Dr. Manny Arango (0:00)

Hey, Bible nerds. This is Dr. Manny Arango and I'm your host for the Bible department podcast. Powered by Arma. This podcast follows a Bible reading plan we created to help you read the entire Bible in a year. You can head to the show notes or thebibledepartment.com to download our reading plan and join the journey. Let's be honest, a lot of us are still treating digital ministry like it's a backup plan from 2020. But discipleship isn't just happening on Sundays anymore. People need gospel centered connection every day of the week. And if you're stuck juggling five different platforms, one for giving, another for sermons, something else for events, it's no wonder engagement feels off. That's not ministry. That's a mess. Subsplash changes that one platform. Everything you need, media, giving, events, messaging, your app, your website built specifically for churches. No hacks, no workarounds, just clarity and simplicity. Because every day you wait, families scroll past your sermons, new guests click away from clunky sites, and real people miss real moments with Jesus. Don't waste another summer stuck in digital survival mode. Use it to get ahead, simplify, upgrade, get back to what matters. Head to subsplash.combible-dept and schedule a free no pressure demo. And let this be the summer your church gets focused and fully equipped. Family. Welcome to day 192. We are in the book of Isaiah. And buckle up, because we are in the book of Isaiah for 17 days. So at the end of the day, at the end of Today, it'll be one down, 16 days to go as we make our way through the book of Isaiah. Now, I say this, most days, if you haven't done the reading yet, if you have not read Isaiah chapter one and two, you can stop the video, stop the audio, do the reading. Okay? Everything that I say will make sense if you've done the reading, but if you haven't done the reading, then you have no context for the things that I'm really going to talk about. And so if you have done the reading, like always, I'm going to give you context clues so that you can really understand exactly what you're reading. I'm going to give you some nerdy nuggets, maybe some things that you didn't know that'll be helpful, that'll add essentially deeper context and deeper meaning. And then I'm going to leave you with a timeless truth. So let's dive in. Now, luckily, Isaiah tells us right out of the gate who he is, who he's talking to. And where he is and when. So. So we have all the context we need for the Book of Isaiah. Chapter 1, verse 1 says this, the vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem. So right out of the gate, we know that Isaiah is not prophesying to the northern kingdom of Israel. He's prophesying to the southern kingdom of Judah. Okay, Concerning Judah and Jerusalem, that Isaiah son of Amoz. And you're going to need to remember Isaiah's father's name, Amoz. Okay, not to be confused with Amos, but Amos a m O z that Isaiah son of Amos saw during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. So Isaiah has a long career, okay, Prophesying. He prophesies through the duration of four of Judah's kings. So, and those kings are Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. Now this is a nerdy nugget, but it's gonna help us with context. And we're doing context clues, so don't get confused. But I just wanna remind people that Uzziah kind of has two names. Not kind of has two names. The man's got two names. Okay, so sometimes he's referred to as Azariah, and sometimes he's referred to as Uzziah. Actually, a famous passage we're gonna get to in the next couple of days is gonna say, like, in the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord high and lifted up. So that's Isaiah, chapter six. So Isaiah's prophesying during the rains of Uzziah, AKA Azariah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. Okay, so Isaiah is going to prophesy during both high points and low points of Judah's history. Uzziah is a relatively good king with a long reign. He reigns all the way from 767 B.C. to 739. Under his rule, Judah retook all the lands that had been lost since Rehoboam son of Solomon. Which meant, as previously mentioned, that when combined with Jeroboam the second in Israel, all the Promised Land was held by the people of Israel, the only time other than David and Solomon's reign. So that's really, really like. That's monumental. Okay, so Isaiah is prophesying during a time of great political or national success, okay, prestige. The nation has won back its original borders. And then Jotham becomes co regent with his father after Uzziah's pride led him to take the role of a priest, for which he was struck with leprosy. This is in second kings, chapter 15 verse 5. So we walked through first and second kings. If you need to go back to second kings to kind of refresh your memory, that second kings, chapter 15, verse 5, as now permanently unclean. He was therefore unable to fully function as king. So the duty was shared with Jotham. Okay, then Ahaz and Hezekiah were the kings that Isaiah mostly interacted with. And in the next couple of days, we'll talk about them a ton. So that's context. Okay? That's who Isaiah is talking to. That's the time period in which Isaiah is prophesying. That's all the context that we really need. And now we can get into some nerdy nuggets. So remember, I told you to remember Isaiah's father's name. Okay? Verse one of chapter one tells us that Isaiah is the son of Amos. And so let's actually dig into who Amos is now. Now, there is a lot of evidence that actually Isaiah is a cousin to King Uzziah and was a member of the royal family. This is huge. And this might actually explain the access that Isaiah has appearing to kings. He's openly walking up and talking to both Ahaz and Hezekiah in encouraging or confronting them. It certainly means that Isaiah is functioning as a court prophet. Remember, way back when, I'm pretty sure we were kind of studying the book of Micah, and Micah is kind of like a field prophet. Like, Micah's a shepherd. And so Micah's not prophesying in any royal court. He's just kind of like out in the field, just like, prophesying. Well, Isaiah is a court prophet, and it would seem as if him and King Uzziah are actually related. Now, this brings a lot of context to Isaiah, chapter 6, that in the year that King Uzziah dies, Isaiah gets a revelation of God, Yahweh on his throne. A first. That just means when an earthly king dies, it's when God finally allows Isaiah to see that although there's a vacancy in the seat on earth, there's no vacancy in the throne of heaven. Okay? And that's. I mean, I could preach that right now. Like, that's most of us. It takes some earthly thing being vacant for you to see that God was more than enough all along. But even more powerful is that in the year that Isaiah's cousin dies, he sees God high and lifted up. So that's a nerdy nugget that Isaiah is a court prophet. He's prophesying to royal officials, he's prophesying to four Kings, and he just has access to them that's so, just so worth mentioning. Okay, there's another little detail, another nerdy nugget that I think is also worth mentioning, mentioning. There are no Israelite kings mentioned at all. Okay. Now of course, Isaiah's prophesying to the southern kingdom of Judah and the kings of Judah that live in Jerusalem. So I get it, he has an audience. But even with the other prophets that are prophesying to specific groups, they're still mentioning the other counterpart. So there are prophets that are going to prophesy to the northern kingdom of Israel. They're still going to mention the kings of Judah or the people of Judah, and then vice versa. There are prophets that are prophesying to the southern kingdom of Judah. They're still going to mention the northern people of Israel. Just mention them, you know, like. But there's no mention of any Israelite kings. And this is fascinating. This has caused like, a lot of, just a lot of scholars to debate, like, why do we have an omission? It's almost like for Isaiah, they don't exist. And this is tricky because this isn't popular. But when we break covenant with God, we do get omitted kind of out of the story. We have chosen by our own disobedience and our own actions to not be a part of the narrative, to not be a part of the story. So we get omitted out. This exact same thing actually happened in the Book of Numbers. You remember the first group to get exiled or, sorry, freed from slavery to experience the Exodus. I got exiled and Exodus kind of confused a bit. The first generation to kind of experience the Exodus, okay, they actually go to the land of Canaan and they refuse to go in. They rebel against God and from that point on they get omitted out of the story. This can actually be found in between numbers, chapter 19 and 20. The story just skips forward 38 years and carries on with their children. Okay, so 38 years of the people's history just gets cut, just gets omitted. It's almost like the consequence for being in rebellion is that God goes, okay, got it. You don't want to be a part of my story. You don't have to be a part of my story. And so a lot of scholars believe that, that the, the northern kingdom of Israel is so wicked towards the end that they, they are operating in full blown rebellion. Now there's a difference between, man, I've got some sin in my life and I am in full blown rebellion against God. Now, just so that everyone knows, I don't theologically line up with once saved, always saved. I don't think that that idea is found scripturally. I do believe that Jesus is a good shepherd and he doesn't lose sheep and he goes after the one. So I don't think your salvation is like easy to lose. I don't think that God's petty. I don't think that you could just kind of like stop going to church for a little while and just like all of a sudden, you know, you, you're not a Christian no more, you're a heathen again. But I do think that there is a state that where you could be in unconfessed, unrepentant, willful, practicing sin. And we would call that rebellion. Like you've walked away from the Lord, you've walked away from God and you've chosen to not be a part of his narrative. And so for Isaiah, he doesn't even talk about the northern kingdom at all. Isaiah prophesied during the final years of the northern kingdom, yet he does not mention the names of the final kings. There could be many reasons for this, but perhaps the most brutal is that Israel had ceased to be the people of God. The land, temples, kings, people had all gone as a result of the centuries long breaking of the covenant. So they are not mentioned. And then just in my notes I have what I already said, similar in a way to the first generation that left Egypt. How their story is told up to the rebellion and the refusal to enter the promised land. But then in between numbers 19 and 20, the story skips forward 38 years and just carries on with their children. The covenant was broken, so the breakers are no longer recorded in God's covenant book family. The wait is over. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos is out now and available everywhere. Books are sold literally to today. I walked into a Barnes and Noble and I signed a bunch of copies at a physical location. So you can grab this book at a physical Barnes and Noble or you can go to a Books a Million or Amazon or anywhere books are sold and grab a copy. If you enjoy reading the Bible from an ancient perspective, if you understand that the beauty of scripture is actually knowing it in context, then you'll love this book. And if there's any chaos in your personal life, I think that reading the Bible from an ancient perspective can actually help to crush the chaos in your life. I think this book is gonna be a New York Times bestseller. I really do. I think we wrote a good one. I think you should get a copy today. All right, back to the episode I Know, it's a big, I think for most modern people, we are stuck around individual salvation, that God saves individual people. But in, in the Hebrew Bible, God saves a group of people and then you make a decision on whether or not you want to be a part of that group. And so by their willful disobedience, they are actually communicating that they don't want to be a part of the people of God. All right, a couple more nerdy nuggets. 66 chapters to the book of Isaiah. We got 17 days. And in the first two chapters, there's a massive theme between the old Jerusalem and the new Jerusalem, okay, the old Jerusalem is gonna get burned, okay? Isaiah starts right out the gate, okay, hear me, you heavens, listen earth, for the Lord has spoken. I reared children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against me. So we coming out swinging, okay? Verse 3. The ox knows its master, the donkey its owners manager. But Israel does not know. My people do not understand. Woe to the sinful nation. A people whose guilt is great. A brood of evildoers, children given to corruption. They have forsaken the Lord. They have spurned the Holy One of Israel and turned their backs to him. And so right out of the gate, okay, we coming out swinging. And so remember back in the book of Joel, we gave a format that the prophets are going to like, announce destruction and they're going to give an opportunity to repent. So Isaiah is actually saying that this city, Jerusalem, he's announcing its destruction, saying it's going to get burned to the ground. But the way that you think about fire and I think about fire and God thinks about fire very, very different. For God, fire is not just for destruction, but fire is for two things. I know this is difficult and we're going to kind of get into some deep waters. That's okay. Fire is either for total consumption, okay? If I, if I burned these books, there wouldn't be any books left. So fires, either for total consumption or destruction or for purification, okay? If I put silver or gold or precious metals in fire, it's going to refine the thing that I put in the fire. The dross is going to get melted away and that which is actually valuable is going to be left. And this is the metaphor. God is saying, Jerusalem is going to get burned, but it's not going to be destroyed, it's going to be purified. So now Isaiah puts forth this vision of the new Jerusalem. John in the book of Revelation is going to pick this up. And how does John end the whole Old Testament? The entire Bible with a vision of a new heaven and a new earth. And you and I, the redeemed people of God, living in a new Jerusalem. So John the Revelator is riffing off of Isaiah, this idea of a new Jerusalem. Now, I don't want to throw too many curveballs, but I think this is helpful when we talk about fire as either total consumption or purification. This is why I would take the theological stance, which would be called annihilationism, okay, that for those who reject Jesus, I don't think that the metaphor of fire is actually saying that people are going to live in torment forever. I would actually take the theological stance that fire means that God is going to consume people wholly. I think that God's punishment for evil is not that he punishes you forever. It's that you lose your existence, you lose your spirit, your soul, your body, everything. But I do think that there is a season of. And it's not torture, it's torment. Tortures from the outside in, torment from the inside out. I do think that there is a season of genuine torment and what we would call conscious punishment. But then I think that you cease to exist. I think that God's ultimate punishment for those who reject him is that you cease to be, that you are no longer a person. Your existence goes and you, like the thanos snap, just kind of, you disappear. Now that's a whole can of worms. But I believe that God's fire in terms of punishment is for two things. It's either to purify or it's to wholly consume. It's either to purify or to wholly consume. And so the fact that fire is the dominant image of eternal punishment means that it's either going to wholly consume or it's going to purify. And I think that we get that beginning of that image here, that the fire that God's gonna send in the form of the Babylonians is not going to destroy Jerusalem forever, but it is going to refine Jerusalem and it's going to redefine Jerusalem and Jerusalem is going to become its ideal version of itself. Now that has a immediate fulfillment, but then a long term fulfillment again after the exile, right? The people of Israel are going to be allowed to come back to Jerusalem under the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah. They are going to rebuild Jerusalem. So that's the immediate manifestation of the prophecy. But the long term manifestation is actually the new Jerusalem that John talks about that's in you and I's future. The Jerusalem that we will inhabit in the New heaven and the new earth. All right. Timeless truth. I wrote down Isaiah also. Yeah. I'll give you a double Thomas truth today. Isaiah, chapter 1. It says this in verse 11. The multitude of your sacrifices, what are they to me? Says the Lord, I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams, of the fattened animals. I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. When you come to appear before me. Who has asked this of you, this trampling of my courts, stop bringing meaningless offerings. Your incense is detestable to me. So these are things that God has required in the Torah. But he's now saying, I don't want this stuff. And why? Why is he saying he doesn't want it? He's saying he doesn't want it because it's coming from people who are practicing sin and thinking that they can do religious things and they can cover up for the fact that their hearts are far from God. This is a timeless truth that God says, do I want you to tithe? Yes. Like, do I want you to serve in church? Yes. Do I want you to lift your hands and worship? Yes. But I don't want you to do those things and have a secret anger issue and lash out at your kids and have all this other stuff that goes undealt with. Please don't think that the things that I'm requiring of you are a substitute for all the other things that I'm requiring of you. I'm not asking you to be perfect, but I am asking you to be honest. And you can't think that just because you check the religious box that we are good. No. I want your heart like I want you. I don't just want you to go through the motions. I really, really want you. The way that I say this, like in me and my wife's marriage and even on our team. And sometimes I'll ask people on our team, are you submitting or do you agree? And what I'm saying is, are you just doing what I said? Are you ticking, checking the box? Or have we agreed with each other? And I love this because here's what God says. He says to his people, it says this in verse 18 in the NIV, it says, come now, let us settle the matter. But in other translations it says, come now, let us reason together. And I love that. Cause I think that's God saying, come now, come on. Don't just submit. Don't just do what I asked. Let's reason together. Like, let's agree. Let's agree that your whole heart needs to change. Let's agree that I want your whole life, not just compartments of your life. All right? That's our Thomas truth for the day. If I had to leave you with one more man. It's Isaiah, chapter 2, verse 17 says this. The arrogance of man will be brought low and human pride humbled. The Lord alone will be exalted in that day. And the idols will totally disappear. People will flee to caves and the rocks and the holes in the ground from the fearful presence of the Lord and the splendor of his majesty when he rises to shake the earth. Man, I believe in a God who's gonna at one day shake the earth. And there is nothing that you are prideful of now that will matter when Jesus returns. That is a timeless truth that your best is not enough. We rely on the goodness and the grace and the mercy of God. And everything that we have deposited in the eternal kingdom will last. And whatever we have put in this earth where moth, rust and dust destroy, will not last. And so I love the perspective that God offers in Isaiah, chapter 2, verse 17. With the arrogance of man being brought low and human pride being humbled and the Lord being exalted. That's a timeless truth. That's not just true for Isaiah and his hearers. That's true for you and I today. All right, tomorrow we've got day one, 93. You've got Isaiah, chapter three, four, five, and six. I'm so proud of you. If you're on a streak, don't break it. If you're not on a streak, how about you start one? I love you guys so much. I'm so proud of you. Uh, let's dive in tomorrow as we continue our trek through the Book of Isaiah. See you tomorrow. Peace. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. You can find us online and learn more about the show@thebibledepartment.com and on Instagram at the Bible Department. If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive deeper into the Bible, you can get free access to our library of courses@thebibledepartment.com we'll see you back here tomorrow.