statements of judgment not just for the nations, but for the whole heavens and the earth.

And not just judgment, but also statements of grace that bring us beyond human history into the eternal state.

And Isaiah talks about a day of overflowing joy when he says, There'll be nature in full abundance, and the earth rejoicing in its creator, and human life fully safe and fulfilling and free ultimately from violence and injustice and hunger and danger and war at an end, and people and animals living in perfect harmony.

People never turned away from God's presence ever.

What is this?

It's the third horizon.

It's the place where the new heavens and the new earth are breaking into our day and understanding to give us a hope that to trust God means not just a better life now, or maybe a get to heaven then, but a flourishing and the new heavens and the new earth in which existence will unfold with all that it was designed to be in all the fullness that God had created it to have.

That's Isaiah.

That's Isaiah.

And so as we come into this place, remember, just like Calvin or me, you might understand only one verse and ten at first.

But the more we go in it, it'll be two out of ten, then three out of ten, and then hopefully eight, nine, maybe even ten out of ten in some places.

Isaiah wants to show us more of God, and in doing so will show us more of ourselves as well.

Some of it's going to be uncomfortable.

Some of it's going to be more exhilarating than we deserve.

He speaks to all of us.

If you're here this morning and you're not a Christian believer, Isaiah will speak to you.

It will talk to you, it will tell you who you are better than you know yourself.

Listen, I encourage you to do so.

Because it also speaks about mercy and grace that is beyond what any of us could ever hope for.

And to find that in his presence is not condemnation, but acceptance.

If you're a new believer, this is a great way to understand the promised purpose of God as we move from the Old Testament into the new, and you see your Savior spoken about in more ways than you might expect.

And if you're an experienced believer, God will speak to us, challenge us to trust Him, even in the hard times, beyond our wisdom, beyond the strength of our arms, which is pretty frail anyway.

In all of these ways, God will talk to us through Isaiah.

A book written so many years ago, but more important and more today than even the articles we read online.

Let's pray together.

Father, we thank you for the gospel.

I almost said it, the gospel of Matthew.

But thank you for Isaiah.

Thank you for what we're going to learn about the gospel in Isaiah.

Thank you, Father, for giving us the scope of your purposes, giving us an indication of what you did and then designed to do in bringing Jesus Christ into this world.

Thank you, Father, for my beloved brothers and sisters here in their keen interest to know.

And Lord, I pray that you would use me and Micah and the others who will proclaim your word over these next several months as servants of your word and servants of your people to help them understand you better.

Lord, work through us, we pray, to grant a feast of your word to your yours so that they might fully receive and fully praise you.

And we ask this in Christ's name.

Amen.