Transcript

Okay, let's pray. We're going to jump back into Isaiah, and I'm so excited about this. I've never in my whole life had to cut a course in half. This is a first for me, and I love it. So, you all are going to help me through it. So, let's pray. Father, I pray that You would multiply Your truth in our hearts. You want to stir us up to love and good works, and You want us to allow Your Word to make us useful, to sanctify us. So, I pray that's what would happen as we look at what was Your favorite book as You inspired Your Word in the New Testament using Isaiah. Help us to learn from it, in Jesus' name, Amen.

Okay, the title for the whole book of Isaiah is what I call Living a Shalom Life. That comes from Isaiah 26:3. If you want, if you're a Bible marker, I've actually written in mine, You will keep him in perfect peace. Right next to perfect peace, those words in your Bible, I wrote Shalom Shalom, because that's the words in the Hebrew manuscript. When you go on the Israel trip, if you get to go. I don't know whether you'll get to go. The book of Isaiah is one complete manuscript in the Shrine of the Book, the Dead Sea Scrolls Museum, that I'm sure you go to. It's 40 feet long, or maybe a little more, and it's one continuous manuscript around a circular viewing area. You look at it behind glass and you can go like this and actually see every Hebrew word of Isaiah. If you were looking at Isaiah 26:3, you would see the two Hebrew words Shalom Shalom, which I told you is an emphasis. It's perfect peace.

What I shared yesterday in part one is, that their world was crumbling. So, Isaiah is written, especially for people in crumbling worlds. The Assyrians were at the door, the murderous rampaging people that were conquering everybody in sight. The Babylonians were right behind them. Jewish society as we'll see in the days ahead was rotting. God was dying out in the people's minds in the temple. Satanism and everything that I described yesterday were growing.

So, what do we need? God knew what they needed. So, what do people in a crumbling society need? You need to understand the Bible is true. You need to understand your culture. You need to understand how to reach your culture. Those are each of the lessons that we're going to cover. Because truly God was anticipating what Isaiah needed to minister to his culture.

So, this is the second half. The lesson is like a challenge to you. Jesus believed Isaiah. He quotes from it extensively. It's hugely quoted from in the New Testament, 472 times. So, Jesus believed Isaiah was true and Paul and John and Peter and Luke and all of the Bible New Testament writers. They believed it was true. But do you? Because we can become almost unbelieving in the way we look at the Bible. We say it's true, but if it's true, God says, I want to give you perfect peace in your crumbling world.

Now let me show you a little Hebrew lesson. Shalom is a noun, and it means peace. Jewish people, if you go to Israel, they go, shalom, shalom shalom. But it's an interesting word. It's a word that has multiple meanings if you understand it. Because Shalom is the noun form of a verb. Actually, what makes the noun is the meaning of the verb. The verb is shalam. It's very similar, but the verb means to be made complete. Isaiah explains that. He says all of us are incomplete and we're restless until we allow God to bring this perfect shalom to our lives. So that's what the book of Isaiah is about.

Now, the ancients, the early Christians, the ancient Christians, called Isaiah the fifth Gospel. It's interesting, that we have Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. But they said the Gospel in the Old Testament was Isaiah, and that's because of the whole way it's lined up and given to us.

Now, the stuff in red is what's on your final exam, so you should really work on this. My academic directors said to really get them to learn this. Isaiah has two parts; God's expectations of His people, that's the first 39 chapters, and God's future plans for His people, which are the last 27 chapters. Our mighty God is chastening His people, that's the first 39 chapters’ major theme. Our merciful God is comforting His people. That's the last 27 chapters. So, everything in those boxes, you will see either as a fill-in-the-blank or a matching or a true and false.

Next, all of that is on the exam. There is some way or another that that is going to be reflected. It'll say something like, if we're talking about the throne of God, what chapter would it be in? Say it out loud. Okay, look up. If we're talking about the throne of God, what chapter would it be in? Chapter 6. That's two-thirds of you. Let's try once more. What chapter is the throne of God? 6. Very good. If we're talking about the Messiah, the birth of Christ, His incarnation, and the virgin birth, what chapters would that be in? 7 and 9, very good. How about, where did Satan come from? What chapter would that be in? 13. Good, because it might not say doom of Babylon, but you have to know the whole line for that. If you want to see the Tribulation described in the Old Testament, what chapters would you look at? 24 and 27. Then the greatest prophecy, the letter to Cyrus is 45, good. How about Christ's crucifixion and the atonement? What chapter is that? 53. Good. The Second Coming of Christ is described in? 63. And the Millennium? 65. What is the Millennium? What does mille-ennium mean? A thousand years. Yeah, Guppy's got it, a thousand years. Here, Millennium is a Latin word. Mille means a thousand. Annum is Latin for years. So, one thousand years.

Now, you will meet someone different. In fact, half of Christendom is reformed. No, I should put it this way, no. Half of all born-again Christians are reformed, and the other half are not reformed. Calvinism and Arminianism, like that. Have you all heard about this controversy? Okay. So, the Presbyterians, the Episcopalians, the Methodists. No, not the Methodists. Some Baptists and the Roman Catholics are reformed. Reformed theology was started by St. Augustine, not Calvin, Augustine. So, they're over here. They don't believe in the Millennium. They say, no, that's not true. You know what they tell you? It's not in the Bible. Do you know what? They're right. That word, Millennium, is not in the Bible.

Where did it come from? It comes from the Hebrew word for 1,000 years. That is 6 times in the Bible, 1,000 years. It's in Revelation 20, 1,000 years, 6 times in a row. Describing what 28 percent of the Old Testament prophets spent their time on. A fourth of the Old Testament is about the Millennium. During the Millennium, everything Jesus promised He'd do on the Earth is fulfilled, and that's what's right here. These two chapters are huge. On your quiz, if I ask you, how long is the Millennium, how long would you say it is? 1,000 years. And how do you know it? Because the Bible says it. Not because a theological term, Millennium, but it actually says six times it's a thousand years long. That’s just for you to know, okay?

Whenever someone talks to you, they have a framework. Whenever you listen to someone, if it's a newscaster, or if it's an entertainer, they have a worldview. A worldview is like my glasses. Do you see my glasses? I don't see you now. When Bonnie and I were first married, we lived in California, and I'm a happily married man. I wasn't interested in walking down the beaches and seeing everybody in their underwear. We lived in the coastal state, so I said, Honey, this is what I'll do, I just won't wear my glasses. You'll have to hold my hand, so I don't fall. But, I have trouble hearing without my glasses. Did you know that? So much of talking is seeing the person's face, and they're communicating by how they talk, and even their mouth moving. When I put this on, everything is affected by looking through those lenses. You have spiritual, philosophical lenses that you see life through.

It's like these windows. If the windows are stained glass, you don't see the trees and everything, you just see the light. If the windows are tinted, you only see it dimly. Do you understand? What you look through affects how you see things. When I look at the Bible, life, the news, and history, I see it through eight lenses. The first one is, I'm an evangelist. I believe everyone is born lost, and they're still lost even after their parents baptized them, after they were dedicated, and after they're confirmed. They're still lost until they get saved, till they're born again. No one can come into the kingdom of God, Jesus said, till they're born again. Born-again means you get a new heart, Ezekiel says—a new spirit. God changes you. So that's called being an evangelist. Evangel, Evangelos, it's the Good News, it's the Gospel.

I'm an imputationist. I believe Christ saves us, and I've drawn this before, but here's me and my sins. Here is Christ on the cross and all of my sins go on to Christ. Christ puts His righteousness on me, and He erases the record of my sin. God treats Christ like He committed every one of my sins. Wow. That means that Christ is lazy, punished for being lazy, punished for being proud, punished for being angry, punished for being impatient, punished for being selfish, even though He was never any of those things because He's punished like He committed my sins. That's called imputation. We're saved by the imputed work of Christ, not by our good works or being in a Christian family.

I'm an inerrantist. The scriptures are inspired, flawless, and accurate. I'm a creationist. God made everything in six solar days, not because it says it in Genesis, but because it says it in Exodus. It says that in Exodus. See, everybody debates Genesis. The age date theory; is it six days, six solar days, six billion years? Moses explained creation during the Ten Commandments, no one contests the Ten Commandments. Everybody believes in the Ten Commandments. They believe Moses gave them. That's it. Google, Wikipedia, the Muslims, the Buddhists, everybody thinks Moses gave the Ten Commandments. What did he say in them, in this most uncontested part of the Bible? He said, For, as God in six days created the heavens and the Earth, so you should work six days, and rest the seventh.

Now let me ask you, remember the first law of interpretation. What did the people that heard that the first time, what did the children of Israel hearing the Ten Commandments from God through Moses, think he meant? They were slaves and they had just been taken away from their brick-making job. They knew what working six days meant and they knew what resting one day meant. It meant sunup to sundown was a workday unless they had torches, and they'd go a little late. In their mind, God said, what you experience, working six literal calendar solar days, and resting the seventh is how I made the universe.

Now let me ask you, how did the Ten Commandments originally come? They came on a piece of stone, like this, and the Bible says, the finger of God wrote them. It's the only part of the Bible God wrote Himself with His finger into stone. So, do you believe in creation? No, I believe in evolution because it makes sense and everything else. I don't because the only part of the Bible God Himself wrote with His finger said, I made the whole universe including the stars, including the galaxies, including Earth and humanity and all the animals. I made them in six solar, literal, 24-hour days, not billions, or even millions. I'm a creationist.

I'm a catastrophist. Noah's flood was global. If you go from South America, the Andes mountains to the Himalayas, do you know what you find everywhere? Water was on top of all the mountains. There are squashed animals and plants everywhere. Did you know what they found, about five years ago, in Canada, for all of our Canadian friends? A coal company had to shut down their whole operation because they found a dinosaur that still had skin, in the coalfield. They shut the whole coal plant down. All the newscasters came, and they were showing it. They were bringing this out, and they had soft tissue, a dinosaur's soft tissue.

The crane operator was pulled aside by one of the news people and they put the microphone up. He said that's really not anything big. He said we find these things all the time. The coal beds are filled with examples of squashed plants and animals all jumbled together and squashed into coal. He really got in trouble because if everybody knew what they were finding it would ruin all the evolutionary thoughts because stuff that's from what they call the geological timetable is exactly on the same level squashed. It's amazing. But I believe that there was a global flood and guess who else believed that? Jesus did. He said, as it was in the days of Noah before the global flood, it's going to be like that at the end of the world.

I'm also a cessationist. In other words, it's about the supernatural sign gifts, the revelation of scripture. In other words, I want to be very cautious about how I say this because I believe that most of them are Christians, but the people that are of the charismatic background when they speak in tongues, will say, God told me to tell you this. The Bible says to be very careful about saying God told you something because that's Scripture. If someone disobeys scripture, it's eternally bad if you don't do what God says. So, I think a lot of our charismatic friends don't mean what they say. They don't believe that when they speak in tongues or have one of these utterances, they don't believe, I don't think they believe, it's like this; it's equal to the Bible. They think it's a lesser form. Many of the writers are starting to say that. I believe that the supernatural revelation of God's Word has ended. Nobody is getting direct words from God anymore. Nobody is writing the Bible anymore. That's number one.

Number two, it appears that during the Tribulation, some of those sign gifts come back. Did you know those 144,000 are Jews that do that? So do the two witnesses. They do what we would call almost apostolic stuff, but not right now. So, I'm a cessationist. Scriptures done. It's all written down.

I'm a maximalist. There are two types of Christians, minimalists and maximalists. Minimalists say if the Bible talks about miracles, if it talks about history, if it talks about prophecy, it isn't literal. They're minimal. I'm a maximalist. I believe everything the Bible says about history is true. I believe everything the Bible says about science is true.

Then I'm a dispensationalist. Israel is not the Church. Now, the covenant theologians, starting with Augustine, St. Augustine, believe that Israel was bad. They crucified Jesus. They're done. Permanently done. In fact, do you know about Martin Luther, do you know who Martin Luther is? Do you know what he wrote? In one of his books? The title is To the German Nobility. That's the title of his book Do you know what it says in there? The Christ-killers should be killed. Guess which book that Martin Luther wrote was Hitler's favorite book? That one. The whole Holocaust, World War II, was propagated by Satan through Hitler misusing what Martin Luther wrote. Martin Luther was a covenant theologian who believed the Church replaced Israel. God doesn't believe that. Jesus doesn't believe that. I don't believe that. You shouldn't believe that. Okay, so that's my framework I see through.

Okay, let's talk about Isaiah. The magnitude of Isaiah's trustworthy message in God's Word. Why is it so important? The book of Isaiah and all of its doctrines were believed and trusted by Jesus, Paul, John, Luke, Peter, and the Early Church.

What were they believing and trusting? Number one, it became the most widely quoted book in the Bible. 472 times Isaiah is quoted in 23 of the New Testament books. There are only four of them that leave out Isaiah, and that is phenomenal.

Secondly, Isaiah is the salvation book. Remember I told you that the ancient Church saw that. It talks more about Christ's birth, and Christ's coming, and John the Baptist's coming, and Christ's ministry, what He would do, and what He would be like. Then, it gets heavy when you talk about Christ's death, burial, and resurrection. In fact, there are so many details in Isaiah that aren't in any other of the Old Testament books. By the way, just the word salvation, of all the twelve prophets, 31 times salvation is mentioned in Isaiah out of the total of 41. So, Isaiah is really talking about salvation and Christ's work.

Thirdly, Isaiah is the primary source of the virgin birth of Christ. When Matthew opens the Gospels, in Matthew 1:21, he says that a virgin would conceive. Now we know that was coming because the virgin birth actually is first mentioned right here. Have you guys studied Genesis yet? Was that a yes, or no? Yes. Good. Is it Mark Strout? Oh, whoever did it is great, but you ought to hear Mark Strout do it. It's one of his favorites. But Genesis has what is called the Proto Evangelium, the first mention of the Gospel.

What it says is, that the woman's seed would crush the serpent while the serpent's heel was injured by the woman's seed. Now, the woman's seed would crush the serpent, but the serpent would bruise... huh. The serpent is getting crushed, and the woman's seed is getting bruised. How does that work?

Number one, women don't have seeds, okay? The male is the seed carrier, and so a woman can't conceive. Isn't that neat how science now is trying to perfect a way to make life without human conception and all that? They are doing all kinds of tests with their work because they want anything that the Bible says, they want to go the opposite. But in normal life, a woman cannot conceive. She does not have seed. She needs it externally. So, the Bible says there's going to be a birth, unlike any other birth. That's what the virgin birth of Christ is; a supernatural conception by the Holy Spirit putting into Mary. Can you believe this? The infinite God of the universe. Jesus is 100 percent God. That's hard to think about, what that means. It means that the infant in the manger was the infinite creator of the universe, but He's an infant in a manger. It's huge.

Okay, next, Isaiah is such an amazing picture of the Bible's structure. It has 39 chapters and then 27 chapters. Those 66 chapters totally mirror the Bible. I've told you that and I've showed you that, with the first 39 being gloom and doom and then the hope and John the Baptist. We already talked about that.

It's also the best source for the Bible's two furthest events. Think about the distance between these two things. Isaiah 14 tells us about how Satan was Lucifer and fell to become Satan. That is somewhere like on day 2, or 3, or 4, or 5. When is that? Most likely, I think it's after the Lord rested because when He finished creation, He said all was good. It's right from the beginning of creation week. Lucifer fell somewhere right there.

Now look at what Isaiah 66 talks about. Isaiah 66 is exactly paralleling Revelation 21 and 22. So Isaiah talks about the two furthest events apart that we know of and gives us almost more details than anybody else gives us.

Isaiah is the best book on the doctrine of God, we're going to cover 40 and 43. Theology is the doctrine of God. Isaiah is the strongest declaration of the Trinity. If you go to, I'll just show you a little of these because they are handy if you ever run into a Jehovah's Witness, or a Mormon, or anybody that denies the deity of Jesus Christ. By the way, Mormons do deny that, right? You know that. Do you know who Mormons say Jesus is? Satan's brother. Yeah, He is a created being, and He is a lesser god than the God. By the way, you can become a god too and all of it is horrible false doctrine.

But look at chapter 43. Real quickly, this you should really mark in your Bible for the rest of your life because many Christians cannot explain why they believe in the Trinity. That was one of the earliest dividers in the Church that people got mixed up about. They said that Christ was half-man, half-God. Or Christ was a man for part of the time, God came on Him at the baptism, God went off at the cross, and He was buried as a man. No. The strongest declaration of the Trinity starts in 43:10, and it says, Before Me there was no God formed, nor shall there be after Me. I, even I, am the Lord, and besides Me, there is no Savior. On down He talks through there. That one is great because the Jehovah's Witnesses say Jesus is not God, He's a god, with a little letter A. Wait a minute, it says before Me there was no God, and there won't be one after Me. That's not true.

If you keep going, look at chapter 44, verse 6. Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel, I am his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts, I am the first and the last. Besides Me, there is no God. All the way through there is verse 8. So, He says, I am the first and the last, I am the only one. Keep going to 48:12. 48:12, Listen to me, O Jacob, O Israel, I've called, I am He, I am the first, I am the last. That's Revelation 1:8. Who said that? Who says in Revelation when He meets John on Patmos, who tells him, I am the first and the last? Jesus. So, it's Jesus talking right here. Jesus is God, but He's God the Son. Now you talk about something difficult. He is God. There aren't three gods. There's one God. We don't believe in three gods. There isn't a Holy Spirit God, a Jesus God, and the Father God. There's only one God, who is eternally existing as Father, Son, and Spirit, but it's one God. We don't serve three.

Now here's something, boy, this will blow your socks away, or your socks off, or whatever, however that Americanism is. When you get to Heaven, will you see three gods walking around? Are you going to say, oh, there goes one of them! Oh, there's one going that way. I want to see Him. There's only one God that you will see in Heaven. God the Father is a spirit. So is God, the Holy Spirit, a spirit. Spirits are invisible. So, the writer of Hebrews says, that Jesus is the image of God. He is the one who lets us see the unseeable God. Jesus said in His ministry, He said, you want to see God? Look at Me. I reveal the Father to you.

But how do we know it's Jesus? So, look at 48:12. I am He, the first and last, my hand laid the foundation of the world. My hand stretched out to the heavens. Wait a minute. What does it say in John 1:3? In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, the Word was God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. What does it say in Colossians? He is the Creator of all things, visible and invisible. Who is the Creator? God the Son. But it's God.

How do we know who He is? Now, look at verse 16. Come near, hear Me, I have not spoken in secret from the beginning. From the time that it is, I was there. Now the Lord and His Spirit have sent Me. All three of them are right there. The Lord, the Father, His Spirit, the Holy Spirit, has sent who? Who's the Me? Jesus Christ. You understand? Even in the Old Testament, Jesus Christ was revealed. I could go on.

So, Isaiah has the most important chapter in the Old Testament, Isaiah 53. Isaiah is the best explanation of prophecy. We'll cover that for a whole hour, and you can verify Isaiah more than any other book.

I just want to show you these pictures. Bonnie and I were just at the British Museum. This is the record Sennacherib wrote himself of trying to conquer Jerusalem and not conquering it. Those are the actual arrows.

This is the actual tunnel that Hezekiah made. You can walk through it. This is the inscription after he dug the tunnel the Bible talks about.

He made that wall that's in the Bible and is in Isaiah 36 to 39. It's still there. In fact, in Sennacherib's writing, he wrote about the siege of Jerusalem.

This is the bottom line: we have a faith rooted in history, not a mystery. The words on the page of scripture are supported by simple elements you can dig out of the ground. They prove nothing, but they support everything. The Bible is not history, but what it says about history is true. It's not science, but what it says about science is true. With our eyes, you can see Hezekiah's wall, his tunnel, and Sennacherib's prison. They are real, and so is our faith in the Bible. That's why Isaiah is so important. So, do you believe the Bible like Isaiah did? Have a great lunch.