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Dr. Manny Arango
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. Welcome to day 198. We are in the book of Isaiah, chapters 20, 21, 22 and 23. This is the end of the section that we would organize as oracles against the nations. Remember, this started in chapter 13. We're ending our reading today in chapter 23. So you've been awesome. You've made a trek through all the oracles of the nations. If you haven't done today's reading, go ahead, stop the video, stop the audio, go do the day's reading. You only got four short chapters and, and really like fun chapters to read. I mean, Isaiah is going to get naked and everything. It's going to be great. I used to say naked. I used to say naked. When I lived in Boston. Then I moved to North Carolina, I started saying naked, you know, so it's my southern, my Southern ness. So we got Isaiah getting naked today. We got a lot of awesome things happening in the book of Isaiah. It's going to be grand. And so, hey, if you've done the reading, let's dive in like always. I'm going to give you context clues. Then I'm going to give you some nerdy nuggets. I got a good amount of them for you today. And then we'll always leave with the timeless truth. Let's dive into some context. Chapter 20 immediately starts with context. In the year that the supreme commander sent by Sargon, king of Assyria, came to Ashdod and attacked and captured it. At that time, the Lord spoke through Isaiah, son of Amos. So we get immediate context. And this is 711 B.C. okay, 711 B.C. okay. In the year that the supreme commander sent by Sargon. Sargon is an Assyrian king, king of Assyria. I said it before the Bible could say it. Sorry, I was trying to give you context. But the Bible's already giving you context. Came to Ashdod. Now where's Ashdod? Ashdod is a Philistine city. Ashdod, a Philistine city. So the Philistia is a small kingdom, is scared of the big bad Assyrians that are gonna come and attack it. And so they try to ally up with Egypt, okay? So they are gonna form an alliance with Egypt. They're gonna become vassals of Egypt because Egypt is a powerful, strong, large nation. And Ashdod, one of the capital cities of Philistia, is still gonna fall to the Assyrians. Even though they tried to ally themselves with another big, bad, powerful nation called Egypt, the big, bad, powerful nation called Assyria is still going to take them into captivity. And Isaiah has some really, really, really tough news, a tough pill to swallow. He's like, in the same way that Egypt failed the Philistines, Egypt will fail us. We are going to get led naked and barefoot off into captivity. Now, I want to help us, like, realize, like, Isaiah ain't popular, okay? Like, no one wants to come to church on Sunday and hear this. No one's trying to hear, yeah, man, God's pissed. He's had enough. He's going to lead you naked and barefoot out to the. Out to Babylon. Like, no one's trying to hear that. And so Isaiah is not popular in his lifetime. Neither is Jeremiah going to be popular. Most of the prophets are not popular. Like, if you're trying to be popular, like, if you're trying to be a televangelist, like, don't be. Don't be a prophet, okay? Because the prophets just don't have anything. They're just. They're not saying what Jeremiah will call itching Ears want to hear. And so want to put this in context because Isaiah is prophesying during a historical time, like wealth and security. So for Isaiah to be walking around saying, yep, God's going to lead us out into captivity naked and Barefoot. Everyone's looking around like, bruh, that is just not in line with what any economists are saying that, like, it's fine. We've been dealing with the Assyrians for a long time. We know how to form alliances with Egypt. Like, it's going to be okay. But Isaiah's like, no, it's not gonna be okay. Okay, so that's the context, okay? I wanna give you that just, like, historical context, that maybe you're reading this and you're going, the writing's on the wall, dude. Assyria just came and attacked your neighbor like the Philistines. Why wouldn't you think that Assyria is gonna come attack you? Well, the Assyrians had been on the doorstep of the kingdom of Judah for a long time. And under Ahaz, again, we have to remember there are a lot of kings who are gonna be famous Israelite kings that are gonna be famous outside the Bible. But in the Bible, they're not famous because what God thinks is respectable and what the world thinks is respectable is totally different. So Ahaz is actually known as a king that brings great wealth and stability to the nation, the kingdom of Judah. But to God, it's like, yeah, but you sacrificed your kids and you worshiped foreign gods. So, like, you don't exist to be like, you're nothing to me, okay? And obviously I'm speaking in hyperbole for those of you who did not catch that. But outside of the Bible, it's very clear that a king like Ahaz is going to bring record growth to the kingdom of Judah. But for God, that's not the stuff that impresses God. So in the middle of wealth and in the middle of stability, God tells. God tells Isaiah. Okay, here we go. Take off the sackcloth from your body and the sandals from your feet. And he did so going around stripped and barefoot. Verse 3. Then the Lord said, just as my servant Isaiah has gone stripped and barefoot for three years. Golly bruh. As a sign and portent against Egypt and Kush. So the king of Assyria will lead away stripped and barefoot, the Egyptian captives in Kushite exiles. Now, I want to remind you, Kushite is black people, okay? Kushite exiles, young and old with buttocks bared to Egypt. Shame. So we got black butt cheeks right here in the Bible. We got. We got. We got kushite buttocks bared, okay? We got. We got. We got Mike Tyson about to fight Jake Paul right here, right here in. In. In Isaiah, chapter 20. Okay? Now, nerdy nuggets, let's get to some nerdy nuggets. Now that we've had on Mike Tyson's butt cheeks in all of our minds family, the wait is over. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos is out now and available everywhere. Books are are sold. Literally. 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 going to 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. Let's go. First nerdy nugget. I'm going to give you a nerdy nugget from chapter 21 and then from chapter 22, and I may have one for chapter 23 as well. All right, by the way, here's something that you need to. Here's a nerdy nugget for Isaiah, chapter 20, actually. So let's do 20, 21, 22. I'll give you three nerdy nuggets today. First 30 nugget from chapter 20 is that the prophets are not just speaking or prophesying, but their message is also embodied in their life, their lifestyle and sign acts. Okay, so Ezekiel is going to have to lay on one side of his body for a certain days and the other side of his body for a certain number of days. So the action is the prophecy. What? Isaiah names his children. He's naming his children based on a prophetic word that God is given to the nation, not given him personally, but given to the nation. Hosea is probably the biggest example of a prophet having to live out a lifestyle based on the prophetic word. So the prophetic word to Israel is that God is a faithful husband, even when Israel is an unfaithful bride. And so Hosea is going to marry a woman who's going to be adulterous and has to love her and then rescue her and redeem her. And so Isaiah is stripped or naked and barefoot for three years. And his life is the message. Okay? It's not just that his words are the message, but his life is the message. His life is a Billboard man. That's almost a timeless truth for all of us, that it's not just our words that are the message, but our life is the message. And a lot of times people, they'll hear what you have to say, but really they're looking at your life, they're looking at the fruit of your life to see whether or not Jesus is someone that they should be following. So next NERDYDY Nugget number two comes from chapter 21. I had to pull out my NRSV today because the NIV is going to tell us when chapter 21 starts. This is a prophecy against the desert by the sea. That's what the NIV says, but the NIV is not translating this well. The NRSV says the oracle concerning the wilderness of the sea. The ESV follows suit with saying the wilderness of the sea. This is a prophecy against Babylon. Now it's strange that Babylon is being called the wilderness of the sea because wilderness and sea are both chaos words throughout the Bible, both of these images. The wilderness is not a place of order, it's a place of chaos. The sea is not a place of order, it's a place of chaos. And Babylon prided itself on its order. Okay, if you go to Babylon, you're going to see gardens. If you actually type in like hanging gardens or like the gardens of Babylon, okay, The gardens of Babylon would have been one of the ancient wonders of the world. So this is a city known for its glory. Great ordered wall, massive ziggurats, legendary gardens surrounding the life giving waters of the Euphrates. The Euphrates river is the thing that has produced all of this life. And remember when you were in school, you read about the Fertile crescent, okay? And this area of the world was fertile because of the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Nile, these rivers. So Babylon prided itself on order. When the Tower of Babel, when they're trying to build a tower, that's actually a ziggurat. Okay? So if you, you've, if you've been listening to episodes for a long time, you're familiar with what a ziggurat is. Is what Jacob saw in his dream, a ziggurat which was an ancient temple. It's an ancient temple that looks like it has a state like stairs on it. So Babylon is, is known for what I would call man made order. And remember, the Genesis account is an account not of God creating something out of nothing. That's how modern readers would read it. But it was actually an account of God creating order out of chaos. Babylon, which is the capital of the Babylonian empire, the city of Babylon is seen as the bastion for human order. Whether that order be found in laws, whether that order be found in the military, whether that order be found in ziggurats or gardens. Babylon is known for order. But man made order will become chaos when God is not involved. Although Babylon is known for order, what does God say? God calls it a wilderness of the sea. So the oracle starts by God calling a place known for order a wilderness of the sea. And unless you know how to interpret the symbols of the Bible, then you don't really know what the Bible is saying. And what the Bible is saying is that even your best attempt at order is still chaos, because you don't have mean. So that's the. The whole oracle starts out with wilderness of the sea. This term wilderness of the sea reflects in some way the formless and void picture of the world. Without God's order in the beginning of Genesis, Babylon, which prided itself over its great city, would become the opposite of what it believed it was. Okay, so that's. So we got two nutty nuggets already. Next Dirty nugget. This section of Isaiah is full of language, is going to find itself in the book of Revelation. These oracles contain many lines and images that will later be used by John and his apocalypse. Lines such as fallen, fallen is Babylon, which is chapter 21, verse 9, that is going to find itself in Revelation, chapter 18, verse 2. Or the image of Tyre, which is one of the capital cities of the Phoenician empire, prostituting herself with the nations. This imagery will be used by John when he declares judgment on both Babylon and Tyre. On the Babylon and Tyre of his own day, which is Rome or the Roman Empire. This one is really, really cool. And you gotta be really nerdy to nerd out on this one. This is from chapter 22. Okay. There's this little confrontation between Isaiah and Hezekiah's steward named Shebna. And in the grand scheme of things, this is like not that fascinating. But in terms of archeology, this is really, really, really fascinating. So actually, let's just go ahead and read chapter 22, verse 15. This is what the Lord Almighty says say to this steward to Shebna, the palace administrator. What are you doing here? And who gave you permission to cut out a grave for yourself here? You hewing your grave on the height and chiseling your resting place in the rock. Beware. The Lord is about to take firm hold of you and hurl you away you mighty man. He will roll you up tightly like a ball and throw you into a large country. There you will die. And there the chariots you were so proud of will become a disgrace to your master's house. I will depose you from your office and you will be ousted by your position. There's this guy, this random dude, his name is Shebna, okay? He's the palace administrator and he's trying to get a grave site for himself with Hezekiah. And this seems like just something that is not even that important. The implication of this confrontation that we have in the book of Isaiah is that Shebna would lose his position and. And probably be in that tomb sooner than he hoped. What's remarkable is that if you were to wander into the British Museum today, go upstairs to the Levant section and then go to room 57 and look to the left of the door into room 56, you would see a piece of stone on the wall. Specifically, a lentil stone of an ancient tomb. A tomb discovered in 1870 near Siloam. A tombstone with an ancient Hebrew inscription on it identifying its owner as Shebniah, the royal steward of King Hezekiah. The very tomb Isaiah spoke of is there in London in a room that anyone can go into for free and look at. Because the stuff that happened in the Bible and is actually historically accurate. And that's just really, really cool. I know that's like the nerdiest of the nerdiest of nuggets. And the really, really cool thing is that when I lived in England and Andy Thomas was teaching me how to study the Bible this way. Color coding my Bible and looking at context. When Andy Thomas was teaching me how to do this, he took me to the British Museum and showed me all this nerdy stuff. And so, number one, we love Andy. And number two, I. I love Andy for showing me all the nerdy British. All the nerdy stuff in the British Museum. All right? Thomas Drew, there's a big message in these chapters, which is to not trust in Egypt. Okay? Ashdod is going to trust in Egypt and the Assyrians are still going to prevail. Now, like I said yesterday, there's actually a massive Christian population in Egypt today. So what God is not saying is don't trust Egyptian people. That. That's not the message for the people of Israel. Egypt represented the bondage of their past. And that is a timeless truth to not go back to the bondage of the past. Man, the Bible says this like a dog returns to his vomit, a fool returns to his folly. I can remember, like, being free from certain things in my life, only wanting to go back to the things that God had actually freed me from. And so the timeless truth is that for you, Egypt does not represent the people of Egypt today. It actually represents maybe a relationship that God rescued you out of. There's so many times where I talk to people who want to go date their ex, and I'm like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. God rescued you from this relationship. And I've been there, Trust me, I've been there, where there was a toxic, dysfunctional relationship and God finally delivered me. But then you get lonely and you start questioning, did I make the right decision? And, man, if you're in just a circumstance. I remember for me, I had left a job in North Carolina at a church, and while I was on the road being an itinerant speaker, Covid happened. And my pastor called me and said, do you want to get your job back? And I. I just remember hearing the Lord say, you can't go backwards. You can't go backwards. I'm. I'm the God that wants to bring you forward. I'm not trying to bring you back. Now, there are certain areas of our life where we need to go back to, like, make amends or to reconcile or to make things right, maybe make some mistakes that went wrong, make those things right. So there are certain areas where we need to go back to faith, fix things. But I knew that season was over. I was not supposed to go back on staff at that church. And I'm not saying that that church was bondage. I'm just saying that it represented something from my past that God wanted to continue a forward progression, a forward movement. And so one of the big themes that we're going to get in these chapters is that, man, Israel's just not supposed to go back. They're not supposed to trust in the Egyptians. They're not supposed to trust in Egypt. And what that represents is going back to old institutions, old relationships, old habits, old sin, old things that kept you bound. And God's not telling you to go back. But. And maybe here's the most succinct way I can say it, sometimes those things that are consistent and predictable are not always safe or secure. And sometimes the human mind has a way of conflating safe and secure with predictable and consistent. And I've had so many things in my life where it was consistent, it was predictable, but that doesn't mean it's safe or secure. We can't define safety and security based on whether or not something's consistent or predictable. I know women personally that have a real hard time leaving a man who's abusing them because that man offers consistency and predictability. But. But that man is not safe and that man is not secure. So maybe there's something in your life right now, and it represents consistency and predictability, and God's trying to put it in your rearview mirror. He wants it to be in your past. And there's a temptation to go back to the past. God is saying, please, please, please, please, please just keep moving forward. Move forward out of whatever it is that I have delivered you from. All right, that's our Thomas truth for the day. Tomorrow we got day 199. We're gonna be in Isaiah, chapter 24 to 27. And this is an apocalyptic section of the book of Isaiah. It's gonna be really fun. I can't wait to get into it with you. I'm so proud of you, especially if you're on a streak. I'll see you right here tomorrow. Love you guys. Peace. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. You can find us online and learn more about the show at the Bible Department and on Instagram. Hebibledepartment. 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.