Well, we are in Learn the Bible in 24 Hours as
our project. And we are in Hour 11 where we’re going to do a quick survey of the Major Prophets.
And Isaiah, of course, is the first, the largest. When they say Major Prophets, by the way, I
should point out to you that’s not because they’re more important, it’s a misleading
label. It’s a label of a librarian. Just means these books are the larger ones. There are 5 Major Prophets
and there are 12 so called Minor Prophets. That just means they're small books. Some of the most interesting prophesies, some
of the most important ones are in the Minor Prophets. So don’t let that … labeling fool you. Isaiah is well known as the Messianic prophet. There is more stuff in his book ab- that anticipates
the Messiah in both His roles. Not only is the suffering servant in His
First Advent, but also when He comes in power and glory in the Second Advent. Jeremiah is the next of the major prophets
and he really focuses on the Divine Judgment upon the Nation. Not just the nation of Israel but the nations
plural. And, he has a very grim tale and he’s
also known as the weeping prophet because he had to in effect preside over a nation
that was disintegrating. Ezekiel is the next of the Major Prophets,
who focuses on the Coming Restoration of Israel. And he wrote of course during the Babylonian
captivity but focuses attention … focuses attention on the ultimate destiny of Israel. One of the great tragedies in the Christian
church is a broad illiteracy among Christians about God’s program for Israel. God is not finished with Israel as many people teach.
But He … they have an incredible climax forthcoming and Ezekiel is among the many
that talk about that. Daniel is another of the Major
Prophets, but we’ve already covered him because half his book is historical and we used that
as our excuse to cover it in depth already. So we really have Isaiah, Jeremiah and
Ezekiel to focus on. You may notice ... just to make a comment ...
to help you be sensitive to when I have something on the screen that’s from the Old Testament
it’ll show in the little scrolls typically, and if it’s a New Testament it’s in
a … in a vellum or in a what purports to be a codex. And, as we pop from Old to New Testament
that’ll make you sensitive, I think, to where that quote is coming from. But, as you may recall from our review
of the historical books, the … after Solomon died there was a civil war and we had the
nation divided. In the southern kingdom, Judah, and the northern kingdom calling itself the
house of Israel. And, the southern kingdom ultimately goes
into the Babylonian captivity and, the prophets that we’re going to be talking
about Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel are, the major ones that we’re focusing on. Isaiah really administered during
the kings of, kingdom of Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah all the way to Manasseh. He’s contemporaneous with them. Jeremiah starts in the days of Josiah and continues
right into the Babylonian captivity through Josiah, Johoiahas, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin,
and Zedekiah. Now, Daniel, of course, writes during
the Babylonian captivity and beyond. And Ezekiel is ... Daniel’s transported,
to Babylon as a teenager in the first siege of Nebuchadnezzar and Ezekiel in the
second. And so that’s ... the focus thus of
these Major Prophets is primarily the southern kingdom and, all the way from Jotham through ...
into the Babylonian captivity. So let’s get into Isaiah. Isaiah is quoted in the New Testament more
than any other single prophet. And, Jesus quotes most from Deuteronomy
as any book but, the 2 testament writers in general quote more from Isaiah than any
of the others. He has a style that is very lofty, very majestic. He had, the … in terms of
vocabulary. His vocabulary rivals that of Shakespeare
and Milton who were known as having the largest English vocabularies. Very lofty style and, loftier than
Shakespeare, Milton or Homer and some of the other literary greats. One of the greatest discoveries of the Dead
Sea Scrolls was a complete copy of the book of Isaiah. And, you know in 1947 at Qumran - that's
a place about 7 miles south of Jericho, they discovered all kinds of very precious documents. But probably one of the greatest of all the
discoveries was Isaiah. And what made the … cause they had … they found a complete scroll. Usually we have fragments here and there of various things. This was a complete scroll of Isaiah. And the
remarkable discovery was that it wasn’t changed. The astonishing thing is, with the exception
I think of half a dozen single letters, the entire scroll is identical to the ones
that we’ve had before this discovery. And this is dated by the experts
to be about 200 BC. It is the most recent copy that
is complete. And the fact that it’s unchanged
is an incredible testimony to the diligence and the discipline of the scribes. Because what they would do is when they copied
… bear in mind, they didn’t have copiers. They didn’t have printing. Everything was hand copied over, of course. And so as they copied a page, they would then
sum … all the letters have numerical values. They’d sum the page and if it didn’t agree
with the page they copied, they didn’t correct it. They burned it and started over. In other words, page by page they had to be perfect. And the rigors of the scribes is what ...
the result of all that is a very faithful, copying, a very faithful continuing
of the text until printing, of course, was available. So, the Qumran discovery really
endorses the accuracy of the Bible that we have. Now Isaiah’s whole life was spent under
the shadow of the threatening Assyrian power. He was a young man. Assyria carried away the northern
kingdom, the kingdom of Israel. We’re focusing, of course, on the southern
kingdom but, Assyria is the big power and, so the northern kingdom
was not just deported … it disappeared because the Assyrians had a policy of taking
their captives and spreading them out through the empire. Forcing people to change regions and to ...
literally, to break up dynasties and so forth. And so, he also witnessed the ruin of
the southern kingdom also, the entire nation except for Jerusalem. And
see in about a few years after the northern kingdom fell, 46 walled cities of Judah
were destroyed and 200,000 captives were taken to Assyria also. So there … they had … they suffered there. And, the grand achievement of Isaiah’s
life was when the Assyrians were stopped at the walls of Jerusalem. They'd captured all these other cities
but, they literally were stopped by an angel of God. One night after dinner, one angel slaughtered
185,000 Syrian troops. And Sennacherib retreated never again to try
that again. So, he learned his lesson, in effect. So they were stopped ... rather dramatically. And so, Sennacherib, even 20 years
later, never again came against Jerusalem. So, the principal message of Isaiah is
judgment, for lack of loyalty and their sin in the country. He nevertheless focuses
on the coming restoration of the nation. So, on the one hand, many of the prophets hammer
away at the sinfulness … sinfulness of the nation and the dire consequences
thereof, but many of them also focused on God’s ultimate restoration of the … of the land. But one of the things that Isaiah particularly
emphasizes is the coming Messiah. And that it will come … the Messiah will
come through the House of David. And … there are a number of
style items that we should be sensitive to as we study Isaiah. One of the things you’ll encounter is what
some scholars call telescoping perspectives. It’s as if they have lenses
of different focal lengths. They’ll always typically put together 2
prophecies, one near and one far, and part of that is for the perspective of the
topic they’re dealing with and part of it is a form of authentication. When the first thing comes true, it tends
to build confidence that the second one will, if you will. So there are many prophecies that are sort
of double references. And we need to be sensitive to that. Often the prophet will be dealing with something
local and as he talks about something local, the language will go far beyond the local
thing and give us insights that are far more profound. We need to be sensitive to that. It’s almost like he has a zoom lens, if you will. And, so another thing you’ll notice
in prophecy in general, in Isaiah particularly, along the way there will be little treasures
dropped by the wayside. Little incidental insights en route to the
main point he's making. Little side comments that turn out to be incredibly
profound. They’re little encouragements in my
mind every time you see one of those. Now the highlights of the book, of course,
the Messianic prophecies is exceeded only by the Psalms. The Psalms, of course, are full of
Messianic prophecies. One of the things he does early in the book ...
he has … he is treated in chapter 6 to a vision of the throne of God. Now we read that in the Bible sort of, you
know, sort of take it for granted. Its rather staggering even for a prophet to actually
be granted an opportunity to behold the throne room of the universe. And, we see it in Isaiah 6. We’ll find it in Ezekiel 1 and 10. We find it in Revelation chapter 4 and following, these are interesting passages that are worthy of very careful study. The other thing that Isaiah focuses on is the incarnation of Jesus Christ and that’s why Isaiah ... I often facetiously say
that Handel wrote the book of Isaiah. And, of course, I’m kidding,
of course, because … but so much of Handel’s Messiah and his things come, of course, out,
literally word for word, out of Isaiah. One of the things that both Isaiah and Jeremiah
talk about that’s going to be very important to you and me is the Doom of Babylon. They both talk, both Isaiah and Jeremiah talk
about the Destruction of Babylon which did not happen historically. Many of your Bible helps unfortunately are
in error. Babylon was conquered by the Persians back
in 539 but without a battle. And even as late as the 1800s AD the
... it’s still there ... there’s still people living there. Even though
it’s been eclipsed by other ... caravan routes and so forth. But the Bible talks about a dramatic catastrophic
destruction of the city on the banks of Euphrates that merits our attention, because if
we’re correct in our perceptions here, there are things going on in your daily newspaper
that are pointing to a direction that is forthcoming that both Isaiah and
Jeremiah talk a great deal about. So the Doom of Babylon will be a major topic. The other thing that Isaiah highlights is
the fall of Lucifer. Where did Satan come from? What’s he all about? Is that just an idiom of English literature
or is he a real living being? Indeed he is. And, you want to understand that. We've talked about the letter to Cyrus already.
That’s in the book, but it’s one of the dramatic elements of it. The Messiah and His Atonement we’ll talk
about in chapter 53. Some people call that passage the Holy of
Holies of the Old Testament. Incredible passage both in its scope and its
reach, but also in some of the treasures that are hidden underneath the text. And we’ll
show you some of those. And then, of course, the book closes near the
end with the second coming of Jesus Christ and it talks about His blood stain approach and
then most of what we know about the millennium. Jesus is actually going to rule the planet earth
from Jerusalem for a thousand years. There’s a particular thousand year
period that’s mentioned in the book of Revelation, but most of what we know about that period
does not come from Revelation 20, it comes from Isaiah 65 and 66. The last 2
chapters of Isaiah. And we’re going to take a little addendum. We’re going to talk a little bit about the
so called 2 Isaiah’s. And that whole issue. But it’s interesting ... getting back,
there was a plot against the throne of Rezin the king of Syria and Pekah
the king of Israel, the northern kingdom. They mount an expedition to depose Ahaz, the
king of the southern, the king of Judah. And place a son of Tabeal on the throne
of Judah. Now, this gets thwarted fortunately. They were literally going to
try to wipe out the house of David. Now that’s pretty foolish if you understand
the house of David has been supernaturally ordained and protected by God against all
kinds of assaults. And so this is obviously ill fated. It’s well known to students of cryptography
because in Isaiah chapter 7 there’s some cryptography hidden under the text that reveals
what the plot … what would have happened if it … what they were planning to do if
they had won. So it’s an interesting study and I won’t
bore you with the details of that except to highlight that it’s there. But there was an attempt to make a full end
of the house of David. But it would not come to pass as (laughs)
Isaiah summarizes. But it leads to an incident where the ... through Isaiah he says to Ahaz, the king even that … although the plot has been foiled
he says, “Ask thee a sign of the Lord thy God. Ask it either in the depth or the height above.” Can you imagine getting that opportunity? The prophet of God comes to you as the king
and says, “Hey, it’s a challenge. Ask a sign, whatever you can think of.” But Ahaz isnt interested in doing that. He says, “I will not ask neither will I
tempt the Lord.” And he said, “Hear me now, O house of David.” This is Isaiah speaking for the Lord. “Hear ye now, O house of David.” He shifts now from Ahaz to the whole house
of David. So this sign even though Ahaz wasn’t gonna
play ball here, Isaiah gives it to him anyway and the focus is an assurance to
the whole house of David. It’s a very profound thing coming here. He said, “Hear ye now, O house of David;
Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will ye weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself shall give you
a sign; Behold, the virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” Your English translation may say a virgin. There’s the ha in the … in the Hebrew. In the Hebrew it’s ha alma which is
a word that means a virgin. Now some skeptics will quibble and say, “Well
that word can under certain conditions also simply mean a young maid.” Well that’s pretty silly in the first place
because he says the Lord is going to give you a sign. Behold a young girl is gonna have a baby. That’s a sign you know. No, the context clearly demands the denotative use of that term. But just to clar … clarify that, 3 centuries
before the birth of Christ the best Hebrew scholars available translated this into Greek. And they used the word Parthenos which is
a virgin, an unmarried girl. And in the Greek it’s very precise, unambiguous,
that’s what it means. Therefore the Lord himself shall give you
a sign. Behold a virgin or the virgin shall conceive
and bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel. Now and so, of course, this is all familiar
to you. We always celebrate this
around Christmas time. Christmas has got nothing to do with the birth
of Christ but we celebrate it at that time. It’s not Biblical but we won’t go down
that path here. But we find a lot from Isaiah in our Christmas
cards and elsewhere. In Isaiah 9:6 you've all heard this. “For unto us a child is born, unto us a
son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called
Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace
there shall be no end, upon the throne of, upon the throne of David, and upon his
kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth
even forever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform
this.” Boy, that's quite, quite a passage. Now notice verse 6. Let’s go back here. You’ve heard this verse many times but you
may not have realized that the child is born is a human. The son that is given is God. This is in that verse is included an attribute
of the unique identity of Jesus Christ. Both man and God in 1 person. And that, of course, we know that doctrine doesn’t
hang on this verse alone as, as it ... but it just ... It’s again, you know, supportive of that. And, his name shall be called Wonderful. You may recall back in Judges 13 when Manoah
had a strange visitor that … was … that was announcing that their child was going to be
Samson. As he says “Who am I speaking with?” He said, “My name is Wonderful.” (laughs) Well, that, you see, is an adjective. He’s using it as a proper noun. Who do you think that person was? Well I would argue from that, he identified
himself with Isaiah 9:6. ... a pre-incarnate appearance of
Jesus Christ. But anyway, of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David. Did the throne of David exist during the days
of Mary and Joseph on the planet earth? No. Rome was ruling things and they appointed
an Edomite. An Edomite is the traditional enemy of Israel. There’s a whole study of Edom you need to do,
but, he was an Edomite, Herod and the throne of David was
not operative. Did Jesus Christ ever sit on the throne of
David? Not yet. Is He sitting on it now? No, He’s sitting on His Father’s throne. You see the book of Revelation's all about
things out of place. You see Israel is not in the land. It needs to be in the land. Jesus is not on His throne. He’s on His Father’s throne. And the woman in chapter 12 or excuse me the,
the … they’re not … woman in chapter 12 is not in the land. And, the church is on the earth but should
be in heaven. So all those things get adjusted in the
book of Revelation. So … but we move on here. When you get to the passage in Isaiah
that some scholars call the Holy of Holies, we’ll call it chapter 53 although I want
to highlight something else here. Many times ... you have to remember the chapter
divisions were added in the 13th century and, they’re very helpful, but you should
also be sensitive to the fact that sometimes the chapters start too early or too late. Often there’s a very key part of a chapter
that really is the last verse or 2 or 3 of the previous chapter. And conversely some major passages start a
little after. So you should be … just don’t take … recognize
the chapter divisions are convenience but not necessarily inspired. So chapter 53 in a sense starts with chapter
52 and the last couple of verses. And, uh, it is an astonishing passage that,
uh, uh, in this quick survey there some places that we will stop and read it verse by verse
because they’re so significant and we’ll, uh, do that here. In Isaiah 52 verse 13 Isaiah writes “Behold,
my servant shall deal prudently, he shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high.” And indeed he will be very high. He was lifted up on a cross and Jesus makes
that point in John 3 speaking of an analogy with a serpent, uh, uh, the [rise 00:20:46]
in serpent and so forth. But then there’s a verse, verse 14 is a
verse that the King James translators didn’t feel you can handle. So they worded it not to be incorrect but
unless you look very carefully you won’t understand what it’s really saying. “As many were astonished at thee; his visage
was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men.” What that exactly alluding to is that the
abuse that Jesus Christ suffered at the cross and pri- just prior being put on the cross
was so abusive that he no longer looked human. He was so disfigured, so abused. We … I think our indebted to Mel Gibson’s
book of, uh, movie the Passion because I, I think there’s many things to commend it. Uh, that’s a very useful thing. I know some people are critical of certain
subtleties. I think that’s quibbling. I think he’s done us all a gigantic favor
for lots of reasons. Not the least of which you can open a conversation
with any stranger. “Hey have you seen the Passion?” No matter what the answer is you got a conversation
going. But the one thing … there’s 2 things that
Mel couldn’t do. Um, one is he couldn’t really communicate
who he was. See the crucifixion was not a tragedy. It was an achievement. But that’s too complex to try to do in a
film, uh, mission really. The second thing he couldn’t do … didn’t
do anyway is to carry it all the way. If you think that was tough, if he had been
even more accurate, it would have even been more shocking. And we have materials on that the agony of
love and so forth. I … I’ll leave that here just as a passing
mark. Let’s go on. Then we get “So shall he sprinkle many nations;
the kings shall shut their mouths at him: for that which had not been told them shall
they see; and that which they had not heard shall they consider.” And then we’re in the body of Isaiah 53
as it’s commonly known. “Who hath believed our report? To whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender
plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and we (clears
throat) and when we shall see him … and when we shall see him, there is no beauty
that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man
of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was
despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried
our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. He was wounded for our transgressions, he
was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes
we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have
turned everyone to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. Let’s go back and take a look at that. Notice how often we are in antithesis, he
and us. “He is despised and rejected of men; a man
of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. We hid as it were our faces from him; he was
despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried
our sorrows: yet we did esteem him s- stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.” See the antithesis going on here. “He was wounded for our transgressions,
he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes
we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have
turned everyone to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” See the substitution here. It’s clearly He was in our place and Isaiah
nails this probably with more precision than all of Paul’s epistles put together. But going on. “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep
before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment:
and who shall declare his generation? For he was cut off out of the land of the
living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken. And he made his grave with the wicked, and
with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in
his mouth. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he
hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see
his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his
hand.” One of the most astonishing prophesies in
the book of Isaiah. Well known to any serious student of the Bible. But I’ll tell you something that may surprise
you. It isn’t fulfilled yet. That should shock you. I thought this was fulfilled at the cross. In a sense it was, in a sense it wasn’t,
because what’s being recorded here is Israel’s awakening to that. This gets fulfilled when they confess their
iniquities as … Hosea 5:15. This is the awareness that God is seeking
in the nation at the national level as a prerequisite to the second coming. And we’ll see that when we get to the book
of Hosea in the next session. Continuing in this chapter though. “He shall see of the travail of his soul,
and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he
shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide him a portion with
the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his
soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and bare the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.” He prayed for those that were with Him. So. 12 key points here. He comes in absolute lowliness. A root out of a dry ground. He was despised and rejected of men. He suffered for sins and in the place of others. Who … What others? You and me. God Himself caused the suffering to be vicarious. He had absolute resignation. He opened not his mouth and so forth. He died as a felon from prison and from judgment
it says. He was cut off prematurely out of the land
of the living. He was personally guiltless. No violence or deceit in His mouth. He was to live on after His sufferings to
prolong His days and Yahweh as most people would say it or Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh, as some rabbis
would say. His pleasure would prosper in His hand and
there will be mighty triumph after His suffering He would divide the spoil and by all
this God would justify many. Praise God for that. Isaiah 53. Let me tell you now ... behind this
text are some surprises. Setting aside for a minute its lofty message,
let’s take a look underneath it. You'll find that encrypted in these 12 verses are all kinds of other words. Yoshua is My name is encrypted there, His
signature. Messiah, Nazarene, Galilee, Shiloh which is
a Messianic phrase. Pharisee, Levites, Caiaphas, Annas, Passover,
the man Herod, wicked Caesar perish, the evil Roman city. Let him be crucified is there … the very
quote they used. Moriah, cross, and on it
goes. Atonement Lamb, bread, wine, Obed, Jessie,
seed, water, Jonah all red words. Now there’s more. That’s just the warm up. You’ll find the phrase the disciple’s
mourn encrypted there, and then you find 40 names encrypted in those 12 verses of the
people that were at the foot of the cross. You got Peter, Matthew, John, Andrew, Philip,
Thomas and 2 James’s. There were 3 James’s but James the
brother of Christ did not become a believer until after the resurrection. And Simon, Thaddeus, Matthias there were 3
Mary’s. One of them is encrypted entangled with John
by the way and Salome and Joseph. Now that’s astonishing on the one hand, but
tell … let me tell you something that’s even more astonishing. Some people would argue “Well that just
happens by the frequency of alphabets in large texts.” We’re not talking about large texts. We’re talking about 12 verses, and we’re
talking about highly relevant accidents here. But there is a word that ... is composed
of 4 Hebrew letters that are very high frequency. Which means that that particular word
would be intrinsically it would show up in any large Hebrew text because of the frequency
of those 4 letters. And you would expect statistically to show
up at least once in this 12 verses. It shows up. It’s conspicuous in its absence. And
that name is Judas. Let’s move on. In Isaiah 61 there’s an interesting verse
that Jesus Himself reads when He opens His ministry. When He goes … when He’s at the synagogue
in Nazareth in Luke chapter 4. He is handed the book of Isaiah and He finds
this place and He reads this to them. And when He reads it, He announces this is
hereby fulfilled in your ears. Those were … here’s what Jesus read and
you’ll find this in Luke 4 and also its, its passage here in Isaiah 61 verses 1
and 2. “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me;
because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me
to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of
the prison to them that are bound. And to proclaim the acceptable year of the
Lord.” He shuts the book and declares “This day
is this passage fulfilled in your ears.” Now they subsequently get upset and try to
throw Him off cliff. I won’t go down that path right now but,
this is His mandate. Jesus opens His ministry announcing this mandate
from Isaiah 61 but this is one of those lessons. The reason I’m making an emphasis ... it’s
important for a lot of reasons, but also I want you to pick up some methodology. Always pay attention to what’s not said
and pay attention to the subtleties because the truth is always in the details. You notice "to proclaim the acceptable year
of the Lord" in your English translation you find a comma. Right? He stopped at the comma. He didn’t read the rest of it. Well, I’m curious about the part He didn’t
read. If you go to Isaiah 61 verse 1 and 2 you’ll
discover this is what He read except the part He omitted "and the day of vengeance of our
God" and He goes on. You see, that part was not fulfilled in their
ears while they stood there. Will it be? Absolutely. That comma after the word Lord has lasted
for about 2000 years, but it’s coming. I think you may have seen sometimes people
put a bumper sticker on "Jesus is coming soon, and boy is He angry." (laughs) And so irreverent perhaps but
it has a scriptural basis, because He’s coming in power to make, make the right … wrong
things right and so forth. And so, I think that’s instructive. Well let me comment and you … there’s
so much ... we can spend a whole year just studying Isaiah. It’s very frustrating just
to try to pick a few highlights. But there is something I do want
you to understand. There are ... I'll call them pseudo scholars
that claim there’s 2 Isaiah’s. I remember when I was an emerging teenager
very excited about the Bible. I ran into these doctrines and they really
set me back for a while. I didn’t really buy them, and yet they bothered
me. See the idea is, is that, they … Isaiah has been broken up into 66 chapters just as we have 66 books in the Bible. And what you’ll notice is the first 39 chapters
have a certain style. And from chapter 40 on it seems to shift rather
noticeably even in the translation. So some say the first 39 chapters really
were written by what they call Isaiah 1. That was a different writer, an earlier
writer. And he spo- ... the subject of Isaiah
1 is the day of the Lord and it focuses on Judah, Israel, the nations and Jerusalem. And then there’s a 4 chapter historical
addendum. Study of Hezekiah and how they foolishly,
... get themselves exposed to the threat of Babylon and so on. From chapter 40 through 66, they call that
… that was written by a different Isaiah. That was Isaiah 2 we'll call him. And that deals with the suffering servant and
the consummation and so forth. People have noted that such a different style
in the 2 and so they say there were 2 Isaiah’s. And that always bothered me. You know you've got people that think there’s 5
different authors to the book, you know, to Genesi- ... to the Torah, the so called documentary
hypothesis. All that is nonsense. All of that is easily shredded by good
scholarship doing a little homework. But you don’t need to because Jesus authenticated
the Torah. You can throw all that nonsense
away. That’s liberal foolishness. Tragic ... undermining of the fai- ... of people’s faith. Well the deutero Isaiah theory you’ll find
in many so called Bible helps. And I never bought it but it always bothered
me cause it lurks there all the time. And I am so grateful … so grateful for my friend
John. The fallacy, by the way, can be argued
from stylistic distinctives. It’s refuted by careful study of style,
images, vocabulary, construction which span both of those books … both parts of the
books I should say. And people who argue there’s 2 Isaiah’s
betray the fact that they don’t understand the organization of the book. There’s the … if they comprehend
the whole design, you’ll recognize it’s a single book. But also when it was translated into Greek
there is ascriptions to it and so forth. And you can also … see some try
to argue that one of the … half the book was written after the exile and all that,
because Isaiah … see Isaiah predicts the Destruction of Babylon. What makes that provoc- and he’s writing
at a time that Babylon hasn’t even ridden … risen up as an empire yet. He’s writing before Babylon conquers Assyrian
becomes an empire. But he writes about how it’s going to be destroyed. Well they couldn’t have done it, it must have been
written later. That’s the skeptic's approach. Well actually there o- there are pre-exile
quotations all through the scripture. And, so, but anyway, ... but there’s
also New Testament quotations. They're the ones that interest me. John ... I’m so indebted to John. In John chapter 12 on verse 38, John quotes
from Isaiah in verse 38 of chapter 12. He says, “That the saying of Isaiah the
prophet might be fulfilled, which he spake, Lord, who hath believed our report? To whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed?” That sound familiar to you? Sure. He’s quoting from Isaiah 53 verse 1. Right? Well a few verses later he quotes from Isaiah
again. He says, “He hath blinded their eyes, and
hardened their heart; that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their
heart, and be converted, that I should heal them. These things said Isaiah, when he saw his
glory, and spake of him.” John is quoting here from Isaiah chapter 6. In Isaiah chapter 6 Isaiah sees the throne
of God and in that passage he talk … he explains why some people don’t believe cause
God has blinded their hearts, blinded their eyes, hardened their heart that they should
not see with their eyes nor understand with their heart or be converted and I should heal
them. These things … there’s a reason it gets
… and we won’t go to the whole story there. But the point is, John is quoting then from
Isaiah 6 verse 9 and verse ... verse 9 and verse 10, okay? We together so far? The exciting discovery is there is a verse
39 between verse 38 and 40. And I’m not being facetious. It’s a treasure because John says after quoting from Isaiah 2, if you will, IIa- the second Isaiah, Isaiah 53. “Therefore they could not believe, because
that Isaiah said again.” And he quotes from Isaiah 6. He quotes from Isaiah 53. He quotes from Isaiah 6 and links them as
being written by the same Isaiah. So if these scholars that get their PhD’s
and H2SO4s from their seminary are correct, John is wrong. I bet on John, okay? See, this linkage of the 2 Isaiahs is
precious to me because its another example of several things. There is no heresy, there is no false doctrine. There is no weird off the wall idea that isn’t
anticipated in the scripture. You’ll find the subtlest little things tucked
around. You’ll discover that they’re planted there
by the Holy Spirit to refute some nonsense that someone will come up with in the future. And this deutero Isaiah thing is shredded by
little … one little verse. Verse 39 of John 12. I’m so (laughs) I’m so grateful for that
cause I remember the grief that I had as a teenager for many years until I discovered
this to put away this nonsense about the deutero Isaiah. Well let’s look the panorama of history
of course. We’ve gone through this with Abraham all
the way through and so forth. And we’re now focusing on the exile. And, literally up to the exile that
Babylonian captivity and the major prophets start in the middle of the monarchy and go
into the, but not through the end of the Babylonian captivity except for Daniel. Daniel does and the minor prophets, of course,
start earlier and go later. So the minor prophets even though they’re
smaller books cover a larger span of history. And, they also, ... we’re going to … we’ve been dealing with Isaiah. Now let’s get down here and take a look
at Jeremiah. Who officiates, so to speak, in the final days of the monarchy
before it goes into the Babylonian captivity. And so he’s known as the weeping prophet. He was commissioned in chapter 1 and
then he has a bunch of prophecies that before the fall of Jerusalem. The first chapters 2 through
20 are undated. They aren’t specific. They’re not … by the way, they’re not
necessarily in chronological order. There’s a whole thing there, I’ll
spare you right now. But, there are a handful of them that are
specific and very dated for some reasons, that deal with the last 4 of Judah's kings. You understand, there were about 9 different
dynasties in the northern kingdom but there’s only 1 dynasty in the southern kingdom, the
dynasty of David. You should need to keep that in ... need to understand that. You can’t properly explain the history of
any nation if you leave God out of the picture. And corrupt leadership inoculates the
whole nation with moral poison. And the inward failure ultimately issues forth in national sin. And that’s exactly the proforma of the
nation that Jeremiah is overseeing. And it’s a traffic tale. And if you go through our commentaries - the
ones that we did some years ago - you may even hear me weep on it. It’s tough stuff because as you go
through that, you can’t help but see some parallels with our own nation. But in any case … there are also prophecies
from chapter 40 to 44. Prophecies after the fall of Jerusalem where’s off … carried
off to Egypt, continues writing. Then there’s a whole bunch of prophecies
included upon the gentile nations; Egypt, the Philistines, Moab, Ammon, Edom, Damascus,
Elam by Persia. He also talks about the Doom of Babylon and
we’ll talk more about that before it’s all over. And of course finally Jerusalem is overthrown. The weeping prophet, he’s one of the bravest,
tenderest, most pathetic figures in history 'cause he was a patriot as well as a prophet. He cared about his nation. And that makes it painful. He ministered for over 40 years about 80 years
after Isaiah under 2 kings. The most tragic national record ever written. And in 40 years he never received a grateful
response from anyone. Thrown in dungeons, prison. They felt his writings were treasonous. They didn’t repent, obviously, and so forth. And one of the questions as you study Jeremiah,
and I encourage you to do that, is to see if you think there’s any parallels to
our own predicament. I’ll give you 1 quote from it and it sort
of captures his mood. Chapter 9 verse 1 he says, “Oh that my
head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night
for the slain of the daughter of my people!” This is his mood. This is his … in fact there’s an acrostic poem added to his book called Lamentations. Basically an acrostic poem, amplifying
all this. There was another weeping prophet that wept
over Jerusalem while riding a donkey. In Matthew … it closes Matthew chapter
23. Jesus Himself said, “Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem thou that killest the prophets,
and stonest them that are sent to thee, how often I would gather thy children together,
even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth,
until ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.” Here you have the purpose of all history. How I would have gathered the children together
as the hen gathered chickens. That was the purpose of all history. The tragedy of all history - ye would not. He came and ... they received Him
not. But the triumph of all history is that He
… there will be a day when they will say blessed is He that … cometh in the
name of the Lord. And they will achieve that destiny that God has specified all through
the Old Testament and the New. Well some highlights. There are a lot of key themes in Jeremiah. The process for Divine Judgment in National
Life is the overriding theme and the whole theme is that God has not abandoned His Throne.
And neither has He abandoned His people. Jerusalem I will punish but I will restore. That’s basically His message. And He ... precisely specifies the
7 year captivity. In fact, its Daniel reading chapter 25 of Jeremiah
that realizes as a captive in Babylon it’s about over. Jeremiah said it would be 70 years. It turns out it was 70 years to the very day. But something very important that we learn
from Daniel, I'll remind you. When Daniel discovers the end is about near,
he doesn’t say, “Man, isn’t that neat?” Put his feet up on the desk and relax. He goes to prayer. If you knew that God was coming back, if the
Lord, with rapture of the church or whatever was happening, you know, by the
first of March, what would you do? Man, ... oh boy, He’s coming! No, that means you got … just … that’s
the time to get into serious prayer. Prayer is God’s way of enlisting you in
what He’s doing. And that’s exactly what Daniel did when
he read Jeremiah and discovered the pres- the precision that the … or took advantage
… took for granted the precision that was there. And Jeremiah also talks about the New Covenant. He gives the name to the New Testament. We call it the New Testament which is a strange
term cause His testament is like a will and testament. Someone's death and, of course, that’s
part of it, but the New Covenant's probably more descriptive and that really comes out of Jeremiah
31 - the whole idea of a New Covenant. And, then the Doom of Babylon, of course,
is the topic I've mentioned. There’s another verse that many people don’t
really understand in Jeremiah 22 closing the chapter verse 30 of chapter 22. By the time you get there, God has had it with
these kings. The northern kingdom went from bad to worse
and they’re gone. But the southern kingdom was not much better. They had a few exceptions come along. Josiah, Hezekiah and a few others but, from thereon its downhill after Josiah. In fact it gets so bad under Jeconiah that
God pronounces a blood curse on he and his descendants. And if you look at Jeremiah 22 verse 30 “Thus
sayeth the Lord, Write this man childless, a man that shall not prosper in his days:
for no man of his seed shall prosper, sitting upon the throne of David, and ruling any more
in Judah.” Here’s a curse on Jeconiah. Okay, he blew it. Bad news. But notice what God has done. He’s pronounced a curse on the line descending
from Jeconiah. Whenever I get into this topic, I always can’t
resist visualizing that when that happened in the councils of Satan they probably had
a party, because I’m sure they were convinced God had shot Himself in the foot as we might
say. That ... because He’s … God
has committed Himself to a Messiah coming from the line of David. This is the Davidic line and if there’s
a curse on it, how’s He going to have a Messiah? And as I visualize that imaginary thought,
I visualize God turning to the angels and saying, “Watch this one!” As you go through your Bible, when you get
to the New Testament. You get to Luke. Luke gives you a different genealogy than
Matthew does. Matthew gives you the legal line from Abraham
down through Joseph, the legal father of Jesus Christ - not the blood father though. Luke being a doctor is interested in His humanity
goes from Adam to Abraham. From Abraham to David they’re identical. But at David, Luke takes a left turn. Doesn’t go through Solomon the first
surviving son of Bathsheba. He goes through the second son ... the second surviving son of Bathsheba, a guy by the name of Nathan. Not Nathan the prophet, another Nathan I believe,
and to Mary. And so here … Jesus Christ is in … has
entitlement to the throne through Joseph His legal father. He also has entitlement through Heli through
the provision in the Torah for the daughters of Zelophahad and so those are things that ... it's ... it's always exciting
to me to see how this all ties together. It’s interesting in its own right, but it’s
also interesting from a methodological point of view. Cause if you stand back from the Bible and
look at the whole package, you discover that every detail is skillfully designed to fit
together. There’s nothing in there irrelevant. And that’s a challenge to find some things
that, what’s that there for? Study it cause it’ll … behind that question
will be a treasure, a discovery. And it always does. Well the Doom of Babylon. I think I’ve covered
this before, but we’ll talk more about it before it’s all over anyway. Destruction of Babylon according to Isaiah
13 and 14 and Jeremiah 50 and 51 is that it’s never to be ... re-inhabited. It’ll never … the building materials
will never be reused, and it’ll be destroyed like Sodom and Gomorrah. That has never happened. It has been inhabited. The building materials are presently being reused. It has never been destroyed catastrophically
and finally as Sodom and Gomorrah has. Both Jeremiah and Isaiah emphasize that. The Fall of Babylon 539 that some of your Bible
helps say fulfilled that is not true. Cause it, it fell without a battle. It became Alexander’s capital. It was the Persian capital for 2 centuries
and … a Greek capital following that. It atrophied over the centuries, but its presently
being rebuilt. And one of the things you want to watch, because if we understand our
Bible correctly, this fabled city from the Tower of Babel far onward is … has a destiny
to rise again as a major world power to receive the judgment that God has in store for. And as you watch that happen, it’s going to
be very fun because a lot of good Bible scholars don’t agree with this. They say Chuck … you're getting carried away with
all this. Well, we’ll see. Stand back and watch. Watch your … watch your newspaper. You’ll see. There’s also an aspect
of this that we’ll touch on when we get to Revelation. So, okay, we’ve been focusing down here
on these ... at this point let’s take a look at Ezekiel. He was a priest and a prophet like Jeremiah. Not only office of prophet but he also had a priest
background. He’s one of the 10,000 that were taken in
the ... captive in the second siege. Daniel in the first. These guys in the second. About 11 years before
the final overthrow of Jerusalem when it’s finally destroyed. See Jeremiah and Ezekiel kept preaching to
yield to Nebuchadnezzar cause he’s ... God’s instrument of judgment. The false prophets said, “No we’re God’s
chosen people.” And, you know, they always encouraged rebellion. And both Ezekiel and Jeremiah say
"If you do it again, God is going to destroy Jerusalem." They’re a vassal right now, but
they’re at least able to live there. If you keep this up, God is going to level the
place. And that’s exactly what did happen 11 years later. But Ezekiel talks about the coming
judgments on Jerusalem. He’s a very colorful character. He has all kinds of similes and visions. He acts out skits to make his point, and
they’re really bizarre ones. I won’t go through them here but very,
very colorful reading. But he also deals with the future destinies
of the nations. And he specifically has a passage on the origin
and destiny of Satan. Both Isaiah and Ezekiel give us most of what
we know about Satan’s origin and ultimate destiny. But Ezekiel also focused fortunately on the
restoration of the nation Israel. He’ll talk about the valley of dry bones
and, ... he’ll talk about Gog and Magog. We’ll touch a bit on those. And, then of course, he has a great … he
has a tremendous amount of detail on the millennium from chapter 40 through 48. About how the land
will be allocated, and he has an incredibly detailed specification for the final temple. Not the temple that they will be rebuilding
in the near horizon but the temple in the millennium. And it’s a subject of a lot
of debate, because it’s too detailed to be just an allegory of some kind and yet
and it’s ... so bizarre that it raises other questions but that’s a special study. So there are strange similes all through Ezekiel. He shuts himself up in his home. He binds himself. He is struck dumb. He was to lie on his right, then his left sides
for a total of 430 days in 1 episode. He ate bread that was prepared in an unclean
manner and he shaved his head and beard which was considered a shame in their particular culture and calling. So he’s a … his kind
is a character. But one of the things he has that attracts a
lot of attention, is he has a vision of the throne of God. And in this he sees cherubim that have 4 faces. Isaiah in Isaiah 6 sees seraphim. They may be the same thing. Some scholars think there may be 2 different
kinds of things, but in each case they share these strange 4 faces. A face like a lion, an ox, a man and an eagle. Now it’s interesting because the camps of
Israel in Numbers 2. Where the 12 tribes were clustered
into 4 camps. The camp of Judah, the camp of Ephraim, the
camp of Reuben, camp of Dan which have as their ensigns those same 4 symbols. And then when you get to the gospels, we haven’t
gotten there yet but when we do, you’ll discover that the 4 gospels present Jesus Christ from
4 vantage points. Matthew being a Jew presents Him as a the
lion of the tribe of Judah, and Mark presents Him as the suffering servant, the classical
symbol of service was, of course, the oxen. And, Luke’s a doctor. He’s focusing on Christ's humanity and he
presents Him as the son of man. And John has a whole another thing
with the ... as a son of God. So we’ll talk about that when we get to
the gospels. Let’s talk about Satan cause he’s too
important to ... not to highlight here. We'll talk a little bit about his origin, his agenda and his destiny. We learn most of that from 2 books, Isaiah
and Ezekiel. In Isaiah 14 we find his ambition as
exemplified by his 5 "I will" statements. Ezekiel tells us that he was "the anointed
cherub that covereth." The cherub, singular of cherubim is a super angel. He apparently was the anointed one. That is the one appointed over all the others. "The anointed one that covereth" is the … is
a quaint way of expressing that. In Revelation we find the summary of his attempts
to thwart the plan of redemption. All the way through ... you can study the Bible
from cover to cover in terms of Satan’s attempts to thwart God’s plan. As it's revealed
more clearly, he makes his attacks more specific all the way through. But let’s take a look at Ezekiel
28. “Son of man, take up a lamentation upon
the king of Tyrus, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord God; Thou sealest up the sum,
full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty.” Now this ... he’s talking in this general passage
about the king of Tyrus. But now his language starts getting carried
away here a little bit. “Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, perfect in beauty.” I have never met the king of Tyrus, but I don’t
know if he was the ultimate of wisdom and ultimate in beauty that sort of … it
seems a little extreme. … to be found in the document like the
word of God. Then the next phrase nails it. “Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God.” Really? Was the king of Tyrus in Eden? I don’t think so. This is being addressed, I believe, to the power
behind the king Tyrus, follow me? Strange structure but, we see it frequently
in the scripture. “Thou hast been in Eden the garden of a
God.” There’s only 3 people in the garden of God
that I know of. And is this ... this is not Adam or Eve. It’s the Nachash, the shining one. “Every precious stone was thy covering,
the sardius, the topaz, the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald,
and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared
in thee in the day that thou wast created.” These precious stones are classic ways of
reflecting colored light. And we find that obviously in the breast plate
of the high priest. We find it in the New Jerusalem in Revelation. It’s an idiom that deserves
a lot of attention but we really, it's ... indulging in conjectures
that go any further than that. But the other phrase in here "the workmanship
of thy tabrets and thy pipes." Those are musical terms. It’s from this phrase that we understand
that his music capability was unparalleled. And their speculation on some that he probably
led the worship in heaven until he got overly ambitious and got carried away with
his own plans. “Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth;
and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up
and down in the midst of the stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day
that thou wast created” comma "thou wast perfect from the day that thou wast … no,
now he’s obviously a super being. It’s obvious though that he is a created
being. Question, who created him? Jesus Christ. Colossians tells us that all things were
made by Him. Without Him, was not anything that, anything
made that was made and by Him are all things held together. So you often hear, you know, between Christ
and Satan is a phrase or something. That’s misleading. They’re not equals; not by a long shot. Satan is a created being. He’s ... and so let’s not confuse that
point. Then we have the saddest words … saddest
words in the entire scripture. “Thou wast perfect in my ways from the day
that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee.” An interesting scrapbook to put together
would be make a list of all the "untils" in the Bible. They usually represent a milestone of some
kind, profound milestones. You can make … you can make quite a doctrinal
dissertation just highlighting the main "untils" in the scriptures and this is one of them. He’s the anointed cherub that covereth. He was in charge until inequity was found
in thee. Then it goes on. “By the multitude of thy merchandise they
have filled …:” The, the merchandise being like traffic … multitude of thy traffic. “They have filled the midst of thee with
violence, and thou hast sinned: therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain
of God: and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire. Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty,
thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness: I will cast thee to the ground,
I will lay thee before kings, that they may behold thee.” And Isaiah is going to pick up on this theme,
give us a little more amplification in it. But continuing with Ezekiel. “Thou hast defiled thy sanctuaries by
the multi-“ Thy sanctuary. See, he apparently led worship. “Thou hast … defiled thy sanctuaries
by the multitude of thine iniquities, by the iniquity of thy traffic; therefore will I
bring forth a fire from the midst of thee, and it shall devour thee, and I will bring
thee to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold thee. All they that know thee among the people shall
be astonished at thee: thou shalt be a terror, and shall … and never shalt thou be any
more.” Let’s shift to Isaiah. There’s a similar passage in Isaiah 14. It's easy to remember Isaiah 14, Ezekiel 28. See its
a multiple of 7. But in Isaiah he is taking after the king of Babylon. Ezekiel was Tyrus, here’s Babylon. But again
the same thing. The language goes … pierces beyond the literal king and is talking about the power that’s behind him. In Isaiah it says in verse 12 and following
“How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which
didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will
ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon
the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights
of the clouds; I will be like the most High.” The 5 "I wills." Unbridled ambition, this is why God hates
pride cause it was pride in Satan that led to the beginning of sin. That’s why leaven is a symbol of pride cause
it corrupts by puffing up. Isaiah continues, “Yet thou shalt be brought
down to sheol, to the sides of the pit.” When you see the word hell in the English you
have to realize there’s several choices that could be referring to. If it’s in the Old Testament it’s typically
talking about sheol which is not the grave. The grave is for the body. The sheol is the … is the domain of the
spirits. So sheol can’t be owned. There’s a single sheol … lots of graves
only 1 sheol. It’s a different … it's similar but
different concept. The grave speaks of the physical, the sheol,
the spiritual. The, the soul and the spirit are in sheol. And in the New Testament the term
would be Hades, roughly equivalent unless he’s talking about the ultimate place which
is the Gahanna. Cause even shoal and Hades will be thrown
into Gehenna at the end. We’ll see when we get there. If I’ve seen Satan “yet thou shall be
brought down to sheol to the sides of the pit. They that see thee shall narrowly look upon
thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did
shake kingdoms; That made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened
not the house of his prisoners?” Wow! See in Matthew 25 Jesus says, “Then shall
he say also them the left hand, 'Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the
devil and his angels...” See the ultimate punishment that we always
talk about in hell in the common vernacular was made for Satan and his angels. And no one will be in hell because of their
sin. They will be in hell for having rejected the
provision God has made for their sin. There’s a difference. Because Jesus Christ
paid for it on the cross if you’ll but accept it. While ... Ezekiel also talks about
the restoration … of Israel in several terms. His passage of the dry bones in Ezekiel 37
is a classic, of course. It’s a … it’s a vision of the restoration
of Israel. They’re brought back to life in the flesh
and then later breathe with the spirit. Many people say "gee, they’re in … they’re
in the land, but they’re not in belief." No kidding. But they can’t be back … they can’t
get the spirit until they’re back in the land. So the … step 1 is taking … is taking
place. They’re in the land. And the good news is, there's a ...
ground swell rising of Jewish people who are believers in the Messiah. That’s exciting. In Isaiah 11:11 we didn’t pick this up when
I was there. I wanted to leave it for here. In chapter 11 verse 11 there’s a
passage in Isaiah that says, “The Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover
the remnant of his people" and it goes on, "from all over the world.” The Lord set His hand on them to bring them back from Babylon and that was the first time. When He sets His hand the second time, that’s all she wrote. You and I have been watching that since the
last part of the 19th century into the 20th. And the middle of the 20th century on May
14th of 1948 David Ben-Gurion citing Ezekiel as his authority named the new Jewish homeland
Israel. And, so God is begi- ... He’s begun
a work and what He starts He finishes. It’s going to be painful, but it’s coming. And, of course, this is fulfilled … this part
of it at least, in the first half of the 20th century. The second time. Why is Israel to be restored? Ezekiel 36 verse 22 “Therefore say unto
the house of Israel, thus saith the Lord God” get this “I do not this for your sakes,
O house of Israel, but for my holy name's sake, which ye have profaned among the heathen,
whither ye went.” What God is saying through Ezekiel 36 to Israel
"The good news is you’re going to be restored, but not because you deserve it. Every place you went, you blew it. But My name is on the deal so My honor is
at stake so I’m doing this for My sake not yours." That’s what He’s saying. "I do not do this for your sake O house of
Israel but for my holy name's sake which ye have profaned among the heathen,
whither ye went." See that’s why I think the third commandment
is so serious. "Thou shall not take the name of the Lord thy
God in vain." It has nothing to do with vocabulary. Nothing to do about swearing. It has to do with ambassadorship. If you’re going to take the name of the
Lord upon your life, you better represent Him fairly, accurately. He’s very jealous of that. Moving on. He continues, “I will sanctify my great
name, which was profaned among the heathen, which ye have profaned in the midst of them;
and the heathen shall know that I am the Lord, saith the Lord God, when I shall be sanctified
in you before their eyes. For I will take you from among the heathen,
and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land.” That’s what we’re watching. Now ... now that’s chapter 36 and
37. In chapter 40 on we have the millennium, the
millennial temple. There’s a highly detailed descriptions.
Not simply symbolic. All nations are going to worship there by the way. Offerings and sacrifices are going to be resumed. People are shocked. What do you mean, I thought Christ
died once and for all. He did, but Christ's death is what saved people.
Not the blood of bulls and goats in the past the author of Hebrews emphasizes. So the offerings in the future are no different
than the offerings in the past. They’re both memorials. The ones in advance are prophetic at what’s
coming. These are going to be … commemorate what
happened, but they will be resumed. And by the way something will disturb a lot
of people who are hung up on Saturday, Sunday issues. The millennial temple is only open on
Saturday and on the New Moons. What happened to Sunday? Well that’s fine now. We have liberty in Christ and He’s the
fulfilment of our Sabbath, so I’m not going to get into a law trip here. But it’s interesting to discover that God
ordained the Sabbath day in Genesis and it’s rather disturbing to read Isaiah 56 and other
passages where clearly He uses that as a measure of people who are trying to please Him. Do they profane the Sabbath or do they honor
it? Not keeping the law - that's a whole another issue. But I leave that with you to think about. Anyone who thinks that’s a simple issue
hasn’t studied it. But there is an event that occurs after the
restoration of Israel which is going on and before the millennium. And that’s chapters 38 and 39. Gog and Magog, strange invasion. It’s famous for 2 reasons. First of all, it’s the occasion in which
God Himself intervenes to quell an ill-fated invasion of Israel by Magog and his allies. A powerful guy by the name of Magog arms and
leads a group of allies in an invasion of Israel that God intervenes in. The allies are listed in Ezekiel 38. Persia, Cush, Phut which is north in dark
Africa, Libya, Gomer, Togarmah, Meshech and Tubal. Meshech and Tubal being principal
cities in Anatolia or Turkey. And, the other thing … the reason this
passage is so well known among Bible scholars is the passage appears to anticipate the use
of nuclear weapons. That’s pretty absurd thing. Where do I get that? Well I’ll show you. First of all let’s figure out who Magog
is. Hesiod was a Greek didactic poet which wrote
in the 8th century BC. He wrote before even Ezekiel did. He identifies the descendants of Magog as
the Scythians by their Greek name. Herodotus the father of history wrote in the
5th century and he ... also calls them Scythians. They terrorize the southern steppes of Russia
from the 10th century BC to the 3rd century BC all the way from the Ukraine to China. The Great of Wall China was built to keep
them out or attempt to anyway. Philo and Josephus call the Great Wall of China
the "Ramparts of Gog and Magog." Soviet archeologists ... have ... done all kinds of discoveries of the kurgans that is the graves of the Scythians and they
know everything. What they ate … cause they … they’ve
been frozen for 2500 years. So they can analyze the bodies to find
out what’s in the diges- ... there still material in the digestive tract that can
be analyzed. They know a great deal about their lifestyle
because they are the forebearers to the true Russians. In any case they come from the outermost parts
of the north. Now if you look at the map of Israel, the invasion
comes from where the uttermost parts of the north. What’s uttermost north of Israel? It doesn’t take a genius to see that
is Russia. And what happens is, Magog lines up
these tribes to invade Israel but God intervenes. Won’t let ... won’t let it happen. And, the leftover weapons Ezekiel tells
us, will provide all the energy needs for Israel for 7 years. That tells me that it happens before the 70th
week of Daniel, because after that we don’t need the energy. Professionals are hired to clear the battlefield. They wait 7 months before entering, and then they
just clear it for 7 months according to Ezekiel 39. They bury the dead east of the Dead Sea. Read that downwind. And furthermore, if a traveler finds something
the professionals have missed, he doesn’t touch it. He marks the location. Let’s the professionals deal with it. And,
anybody that has been briefed on nuclear biological chemical warfare knows the drill. We’re contemp- ... this language in Ezekiel
was written 2550 years ago. It sounds like a DOD publication in the last
few years. Well we talked about the 70th week of Daniel which,
of course, is defined by a covenant being enforced by a world leader. In the middle
of that 7 year period there’s the Abomination of Desolation. We’ve talked about that already. And Jesus Himself quoting Daniel 12 labels the period between the Abomination of Desolation
and the end of that week as the Great Tribulation. Jeremiah in chapter 30 verse 7 calls it the
Time of Jacob’s Trouble cause the focus of course is Israel. Now the que- and, of course, we know because
the Abomination of Desolation is desecrating a temple. We know that, by then the temple will
have been rebuilt. We don’t know when it’s going to start, but
we know its standing by then because that’s the focus of this issue. That 70th week climaxes with the battle of
Armageddon, which is in turn interrupted by the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and the
establishment of God’s kingdom - the Millennium. The question is, where does Magog fit in? The Magog invasion. Many scholars, good scholars place it as part
of the Armageddon scenario. Hal Lindsey to this day still believes that’s
the correct understanding. And he may prove to be correct. He's certainly a major factor
in our perceptions here. On the other hand, there are a number of us
that happen to believe, for a number of technical reasons, that the Magog invasion is not connected with
Armageddon. It occurs prior to the 70th week of Daniel. And we have our reasons. That’s not
important cause I’m not here to really, you know, attack that one way or another except
to make this point. Of the placement of that has some ambiguities
but something that we all agree on … all conservative scholars agree on, is that it
occurs after the Rapture of the Church. So if the Magog invasion appears to be getting
positioned on our horizon, that’s exciting. It’s the way I usually express it if, if
you see the stores decorating for Christmas you know that Thanksgiving is not far away. There is a disturbing hint in Isaiah 39 that
I can’t resist sharing with you. The more you know about the details of the
text in Ezekiel 38 and 39 and the more you know about the current geopolitical horizon, the
more it seems that it’s getting in position. However, in verse 6 ... God says "I will
send a fire upon Magog." He’s talked about that already. "Hailstones of fire falling on the field
forces. And among them that dwell carelessly in the
ilia and they shall know that I am the Lord." The word isles or coastlands is ambiguous. There are some that worry what may be hinted
at here is that it may be United States missiles that are used to wipe out ... to qwell this invasion of Israel and it precipitates a hit in return. That the fire of Magog may also fall upon
them who dwell carelessly in the remote coastlands. Some people suspect that this might be the
way that God chooses to finally bring judgment upon America. And we’ll talk about that when we get
to the Minor Prophets, cause they have much to say about that. So in our subsequent sessions we’re going to
talk about the 12 Minor Prophets in Hour 12, and then we’re into the New Testament. We’ll talk about the Messianic thread and
how sure can we be of these things as our bridge. And, so. But let’s take a ...
quick look at how these fit together. Here are the southern and northern kingdom. The southern kingdom, of course, goes into the Babylonian Captivity and then we have the Exile Prophets. The northern kingdom
had been spirited away earlier, but it gets conquered by Babylon. So those … they
get comingled again. I want to talk a little bit about the
Old Testament texts. See the original Hebrew sometimes called the
vorlage was pulled together in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah. The Septuagint translation is the translation
of the Old Testament that occurred 3 centuries before Christ's ministry. Started about 285 BC to 277. 72 scholars in Alexandria were commissioned to do. This took them 15 years. And the primary quotes in the New Testament
of the Old Testament come from the Greek. It’s about the 9th century … well first
of all there is a council of Jamnia that in 90 AD where they meet. And they’re
upset because the … their Greek ta- ... Bible has become the Christian’s Bible. And so they lay the groundwork for what eventually
becomes the Masoretic text. See the Hebrew lay- a little comment about
Hebrew language to give you some … a little more background here. The Hebrew language is characterized by vividness,
conciseness, simplicity and ... but it also makes it difficult to translate fully. It takes about twice as many English words
to translate Hebrew and … but it has a root structure. It’s formed from 3 letter roots with
forms developed by change of vowels or by adding suffixes or prefixes. But they’re
all … it’s all based on 3 letter roots. The root consonants give Hebrew a semantic
backbone and stability not characteristic of western languages. And verb usage is not characterized by precise
definition of tenses. Its very context dependent. Therefore it seems designed to allow puns
and word games. That’s why we see all kinds of exploitations
of those features in the Biblical text. Let’s talk about Greek as the other primary
language - it's just the opposite. It’s very beautiful. It’s rich. It’s harmonious. And it’s a fitting tool for vigorous thought
and religious devotions, but it’s also incredibly precise. It’s characterized by strength and vigor. The language of argument. It has a vocabulary and style that could penetrate
and clarify phenomenon rather than simply describe. So it’s far more a perceptive language. It’s the most precise form of expression
of any language in existence the Greek. I’ll give you an example. The Greek verbs have to fit 5 aspects; tense,
mood, voice, person and number. A Greek verb will convey far more than just
its definition in the lexigram … lexicon. It’ll tell you who’s performing the action,
whether just 1 or more than one is doing it, when it is done, whether a single event
or a process, whether it is an actual happening, a command or just something wished for, whether
it’s a subject or verb is active or passive participant or both. We have passive voice and active voice in
English. They have optative. It can be both. A single Greek word may thus require a phrase
or a sentence ... or more in another language. Just the Greek verb requires a sentence to
get across what it's commanding. There was a classic attic Greek which was
subtle and very … but very expressive and that characterized the culture at its peak,
of course, but it's often untranslatable. After his conquest Alexander the great encouraged
the spread of Greek culture and regional dialects were replaced by Hellenistic
or common or Koine Greek and that’s the Greek that we’re dealing with here. It’s simpler, less elegant but it retains
much of the original strength, beauty, and clarity and its rhetorical power. Well the Septuagint manuscripts. There’s
a number of them. I won’t take you through all of these in
detail except that we have plenty of the Septuagint manuscripts. Uncials means simply that
they’re all capital letters. The vellum uncials came out
of Alexandria and we now have discovered that many of them were modified by the Gnostics
in the … in the 3rd and 4th, 5th centuries. But the ... and I won’t go through
all of those. That’s a whole another discussion. We have a briefing pack on "How We Got Our
Bible" That will go into this for you if you’re interested in that. But the Council of Jamnia is worth understanding. In 90 AD they rejected the Septuagint because
it becomes the Christian’s Bible and so they want to return to the Hebrew versions
upon which it’s based. The vorlage if they could. They produced a unified text of the
Tanach the Old Testament, and tried to see the divergent texts were destroyed. And that led eventually to the … what now
we call the Masoretic text. And that’s the English that you
… the translate … your English translation came from primarily from Masoretic. The Masoretes were a group of very,
very strict scribes from the 500 AD to about 950 AD. And, they … they’d … they’re the
ones that developed a form of vowels. See, old Hebrew didn’t have vowels. You inferred the vowels. Well, they put little marks above and below the
letters to imply the proper vowels. And the oldest of this … the oldest one
of these is 895 AD only for … only part of it. There’s still parts of it that’re missing. But anyway, the ... I won’t go through
all the other text except to say that we have good copies of these and they’re,
ample from 1000 AD on. The Dead Sea scrolls, of course, there were
11 caves in Wadi Qumran 600 manuscripts and the 60,000 fragments - many are still
being studied. 85% were leather. Only 15% were papyrus. More
durable. And in cave 4 they had 40,000 fragments of 400 manuscripts. A … 100 of which were Biblical. Every book has been found except Esther.
Parts of it at least. And the important thing to understand that
the Septuagint is well before the New Testament period. That’s why it’s so valuable to
us as we study prophecy cause there’s no question about the existence and what ... Cause the Septuagint is 3 centuries earlier and it is in Greek, very precise. No excuse for ambiguities. The central theme of the Old Testament is
the account of the nation. The New Testament is the account of a man. The creator became a man. His appearance is the central event of all
history. He died to purchase us and He is alive now. And our most exalted privilege is to know
Him and that’s what the Bible is all about. So with that let’s stand for a closing
word of prayer. Well, Father we thank You for Your word. We thank You for the privilege You’ve given
us to be able to meet without hassle, without persecution, without interference. We realize that that’s a unique blessing. Father we just pray that You'd help us take advantage
of these days. Help us to discover the treasures You’ve
hidden here for us. And above all things Father we pray that You’d
illuminate that path before us. That through Your Holy Spirit and Your word You would make it ever more clear what You'd have of each of us in the days that remain as we seek to be more
fruitful stewards of the opportunities You've brought before us. And as we commit ourselves without any reservation
into Your hands in the Name of Yeshua, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen.
