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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. Family. Welcome to day 199. We are in the apocalyptic section of the book of Isaiah, also known as Isaiah's apocalypse. So we're Studying Isaiah, Chapter 24, 25, 26 and 27, four chapters of the biblical text today. If you have already done the reading, then you are gonna. You're gonna enjoy this. This is gonna be great. If you haven't done the reading, you're gonna be confused by everything that I have to say. No, I'm just joking. You're not gonna be confused, but you're not gonna have proper context. So stop the video, stop the audio, do the reading, and then come on back and let's talk through what it all means. Like always, we're always gonna give you context clues, nerdy nuggets, and a timeless truth. So let's jump into our context Clue for day 199. Normally, our context clue involves like a date or something that's happening, like a historical event or some kind of scenario between two people. But today, our context clue is actually a genre. So like I said, chapters 24 to 27 is what we would call Isaiah's apocalypse. It's an apocalyptic vision. So before we even try to interpret what's Going on, let's. Let's first wrap our minds around apocalyptic literature. You may have heard me say this story before, but I'm so grateful that my senior year of my undergraduate degree in biblical and theological studies at Gordon College, my senior year, we all got to pick, like a senior seminar, and I picked a class on the Book of Revelation. So for an entire semester, we studied the Book of Revelation. And so I'm expecting day one, we about to crack open Revelation chapter one, and we're going to get to it. And instead of doing karate, my teacher, Dr. Mathewson, gave us wax on, wax off, okay? And so for two and a half months, all we read was apocalyptic literature that was not the Book of Revelation. Because the mistake that a lot of Christians make is that they have no experience reading apocalyptic literature. And then they rush in to start reading the Book of Revelation, and they think that just because they have the Holy Spirit, that they can interpret ancient texts in genres that they are totally unfamiliar with. And yes, the Holy Spirit gives you an ability to understand. Of course the Holy Spirit does that. But the Holy Spirit also gives you a thing called self control, AKA discipline, to read and to study and to learn, so that you can interpret things based on an academic understanding of what they mean. So two and a half months of just reading apocalyptic literature And Isaiah, chapter 24 to 27 is one of the pieces of apocalyptic literature that we had to get familiar with. So I want you to think about two things. Number one, Isaiah is a prophet, but Isaiah is also a poet. And poetry is art. And like any art form, doesn't matter what the art form, artists are constantly pushing the bounds on what is normative, okay? So apocalyptic literature is, is growing out of prophetic and poetic artistic interpretation, okay? So apocalyptic literature is more symbolic, more visual, more hyperbolic. Apocalyptic literature typically involves visions that should not be interpreted literally. If you think about, okay, a book like Isaiah, and most prophetic books are prophecy, but they're also poetry, which means that these prophets are artists, okay? Because poetry is art. And every artist doesn't matter if it's music, doesn't matter if it's painting, is going to be an artist. They're going to continue to push the bounds of creative expression. And so apocalyptic literature is a form of literature that is growing out of prophets who are artists, artistic prophets. Also artistic literature is going to skyrocket as the people of Israel are under oppression. Because the thought is that while we're captive to the Babylonians, if the Babylonians pick this up and read it, they're only gonna be confused. Okay. And so the apocalyptic literature is very subversive. It's anti Babylonian. But how can you be anti Babylonian while you're living in Babylon? Well, you make your literature something that's highly coded. And when you make your literature something that's highly coded, then only people on the inside are able to understand it. The same thing is happening with the Book of Revelation. Christians are under persecution, and so it would be silly to just outright say Domitian is evil and God's going to kill him. What's easier to say is, hey, this emperor is represented by this number. And so let's just talk about this number. To shroud the literature in stuff that can't be understood so that if your average Roman picks up the book of Revelation, they're not gonna persecute the church more. Okay. The length the literature doesn't give it away that I'm kind of talking about you. I'm making fun of you while you're around. Negro spirituals functioned in the same way, right? Enslaved black Americans in this country would be singing about the Underground Railroad, and they're singing about the underground Railroad in earshot of the people who are trying to systematically enslave them. But because the music is coded, then the slave. The slave holding masters are not understanding what's actually being said. But other enslaved people understand exactly what's being said. So people under persecution are typically going to create forms of literature that are highly artistic but highly, highly, highly coded. So it's ignorant of us to just enter into the mix and think, oh, yeah, as long as I got the Holy Ghost, man, I can understand what they're talking about. Ah, not so much. Okay, so these four chapters, 24, 25, 26, 27, are Isaiah's apocalypse family. The wait is over. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos, is out now and available everywhere. Books 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. All right, so that's our context. Now let's get into some nerdy nuggets. One of the things that I really want to highlight is this phrase on that day. This is going to get repeated a lot on that day, in that day. A variation of the two on that day, in that day. On that day, in that day, which is a reference to the phrase the day of Yahweh or the day of the Lord. Now, the day of Yahweh or the day of the Lord is a hard phrase to interpret or nail down because it's almost like there are multiple days of the Lord. Okay, so anytime that Yahweh breaks into human history and saves his people, that's the day of the Lord. So like the Exodus, right? It's the day of the Lord. It's a day that Yahweh chose to break into human history and open up the Red Sea, lead his people through, and then drown their enemies. It's the day of the Lord. But it's also a day of judgment on Egypt. That same day of the Lord, which is salvation for his people, is a day of judgment on people who were opposing his people. Okay? So that's the day of the Lord. Now, when Isaiah talks about the coming day of the Lord, a lot of times he's talking about there's gonna be a day of the Lord where judgment's gonna come, but the judgment now is gonna be Babylon coming to bring Israel off into captivity. But how in the world is that judgment but also salvation? Well, it's God saving the people of Israel from themselves, saying, hey, you keep rebelling, you keep rebelling. You keep rebelling. But I'm gonna put an end to your rebellion by chastising you, by disciplining you. And here's what's true. After the exile. This is unfortunate, but it's human. It's just the human condition. After exile, the people never struggle with idolatry ever again. They never worship BAAL ever again. They never worship Asherah ever again. They never worship Molech ever again. Never, never, never, never. So it takes the Exodus to deliver the people out of Egypt, but it takes the exile to get Egypt out of them, to finally get the polytheistic, idolatrous practices that they learned while they were in Egypt to get those habits and those desires out of them. The exile did its job. And so when Isaiah says, there's gonna be a coming day of the Lord where he's Gonna judge. He's gonna judge. He's gonna judge. It's like, I thought that the day of the Lord is supposed to be a day of judgment and salvation. Yes. God is judging your sin, but also saving you from that same sin by putting you through a very painful process called the exile, whereby you will be healed of a desire to sin against God in this way to the day of the Lord. But then the day of the Lord has another context, and it has an apocalyptic context. By apocalyptic, we mean it has a end of the world. Like, it has a. This world will end, and God will break into human history once and for all. And the thing that makes interpreting Isaiah or the Book of Revelation or any apocalyptic literature difficult is that when is the author talking about the day of the Lord in their context, and when is the author talking about the day of the Lord? Which means there's multiple days of the Lord. There are, like, little days of the Lord, and then there's, like, the day of the Lord, the day where Jesus is gonna return. The day where God will judge all the nations. The day where the new heaven and the new earth will start and this heaven and this earth will stop. The day. The day where we'll stand before God and have to give an account for what we did with this life. And so what's always difficult. I mean, this is difficult for academics. This is why there's tons and tons of books behind me and all around me. Like, this is tough. It's hard for professors and academics and scholars to tease out, okay, like, is Isaiah talking about the day of the Lord, or is Isaiah talking about his day of the Lord? So the difficulty in interpreting such prophecies, especially apocalyptic ones, is distinguishing between the two. Is this day described describing a day when God will judge or save a nation? Or is the day describing the day when he will judge or save all nations? Okay, so that's always the. The thing that we're trying to figure out. Also, one thing that we really need to nail down is that the word apocalypse does not mean end of the world. I know. That's how our secular society has interpreted the word, right? So zombie apocalypse means a zombie movie about the end of the world. But this is a place where, because Christians got this wrong, now everyone has this wrong. The word apocalypsis in Greek means unveiling. It's why the book of Revelation is called Revelation. In Greek, the book is called apocalypsis. That's it. It means John's Apocalypse. And what's an apocalypse? An apocalypse is A revelation. Because if you're under persecution, all you can see is that Babylon is in charge, that the Babylonians are in charge. So God needs to give you a revelation. And what's that revelation? That Yahweh's on his throne. In the same way in the New Testament, if you're living in Rome and you're experiencing persecution, all you can see is that the Roman Empire is powerful. We're nothing. They're everything. Domitian is in control. He can take Christians and throw them into the Coliseum and feed them the lions. He can do whatever he wants. So what do the Christians that are living throughout the Roman Empire need? They need a revelation. They need a revelation that there's an invisible reality, that there are angels surrounding us, that there's a God that's on the throne. That it's not just Nero or Domitian that's on the throne, but an apocalypse is an unveiling. It's a revealing of a spiritual reality that our natural eyes are not always able to see. And so the word apocalyptic doesn't mean end of the world. It means a revealing. And that is exactly what's happening in these chapters of the book of Isaiah. There's a revelation of God's reality, of God's truth, of God's ideal, of what God actually wants to do. Okay, Isaiah, chapter 27. We are going to get one of my favorite nerdy nuggets. We're gonna get reference to a creature by the name of Leviathan. Now, I love when the Bible talks about Leviathan. I wrote a book called Crushing Chaos that is all about God conquering Leviathan. I actually think this is one of the most important biblical themes in the entire Bible. Is God crushing dragons? Now you may wonder, are there really dragons in the Bible? Yes, they are. Cause dragons symbolize chaos. So I know that many modern readers, we read Genesis as the account of God making something out of nothing. But actually, for an ancient person, they would have seen the subduing of Leviathan in the creation of the world as God not making something out of nothing, but God creating order in the place of chaos. And so we're gonna get Leviathan here in Isaiah 27:1. On that day, the Lord with his cruel and great and strong sword, will punish Leviathan, the fleeing serpent. So you see how God the, the Old Testament links dragons and serpents. Okay, Leviathan is a dragon, but he's going to be called a serpent. So these are the same idea in the Bible. I know for us in the western world, dragons are not serpents. And serpents are not dragons. But in the ancient world, they are one and the same. Leviathan, the twisting servant, serves serpent, and he will kill the dragon that is in the sea. So when we think about dragons, we think about creatures on the Earth. When the ancients thought about dragons, they thought about land dragons and sea dragons as both just dragons. So what is God actually saying? He's saying that part of the day of the Lord. Now John is going to pick up on this big time. In the book of Revelation. What does Revelation 12 open up with? You would think I'd grab it sooner, since Revelation is the last book of the Bible. Come on, come on, Bible guy. Revelation chapter 12. A great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, the moon, she was pregnant. Then another portent appeared in heaven, a great red dragon. Okay, so this is John is describing Leviathan or Satan trying to kill Mary, trying to kill the one who he knows will crush the head of chaos, which leads us into our timeless truth. God overcomes chaos. The way that we overcome chaos is not by trying to find our own order. The way that we overcome chaos is surrendering to the order that God wants to bring into our lives. God ultimately crushes chaos. It's actually the promise that he gives in Genesis, chapter 3, verse 15, that one offspring of the woman will crush the head of the serpent. It's not just a serpent, it's a dragon. Because if you think about it, a serpent that has lost its legs and limbs means that it used to be a dragon. And so Jesus is the one who knows how to conquer chaos and then teaches us how to conquer chaos. I used to tell the kids in my youth group all the time, I'm not going to pray that God would give you peace. I don't pray for peace. I pray for order. Because the God's solution for chaos is not peace. His solution for, like, your anxiety, it's not peace. His solution for your anxiety is order. Because if you got order, you'd always be able to grow the fruit of peace. Peace is a natural byproduct of an ordered life. When your life is full of order, then your life will always be full of peace. So I don't really pray for people to have peace. I pray for them to embrace the order of God in their life. And that's a timeless truth. Whether dragons are real or not, whether you believe Leviathan is out there in the ocean or not, like whatever you believe about how we've interpreted these chapters of Isaiah. Here's what I know is true. What I know is true is that there's chaos in all of our lives. And God says that on that day that we are living in between the day where Jesus has already began to conquer chaos and the ultimate day where all chaos will be crushed. And while we're in the middle, we use the power that Jesus has already deposited within us to crush chaos in our life and attract and maintain God's order in our life. But we look forward to the day where he will crush all chaos permanently, once and for all, in a decisive move which will mean throwing the dragon into the lake of fire. And I look forward to that day. And the only question is, will I experience salvation on that day or judgment on that day? And because I've placed my hope and my faith in the person of Jesus, I believe that I won't experience judgment on that day of the Lord, but I'll experience salvation on that day of the Lord. And I believe you will too, if you put your hope and your faith and your allegiance and your trust in King Jesus. All right, tomorrow we're going to continue our trek through the book of Isaiah. I'll be here nerding out with you. I'm so proud of you. Hey, if you're on a streak, don't break it. If you're not on a streak, what you doing with your life? Let's read the Bible. I think the Bible's good for you. I'm proud of you. I love you. I'll see you right here tomorrow. Take thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. You can find us online and learn more about the show at thebibledepartment.com 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. Sa.