Isaiah Bible Study: Session 2 (Epic of Eden) with Sandra Richter

so welcome to session two of the book of Isaiah we now have to launch in and answer several of the questions that we began asking in our first session and specifically we're going to circle back to dealing with the office of the Prophet the gift of prophecy that you hear about in your New Testaments in fact Corinthians 12 through 14 is full of a discussion of the gift of prophecy is not new with the New Testament rather there are a number of stories in your Old Testament that speak of the gift of prophecy as well so numbers 11 is a great example it's about this time that Moses has decided that being a pastor of you know 600,000 Israelites in the wilderness is not the best possible occupational calling and he's done with them they're making him crazy how is he going to deal with all this drama in detail and his father-in-law steps in and says why don't you appoint some elders to help you with the task and Moses says brilliant and so he appoints some elders they come in front of the community and he prays over them to appoint them to their offices when he prays to appoint them the Holy Spirit comes upon the elders and they prophesy and then the text says but they never prophesied again hmm what's going on what's going on in the theology of the Old Testament is that when you are placed into an office of service under the Old Covenant and the Holy Spirit empowers you for that office this is the Old Covenant then the Holy Spirit comes as well and there is a temporary anointing that results in oral expression a second story would be First Samuel chapter 10 where Saul is called to be the king of Israel and Samuel comes and anoints him to appoint him to as a new office and so the Holy Spirit comes and Saul begins to prophesy do you remember the story and then everybody saw Saul prophesying and he's basically the quarterback of the football team I mean that's the Saul persona and everyone in the youth group sees Souls start prophesying and they say what is Sol among the prophets well he is in the capacity of gifting he receives the Holy Spirit so that he can carry out his office and his oral expression is temporary okay this happens all over the Old Testament and it moves into the new but the office okay that's a whole different gig the theocratic office of Prophet is actually a civic office in Israel's government it is legislated to us in their constitution and bylaws which is the book of Deuteronomy specifically chapters 13 and 18 where the role of that theocratic officer of the Prophet is defined so the first question you're asking is what in the world is a theocratic office and the answer is a theocratic office is an officer who serves the theocracy and the word theocracy is a Hebrew word well excuse me it's actually a Greek word that comes from the word the US meaning God and crotteaus which comes from cattell meaning to rule so theocracy here's one of our big words for the weak means the rule of God or rule by God Israel actually was a theocracy and if you've already worked through the epoch of Eden understanding the Old Testament you're a pro at this God actually was the king of Israel no this isn't a metaphor this isn't an allegory no he literally ruled the kingdom that's why he was seated on a chair abeam throne in his palace ie the temple and the people brought him tribute and taxes and he established the law Yahweh was the king of Israel and in that system of government it was Yahweh's word that was law now as Americans we live in a democracy right which means the rule of the mob hmmm that might explain a few things okay so this theocracy had three human office and those three human officers were the Prophet the priest and the king these are the three human agents through whom God executed his government now we naturally being the heirs of monarchy ourselves we think about that and we think well it must be the king then who is the supreme authority we would think that but we would be wrong so then they might say well maybe the priest was the head thority well we'd be wrong again in Israel's government it was the Prophet who is the most powerful figure and the reason he was the most powerful figure is because he actually spoke for God you see the priest spoke for the people to God that's what a priest does but a prophet spoke for God to the people and the King well he was kind of a type man a representative of the kingdom his job was to demonstrate how to live in obedience and as you know well sometimes the king succeeded at that and sometimes they did not so this little diagram up on your screen helps us to understand that the Kingdom of Israel was actually ruled by Yahweh there were three human officers and out of those three human officers it's the Prophet who actually has the greatest amount of authority and this reality becomes very clear in many of the stories you have out of your Old Testaments because over and over again it is the Prophet who tells the King what to do and the king of A's it's the Prophet who anoints salt and says you're the king of Israel it's also the Prophet who comes to Saul and says you're not the king of Israel anymore and it's that same prophet he turns to David and says now you're the king of Israel so kingmaker king breaker the mouthpiece of Yahweh this is who the Prophet is so there is no office in Israel government that out distances the Prophet and this is very important to keep in mind now what about that legislation well let's turn in our Bibles to Deuteronomy chapter 13 verses one through five and we're going to take a look at the first piece of legislation that defines the profit and I'm gonna read it for you so Deuteronomy 13 one through five it states this if a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder and the sign or the Wonder comes true concerning which the prophet spoke and he says okay let's go after other gods whom you have not known and let us serve them well you won't listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams for Yahweh your God is testing you to find out if you love Yahweh your God with all your heart with all your soul you shall follow Yahweh your God you shall fear him you shall keep his Commandments you shall listen to his voice and serve him and cling to him only so the thesis of this first piece of legislation is doctrine over experience how did I make that translation well if a prophet or a dreamer of dreams shows up and he's got a sign a wonder a miracle he has some great story some great miracle that he's telling you about but he tells you that Yahweh isn't God well he's a liar so set your doctrine over your experience interpret your experience in light of your doctrine not the other way around because there gonna be a lot of people out there with great stories and a lot of people out there with great testimonies but the question is who was the testimony of and who is the source of power and so Deuteronomy 13 goes on to say but that prophet or that dreamer of dreams he shall be put to death because he's counseled treason against the Lord your God now again if you've done understand your Old Testament you know all about Susan vassal treaties and how Yahweh was actually the king of Israel's government and so for someone to rebel against Yahweh was treason in a political sense of the word so that's what this prophet is doing if he's counseling the people of Yahweh to follow another God that's treason against the Lord your God who brought you up out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery it's Yahweh who deserves your worship he's the one who rescued you that's the historical prologue of Israel's covenant and so this prophet is trying to seduce you from the way in which Yahweh your God commanded you to walk so you shall purge the evil from among you so what's the second piece of legislation it's Deuteronomy chapter 18 now 9 to 12 so these two pieces out of Deuteronomy define the office of the Prophet listen to this one carefully because it sets a stage that we want to investigate when you enter the land which Yahweh your God gives you you shall not learn to imitate the detestable things of those nations there shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire one who uses divination one who practices witchcraft or one who interprets omens or a sorcerer or one who casts a spell or a medium or a Spiritist or one who calls it the dead for whoever does these things is detestable to Yahweh your God and because of these detestable things Yahweh your God will drive them out from before you now the first question that you want to ask as a student of the Bible is why is this legislation being put against this backdrop why is the backdrop all about diviners and witches and people who pass their children through the fire and omens and spiritists what would be the logical answer to that because all those people were out there and when Israel actually comes into the land all of these and I will call them divine intermediaries are operating in Israel's world because you see we're humans yeah and we want to know what the gods are thinking we always have and we always will we want to be able to predict our futures how many of you have actually like read that slip of paper inside your fortune cookie yeah how many of you when eating a bag of Dove chocolates unwraps the Reverend says oh yes that is such a description of my character or if left alone with the horoscope page how many of us do match let's just take a peek yeah we do we do we're the only ones who are honest here Oh this is humanity we want to know what's happening on the other side we want to hear from the gods and so in Deuteronomy 18 we get an exhaust not exhaustive but a very long list of all the divine intermediaries in Ezra's world that are out there making a buck communicating to people that I know what the gods think and I'm willing to tell you for a price and so Yahweh starts off the legislation in Deuteronomy 18 saying when you get in the land and you find all these people we're not gonna do it that way no I know that you want to know what's on the other side I know you want to hear from me I know you want to be able to predict the future but we're gonna do this a whole other way and the whole other way as we keep going with this passage is that I am actually going to speak to you directly now let's spend a little bit of time on what these other divine intermedia doing I study ancient texts I spend lots of time looking at the archive materials from Mari and what's going on in Babylon and what's going on in Egypt and there were whole career paths for divine intermediaries people would train their whole lives in order to step into a career that communicated the will of the gods to the kings of these other nations and the primary way that these guys interpreted the future to their audience were through something that we're gonna call omens and that would be the appropriate English term for it so what is an omen well an omen is anything that is perceived as foreshadowing the future anything that's perceived is foreshadowing the future now an omen can be casual or it can be contrived a casual omen is when you're at a church picnic and a huge flock of boat-tailed grackle x' comes flying through and it lands all over the picnic tables and all over the picnic baskets and they're everywhere and they're squawking and there's noise and then all of a sudden just as quickly as it came they all fly off and when they fly off we find out that sister smith has dropped to the ground and she's having a diabetic event and so everybody says oh my gosh if large flocks of boat El Greco's come flying through the church picnic someone might have a diabetic incident that's a casual omen for the ancients it often in fought involved things traumatic events certainly write a huge rainstorm or something like that but deformed fetuses were a regular so a farmer would go out and deliver a baby sheep and it had two heads and then he'd come back in his barn had burned down well go figure if you have a sheep with two heads then the barn burns down that's a casual omen what about a contrived omen well a contrived omen is when somebody actively solicits a predictive phenomenon how do you actively solicit well one way is incubation where someone who is a professional divine intermediary those in sleeps in a holy place do you remember the story of Samuel they go and sleep in a holy place and they ask the God to give them a dream another way is that you would read the stars yeah and you would determine what's gonna happen in the future by the way the planets and the stars align there's a very famous story about three guys coming out of Persia who used that method but the method that is all over the literature out of the ancient Near East is something called ecstasy that's a fancy word huh do you want to say it yeah okay you can take that one home and what ecstasy is is it's reading the entrails of a slaughtered animal yeah you thought you had a crummy job so these guys did reading the entrails of a slaughtered animal and specifically we read lungs and livers the idea is that you would take a ritual animal you know a perfect breeding Ram or some sort of bovine and you would bring the priests in and they would pray over the animal or do a ritual formula over the animal asking that the gods would write their will on the entrails of the animal then you slaughter the animal and then you pull out its entrails and you figure out what the gods have to say I don't know about you but this seems like a fairly complex way to figure out the will of God okay so the literature coming out of the ancient world is absolutely full of these omens and I had to translate hundreds of these to get my PhD you're looking at one right now that's coming out of John hyuna guards work and it reads like this Shuma Martin Mali Atma this is Akkadian Musa war qu rodham alack Shuma Martin Malik mamushka war ku rata Melek yes aren't you glad that you speak American English okay then this is transliterated it's not the Kanaya form which would make it way harder but these omens have the same sort of setup if so and so happens if a certain phenomenon then the resulting event and so this one reads if the gallbladder is full and it's liquid is yellow a cloudburst is coming so some poor animal gave its life for that like we couldn't just look at the clouds okay let's look at another one also Shuma Mitzi Libby Kay I won't read the whole thing for you but it reads if the right side of the heart is held by filaments the anger of the God against the man is not ended okay page after page actually I should say tablet after tablet after tablet of these in the ancient world and your job is a professional divine intermediary would be to memorize all of these things to learn the procedures and to figure out some way to make sure that the goal bladder you read says exactly what the king wants to hear that's your job so how common was this well you're looking at an image right now it's a little worn because you know it's 3,000 years old of an ancient priest and a worshipper and they have brought a breeding RAM for sacrifice and they're busy slitting open its gut to pull out its entrails so they can read the will of the gods it's everywhere and it goes well back into the third millennia this is how the ancients of Israel's world figured out what the gods had to say it was so common that they actually had she Sheetz you know like cliff notes versions of moby dick because you didn't actually want to have to read it this is a cliff note version of how to redeliver and how to redeliver there's Kanaya form all over this liver each quadrant of the liver has been identified and segmented off with notes as to how to read the thing so that you can predict the will of the gods now this sounds more than a little bit absurd to us yeah at least to me it does think about a particular story that you know coming out of numbers chapter 23 because you've actually been introduced to this you didn't know it and the people of God are moving up out of the wilderness wanderings they're coming north up the trans Jordanian plateau on the Kings Highway and they have to pass through Edom Moab and Amon do you remember the story and so you always says to them don't pick a fight just get on the highway pay the passage and let's get where we're going well they do that and they come all the way up to Moab and the king of Moab sees these guys in the highway and there's six hundred thousand of them and he's a little nervous so he says hmm I need to hire myself a divine intermediary to curse these people so I'm gonna go get a real famous guy his name is Balaam and I'm gonna hire him to curse this new community this new nation that's moving up through my turf and making me really nervous this is what's happening in numbers 32:23 now what you don't know is that Balaam was famous enough that he actually has inscriptions at a place named Eyre Allah coming out of the seventh century he was known to the ancient world not just to the Bible so he's a at least traditionally a very real guy and he's hired now if you know the story four different times Balaam attempts to curse Israel and four different times he fails and so finally he comes back to the king of Moab and he says I've tried four times and I can't find a curse what has he tried four times this is what he's tried four times on four different mountains he is sacrificed ritual animal and he has pulled out the entrails and he's tried to find a curse now do you really think you can't find a curse on that liver do you really think with all the gold bladders and lungs out there you can't find one nasty word about the Israelites only if a miracle is happening and so what happens is the Balaam comes back to the king of Moab and he says this which is such a powerful passage he says to the king and this is a very formal translation because it actually is coming from a Nasiri ologist lo o king of Moab there is no augury and jacob no divining in israel jacob is told at once yay Israel what God has wrought what he's saying is I've tried four different times to curse these people and apparently there's no divination in Israel apparently these people don't read lungs and livers apparently what happens in Israel is that their God actually speaks to them how cool is that and if you go back to Deuteronomy 18 you find out why that is because as the passage continues it says this rather than witches and mediums and diviners and passing your children to the fire rather Yahweh your God will raise up for you a prophet this is the theocratic office of Prophet like me Moses from among you from your countrymen and you will listen to him this is the role model for the office of the Prophet like Moses the Prophet actually steps into God's presence here's his word and reports it to the people now I talked about how ridiculous the lungs and livers sounded and for the longest time in my own studies it was ridiculous until I started thinking about the individual worshiper and thinking about this average everyday Mesopotamian farmer whose wife has been sick for months and months and months and so he goes and he gets his breeding Ram out of his flock an animal that in today's market would be three to five thousand dollars he brings it to the priests and he says I have to know the Wills the gods I have to know I got four kids at home I've got a farm I need her to live and he turns his breeding RAM over to the priests and they slaughter it and they keep it you can be sure and they pull out a gold letter and they say you didn't see a shadow I think your wife will live in six weeks you get the illusion - yeah horrible is that these guys are charlatans they're lying and this is the only means by which these people have access to their God where is an Israel's government and in God's kingdom it's the Word of God for the people of God thanks be to God I'll speak you'll hear and won't go forward you're never gonna have to guess what I have to say now we have to turn the page and ask the question how does this particular character get the message of God and the answer is that the Prophet has a very unique job description and again if you know Isaiah chapter 6 you already know about this job description because the ancients perceived that life in the heavens was a lot like life on Earth and they sort of projected their own world on to the heavenly beings and so there was a concept that there was a royal court in heaven that looked a lot like the royal court on earth and so in Canaan in particular the ideas that ail the High God was like the the big king the dad the patriarch of the clan and then his eldest son Bale was his right-hand man and then his daughter Astarte she was a warrior goddess and she hadn't settled down and gotten married yet but that's okay we're moving that direction and six seven eight more divine beings that would sit around the great conference table of the gods and the picture was almost like a really bad holiday meal you know where the family has erupted into an argument and everybody's yelling at each other and finally okay we'll do it that way and then the conference would end and then ale the great God would turn to the least superior person in the room I call it the rule of the remote control you who always has to get up and get the remote control and the answer is the youngest person in the room every single time okay so they would turn to the least deed at the table and they would say okay you bring our message to the human beings and this is recounted throughout the canaanite literature all right our God apparently condescends to this image and he allows Israel to think of his throne room like a royal court as well but just like everything else in Israelite religion he tilts it toward monotheism so what we see in the heavenlies is rather than a conference table with twelve deities sitting around the table arguing it out and looking for some poor Schmo to take the message down to the humans instead what we read is of God and throned upon his throne and upon his throne he deliberates and he decides and then when he's done deliberating and deciding he sends a messenger see the deal is that the Prophet was understood as a human who was caught up into the actual throne room of the Almighty and being caught up into that throne room he heard the message of the Lord and then like a diplomat who is sent from one royal to another he took that message didn't dare change it and brought it to the human king of Israel this is what a prophet is doing so standard prophet talked our words like thus says the Lord because you see the Prophet has actually stood in the divine counsel and heard the Word of God so he actually has the authority to say thus says the Lord or the word of Yahweh the Prophet is understood as the envoy of the Great King he is a mixture between Henry Kissinger and Billy Graham he's an evangelist he's a religious leader but he's also an extremely authoritative political character the Envoy of the great king and just like someone like Henry Kissinger if he decided to change the message in his hand before he reached the Allied royalty of the other country he would lose his job so to this profit he speaks only the word that he's heard now I told you you already knew this you just didn't know you knew it turning your Bibles to Isaiah chapter 6 and let's see what we've got here and Isaiah chapter 6 a passage that's very familiar the call narrative of our prophet listen to these words in the year of the death of King Uzziah I saw the Lord sitting it upon an exalted and elevated throne the skirt of his robe filling the temple what has happened is Isaiah having a vision yeah probably or has he been caught up in some form in to Yahweh's throne room I don't know which it is but Isaiah certainly thinks he's there there were Seraphim standing above the throne six wings belonging to each with to each one covered his face and with two they covered their feet and with two each one flew and one was calling to the other shouting holy holy holy is Yahweh of hosts his glory fills all the earth and the pivots of the thresholds trembled from the sound of the crying out and the temple / palace was filled with smoke and what does Isaiah say woe to me I cried I'm ruined fry my I'm a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips and my eyes have seen the king the Lord Almighty what is happening to Isaiah Isaiah like Jeremiah like my kaya been in lock like John the Revelator in chapter 4 the book of Revelation is being caught up into the very throne room of the Almighty so that he can hear in his own ears what the Word of God is and when he hears what the Word of God is what's his job to take that word and to report it to his audience does he change that word and not if he wants to live and what's the authority that he has because he's actually heard the Word of God and then the passage in verse nine then I heard the voice the Lord saying whom shall I send you hear it and who will go for us and Isaiah's in the back of the room going oh send me send me I will go okay last bit and we'll close down this lesson what else does the prophet do well as the messenger of the Great King the Prophet is also a bit of a federal lawyer diplomat evangelist lawyer and this guy actually brings the lawsuit of God against his people the prophetic lawsuit is a form that we find throughout the prophetic books but especially frequent in the Book of Isaiah Yahweh is suing his people on what grounds is he suing his people that they have failed to keep covenant and so especially in Chapter one that you're dealing with and your study guides this week we are hearing the language of the courtroom it's everywhere we're hearing a summons we're hearing accusations we're hearing the word again of a federal lawyer who is bringing a lawsuit against the people of God so the prophet in this story becomes Yahweh's litigator and comes with first warning then lawsuit and ultimately with judgment to speak to God's people about the fact that they have failed to keep the contract what's the contract it's the government and just like a federal lawyer takes the Constitution and bylaws and reapplies them to contemporary situations the Prophet takes the Constitution and bylaws ie the Covenant and reason re applies it to current situations and when he does this he brings first a summons then an accusation and then he pauses after his accusations with a lament you've actually got a handout among your materials that outlines this form now in any other courtroom if a lawyer was making an argument and winning his case would be a very rare thing for that lawyer to stop in the middle of his very effective argument turn to the side and start sobbing because the defendant is actually going to jail this is not a standard thing for you know like Tom Cruise and a few good men this is not the way you handle a courtroom but this is exactly what our prophets do over and over again because they actually love the defendant and their hearts are broken of the judgment to come and then they turn back and they finish the accusation in the lawsuit until the very last section of your handout there is a word of restoration again this is not what you would expect in a standard secular courtroom but this is the prophetic lawsuit now this brings us to our final word here I had already introduced to you that Isaiah chapter 1 is one of these prophetic lawsuits why is it the first chapter because it embodies the message of the book and in this first chapter are many lines and passages that you already know because the Prophet begins saying here o heavens and listen o earth for yahweh speaks sons i have reared and brought up but they revolted against me a stupid ox knows its owner a stubborn donkey its master's manger but israel doesn't know my people do not understand so this is the summons in the accusation he goes on to list their crimes a sinful nation people weighed down with iniquity their evildoers they act correctly they've abandoned Yahweh their God and then he turns to his lament but your land is desolate your cities are burned with fire your fields strangers are devouring them in your presence I didn't want it to come to this and then the Prophet concludes with his hope for restoration come now to hear it come now and let us reason together says Yahweh though your sins are as scarlet they can be as white as snow if you will relent then I will restore Zion can be redeemed with justice and her repentant ones with righteousness guys this is the opening message of our book this is the opening oracle of isaiah this is the prophetic lawsuit yahweh stands in the heavenlies suing his people hoping that the mouth of Yahweh the Prophet himself will be able to scare these people into repentance and yet warning them that if they don't repent literally all hell is going to break loose this is the office of the Prophet

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Keywords: Seedbed, Christianity, Asbury Theological Seminary, Sandra Richter, Isaiah, Bible Study, Isaiah Bible Study, Religion, Faith, Jesus, Jesus Christ, Bible, Scripture

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Length: 34min 9sec (2049 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 24 2017