Doug McMasters: That was a hard question, right?
Doug McMasters: Yeah, yeah, royal leaned over to me and she said I don't think I have a favorite and I was like, well, it's kind of like your children.
Doug McMasters: You know you love your children.
Doug McMasters: You wouldn't say at least I don't know, maybe you would.
Doug McMasters: I wouldn't say I love one of them more than I love another one, but you love them differently.
Doug McMasters: Right, let's take our Bible and go to the book of Isaiah.
Doug McMasters: We're on our journey along Route 66 and gotten ourselves to Isaiah and, because of the way our English Bible is arranged, we're entering into a long section of prophetic literature beginning with Isaiah, running all the way to Malachi.
Doug McMasters: So several books will have somewhat of the same flavor.
Doug McMasters: So tonight's message on Isaiah is going to be a little different than some of our other books that we've looked at.
Doug McMasters: In over a month, or just over a month, we're going to launch into a Sunday morning series on the book of Isaiah, and so I'm going to give a more detailed overview of Isaiah.
Doug McMasters: I think the last Sunday of September will be the launch of that study.
Doug McMasters: That's the plan anyway.
Doug McMasters: So tonight we're going to look at Isaiah, but only in relationship to the other prophetic books as a whole and as we go through this evening, I'm just going to ask and answer about five different questions.
Doug McMasters: So if you're taking notes, it's going to be sort of a question answer format.
Doug McMasters: First question is who were the prophets?
Doug McMasters: As we enter into Isaiah working through Malachi in the Old Testament, who were these prophets?
Doug McMasters: Well, the first thing we need to do is distinguish between the large number of people that are called prophets and even prophetesses in the Old Testament in comparison to a smaller number of prophets who have books assigned to their ministry.
Doug McMasters: God gave to the people of Israel a number of people throughout their history who do not have books named after them.
Doug McMasters: Talmudic literature and other rabbinic literature numbers them.
Doug McMasters: Some say there's 46, I think in the Talmud says 48 prophets and they name them and they have criteria for why they name that many.
Doug McMasters: And there's seven prophetesses and then there are seven prophets to the nations.
Doug McMasters: We're not talking necessarily about that, but a number of people were called prophets.
Doug McMasters: And then there are the books of the Old Testament and we call them prophets and we start here with the book of Isaiah.
Doug McMasters: Part of this comes into how our Bibles are arranged.
Doug McMasters: We know how our English Bible is arranged, particularly in the Old Testament.
Doug McMasters: But we may not be as familiar with how the Old Testament is arranged in the Hebrew Bible.
Doug McMasters: The Hebrew Bible is arranged in a three-part category, three-category breakdown.
Doug McMasters: It's called the mikra, which means that which is written, and it also uses a term that you might have heard tanakh.
Doug McMasters: Have you heard that term before?
Doug McMasters: Tanakh?
Doug McMasters: It's an acronym which helps you understand what the three sections are.
Doug McMasters: You might be familiar with Ohika Castle right, ottoman Herman Khan, oh-hi-ka, ottoman Herman Khan.
Doug McMasters: The guy who built that place named it after his first three names.
Doug McMasters: So that kind of structure is the kind of structure that Tanakh is.
Doug McMasters: That kind of structure is the kind of structure that Tanakh is.
Doug McMasters: The three sections of the Hebrew Old Testament the Torah, the T word, has five books in it.
Doug McMasters: The Nevi'im, the prophets, has eight, so Tanakh.
Doug McMasters: Then we get to the K, the Keduvim, or the writings, which has 11 books.
Doug McMasters: The Ketuvim, or the writings, which has 11 books.
Doug McMasters: So the first one, the Torah, the five books of Moses, we might call it that, or call it the law or the Pentateuch Right.
Doug McMasters: We call it those terms, the Torah.
Doug McMasters: And then there's the latter section, called the writings, which is broken up into three subsections.
Doug McMasters: We've got the poetic and wisdom literature Psalms, proverbs and Job and then there's the what they call the scrolls.
Doug McMasters: There's five of those Song of Solomon, ruth, lamentations, ecclesiastes and Esther.
Doug McMasters: And then there's in the writings, another subsection that deals with exilic literature.
Doug McMasters: So people who wrote during the time of the exile Ezra and Nehemiah would be a prime example of that.
Doug McMasters: But when we look at the Hebrew structure of the prophets, they break it into two major sections the early prophets and the later prophets.
Doug McMasters: Early prophets and the later prophets.
Doug McMasters: So the former prophets include books that we wouldn't consider necessarily as prophets Joshua, judges, 1st and 2nd, samuel, 1st and 2nd Kings these are all part of what we call the former prophets.
Doug McMasters: These are all narratives.
Doug McMasters: We would call them narratives that explain the history of Israel in relationship to God's covenant and the outflow of that covenant.
Doug McMasters: And then there's the later prophets, and the later prophets are broken into two sections.
Doug McMasters: There's Isaiah, jeremiah and Ezekiel, and then there's one other book called the 12th, in which there's the 12, what we would call minor prophets are included into one scroll.
Doug McMasters: If you listen closely, you might have noticed something, and I'm about to explain.
Doug McMasters: In our English Bible we have five parts of our Old Testament.
Doug McMasters: We have the law.
Doug McMasters: We have the history, right.
Doug McMasters: We have the poetic and wisdom literature.
Doug McMasters: Then we have the major prophets and the minor prophets, right.
Doug McMasters: So we're more familiar with that breakdown rather than the three category In our English Bible.
Doug McMasters: In the major prophets, what do we include?
Doug McMasters: Do you know?
Doug McMasters: Isaiah, jeremiah Lamentations, right.
Doug McMasters: Ezekiel and Daniel, right.
Doug McMasters: When I was memorizing the books of the Bible as a new Christian, I had to find ways to memorize these books.
Doug McMasters: I hadn't even read them yet, but I was already tasked with memorizing the order of them, and so I decided just one day to sit down and memorize them, and this is how I remembered the major prophets.
Doug McMasters: I just like every dog.
Doug McMasters: Right.
Doug McMasters: Isaiah, jeremiah Lamentations, ezekiel, daniel.
Doug McMasters: It works, I haven't forgotten it yet.
Doug McMasters: Now the other one I forgot.
Doug McMasters: It was like Henry just ate orange juice, or something like that.
Doug McMasters: It was really weird, but it worked when I needed it.
Doug McMasters: Well, isaiah, jeremiah Lamentations, also in Jeremiah, ezekiel and then Daniel, and then the minor prophets.
Doug McMasters: In the Christian framework, daniel is numbered with the major prophets, but in that Hebrew collection that I just mentioned to you, daniel is not listed in the prophets at all.
Doug McMasters: Daniel is not in the early prophets and it's not in the later prophets.
Doug McMasters: It's actually in that section called the writings, in that exilic subsection of the writings, along with Nehemiah and Ezra and along with 1 and 2 Chronicles.
Doug McMasters: Now, what are the three main types of prophets?
Doug McMasters: Well, there's three categories that all of these prophets fit into.
Doug McMasters: Well, most all of them.
Doug McMasters: Three main categories.
Doug McMasters: There are obviously exceptions to these three categories, but there are what we call the leader prophets.
Doug McMasters: The leader prophets are the people that brought the people of Israel sort of in front of them.
Doug McMasters: So you think of Moses, for example.
Doug McMasters: Moses was a prophet, he was a leader prophet.
Doug McMasters: Interestingly, aaron is also mentioned as one, and Miriam, the sister of Aaron and Moses, in Micah, chapter 6 and verse 4.
Doug McMasters: I brought you up from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from that place of slavery.
Doug McMasters: I sent Moses, aaron and Miriam ahead of you.
Doug McMasters: And Miriam is also called a prophetess in another part as well.
Doug McMasters: And then there's other leader prophets Deborah in the book of Judges is called a prophetess in another part as well.
Doug McMasters: And then there's other leader prophets Deborah in the book of Judges is called a prophetess.
Doug McMasters: There are also a subsection called the court prophets.
Doug McMasters: The court prophets.
Doug McMasters: These were people that were active during the time of the monarchy and they stood, as the title signifies, before the kings and advised them, got in their faces sometimes and warned them or encouraged them to follow the Lord and to bring the people into conformity with the covenant.
Doug McMasters: Elijah and Elisha are good examples of that.
Doug McMasters: You might think of Nathan the prophet as he ministered to David.
Doug McMasters: Court prophets Nathan was, I think, probably a very good example of one.
Doug McMasters: He promised the house of David an eternal monarchy.
Doug McMasters: He notified David about the building of the temple being postponed until Solomon came, david about the building of the temple being postponed until Solomon came.
Doug McMasters: He also reproved David for his sin with Bathsheba and Uriah.
Doug McMasters: So very much a court prophet.
Doug McMasters: And then there's a group or a subcategory called classical prophets.
Doug McMasters: Classical prophets these are the literary prophets, these are the ones that have a book associated with them, and so you think of Isaiah, jeremiah, ezekiel, you think of the minor prophets.
Doug McMasters: Well, isaiah sort of sits in between the two of being a court prophet and a classical prophet.
Doug McMasters: Some of his ministry is before the kings, and we'll talk about some of the kings that he ministers to.
Doug McMasters: In fact, if you look at Isaiah 1.1, it mentions his ministry in the times of four different kings of Judah.
Doug McMasters: But most of his writings are more like classical writings, more like a classical prophet, as he indicts the people for their behavior, as he promises to them judgment if they continue to disobey, or to encourage them about the blessings of the covenant if they obey.
Doug McMasters: So that leads us to our third question when did these prophets minister?
Doug McMasters: We're talking about a lot of books here.
Doug McMasters: If you count Daniel as one of them and we do in our arrangement, there are 16 books of the Bible in the major and minor prophets.
Doug McMasters: When did they minister?
Doug McMasters: Well, when you look at their time frame of the ministry of these 16 people, it adds up to a time frame of about 300 years.
Doug McMasters: If you go from Abraham all the way to Malachi, that's a time frame of about 1500 years.
Doug McMasters: So you take a lot of the books of the Bible and squeeze them into a small little section of time here.
Doug McMasters: Why is that?
Doug McMasters: Why is it, when we go from the first of these prophets some say Jonah, but he's kind of a unique person in a unique position Go from Amos as one of the first ones, to the people of Israel all the way to Malachi as the last one.
Doug McMasters: Why just about 300 years?
Doug McMasters: Can you think of the reason why they're concentrated in that small little sliver of the people of Israel's history, in that small little sliver of the people of Israel's history?
Doug McMasters: It's because those are very turbulent centuries in the life of Israel.
Doug McMasters: After David and Solomon, we have Rehoboam and the splitting of the nation into two the ten tribes of Israel and the two under the banner of Judah.
Doug McMasters: And how the northern kingdom was riddled with social and economic injustice and idolatrous worship of Baal and syncretistic worship of Yahweh.
Doug McMasters: So God sent to them prophets Amos and Hosea to warn them of judgment if they continued down the pathway that they were going.
Doug McMasters: And they didn't listen.
Doug McMasters: He warned them of imminent destruction.
Doug McMasters: And in 721 BC that happened, when the Assyrians destroyed Samaria and the northern tribes were scattered.
Doug McMasters: Judah in the south was just as bad.
Doug McMasters: All of the kings of Israel were bad and nearly all of the kings of Judah were bad.
Doug McMasters: And so God sent them prophets like Isaiah, like Micah, like Jeremiah, to warn them that, unless they repented, they too would face a similar destruction as the northern tribes of Israel.
Doug McMasters: And in 587 BC, jerusalem was captured, the temple was burned and the people were carried off in a series of exportations in exile to Babylon.
Doug McMasters: However, when we read these prophets, we realize that that's not the end of the story.
Doug McMasters: It's not over yet.
Doug McMasters: Prior to this exile, there are statements of encouragement of something that God will do in the future.
Doug McMasters: Isaiah speaks about it, even Jeremiah speaks about it, and while they were in exile they were given encouragements by Ezekiel and Daniel predominantly, that if they repented, even though they weren't in the land, that God would continue to show his blessings and favor to the people.
Doug McMasters: Well, they did return from exile, as God said.
Doug McMasters: They would Doesn't mean that they were necessarily righteous, and so there were still prophets that would speak to them, even in the post-exilic period, after they had returned back to the land.
Doug McMasters: So when we look at the prophets, we divide them into major prophets and minor prophets, which only has a signification about the length of the book, not necessarily the quality of their ministry.
Doug McMasters: It wasn't like Isaiah is a major player and Habakkuk is a minor player.
Doug McMasters: It's just a longer book and a shorter book.
Doug McMasters: But all of these prophets can be broken into the sections of speaking to Israel or speaking to Judah, or maybe a bit of a mix there before the exile, and then the exile itself, and then a ministry after the exile.
Doug McMasters: So you can sort of break it down into those time periods, but all in all about 300 years.
Doug McMasters: That brings us to Isaiah.
Doug McMasters: Who is Isaiah?
Doug McMasters: When did he minister?
Doug McMasters: Well, he ministered to the people of Judah, to those two tribes around Jerusalem, and in the late 8th century the glory days of David were long past.
Doug McMasters: Even the relatively strong ministry of Uzziah's death brought a decline.
Doug McMasters: Economically they were in bad shape.
Doug McMasters: Geopolitically they were under the reign of terror of major players At that time Egypt and Assyria.
Doug McMasters: Babylon at that time hadn't quite risen to ascendancy.
Doug McMasters: They were weakened internally by syncretism, by injustice, by a very formalistic religion, and they were led by bad kings.
Doug McMasters: The kings of Judah were vassals serving at the pleasure of the kings of Assyria, and from the time of Isaiah's ministry all the way until the end, in only little moments of respite, every one of those kings served as underlords to the kings of Assyria.
Doug McMasters: And then Babylon put the earthly reign of the line of David to an apparent end, but we know, not a complete end.
Doug McMasters: So Isaiah speaks to a nation in decline, he speaks to a nation in sin.
Doug McMasters: He speaks to a nation in a very topsy-turvy world.
Doug McMasters: He speaks to a nation that has chained itself to foreign powers, to a nation that's forgotten its God.
Doug McMasters: Amazingly, in the middle of oracles of judgment, there are great words of encouragement that Isaiah speaks, and we'll get into those in the weeks and months to come.
Doug McMasters: When we go into that, one of the things that we need to know is found in verse 1.
Doug McMasters: Isaiah speaks during the times of the reigns of King Uzziah, jotham, ahaz and Hezekiah.
Doug McMasters: We find out in chapter 6 that Uzziah dies, so we don't learn much about his ministry when Uzziah was king.
Doug McMasters: We don't hear much of his ministry under Jotham.
Doug McMasters: The last two are the two kings that we learn the most about when we look at Isaiah, ahaz and Hezekiah.
Doug McMasters: But during Isaiah's ministry, assyria was the nation that was most at play and Ahaz interacted with one king predominantly and Hezekiah interacted with another king of Assyria.
Doug McMasters: Tiglath-pileser III was the one that Ahaz had to deal with and Sennacherib was the one that Hezekiah had to deal with, had to deal with and Sennacherib was the one that Hezekiah had to deal with.
Doug McMasters: And so when we read the first 39 chapters of Isaiah, we see that a lot of it is wrapped up in Isaiah interacting with Ahaz and also him interacting with Hezekiah.
Doug McMasters: During these two crises in which there is the danger of invasion from the north, Ahaz, as a king, fails the test.
Doug McMasters: He decides to trust human schemes, he decides to get into ill-advised military alliances instead of trusting Yahweh.
Doug McMasters: And when we read the first chapters of Isaiah, particularly chapter 7 to 12, we find those interactions.
Doug McMasters: Later, hezekiah comes into a similar situation.
Doug McMasters: He also is tempted to yield to finding strength in alliances with other powers, but in the end he heeds the words of the prophet Isaiah and relies on the Lord, god, for help, and the people are delivered for a short bit of time.
Doug McMasters: Those chapters chapters 36 to 39, help us to understand that In between those two sections, with these two kings, in this sort of courtly prophetic ministry, we get the classical ministry of Isaiah speaking oracles of doom to the nations around Israel, and he mentioned several of them, some of whom that we're familiar with, and some of them were even distant lands away from Israel, away from Jerusalem and not even really players.
Doug McMasters: But those oracles weren't written for those people necessarily.
Doug McMasters: They were written for the people of Judah To answer the question who will you trust and who will you model your life after.
Doug McMasters: If God was going to bring judgment on Damascus and God was going to bring judgment on Moab and God was going to bring judgment upon Edom and God was going to bring judgment upon Assyria.
Doug McMasters: Should you really be trusting them?
Doug McMasters: No, should you really be aligning yourself with them in your lifestyle?
Doug McMasters: No, because they are under the sovereign hand of Almighty God.
Doug McMasters: Who's going to call them into account for their wicked behavior?
Doug McMasters: And if you make friendship with them, you will find yourself also at enmity with God.
Doug McMasters: And that was the message Judah was to pick up when Isaiah was casting off these oracles against the nations.
Doug McMasters: When we get to chapter 40 of Isaiah, a new situation has arisen.
Doug McMasters: God is no longer challenging the people to trust him and not find deliverance in alliances.
Doug McMasters: That day's already gone.
Doug McMasters: God has followed through already in his repeated offering of warning that they would be brought to nothing.
Doug McMasters: When you begin Isaiah, chapter 40, isaiah is not speaking now to a people about to go into exile.
Doug McMasters: He's speaking as if the people are already in exile, even though that hasn't happened yet.
Doug McMasters: He's speaking to them about the same issue, though Can they trust God?
Doug McMasters: Can they trust God to fulfill his promises when there's no Davidic king reigning in Jerusalem?
Doug McMasters: Can they trust God to bring them back to the land?
Doug McMasters: Can they trust God and his forgiveness?
Doug McMasters: Can they trust God and his strengthening so that they might fulfill their calling as the servant of the Lord?
Doug McMasters: And so the oracles in chapters 40 to the end of the book speak to a people as if they were already in Babylon.
Doug McMasters: And some would say chapters 55 to 66 speak to the people as if they had already left Babylon and had come back to the land, which is kind of interesting.
Doug McMasters: And so in the first 39 chapters you have indictments of interest.
Doug McMasters: And so in the first 39 chapters you have indictments of judgment, and in chapters 40 to 66, you have largely statements about God's forgiveness, god's deliverance and God's restoration.
Doug McMasters: That leads us to another question, and I've sort of already answered it a little bit in this last one, number four what is the purpose of the prophets?
Doug McMasters: What is the purpose of the prophetic ministry, of these classical prophets?
Doug McMasters: Well, to make it as simple as possible, it is to do one thing it is to remind the people.
Doug McMasters: To remind the, the people First of all, to remind them of their history, Remind them that they were simply a tribal group, that God had chosen out of all of the peoples on earth to be his special possession, and that he had prospered them as he gave promises to their fathers and he had made out of this small little band a nation, by delivering them from the strongest power of the time, the people of Egypt, and had gathered them to himself and had made covenant relationship with them, promising himself to them.
Doug McMasters: So the prophets, over and over again, whether we're talking about Amos or Isaiah or Malachi or Habakkuk, you're going to hear this first call of remembrance, to remember who you are, remember what God has done.
Doug McMasters: And then the second one is to remind the people of their commitments, because when they were brought into covenant relationship with God, they stood there and said these things we will do, and they bound themselves in a covenant relationship with God that they would respond to this loving God, who had called them out of slavery, by way of trust and obedience.
Doug McMasters: And so, when you read the prophets, you will hear God speaking to them through these prophets, about remembering to trust and remembering to obey.
Doug McMasters: And then, last of all, the prophets would remind Israel of God's threats and God's promises when God gave them the covenant, he told them of what would happen should they disobey.
Doug McMasters: And what would happen should they disobey and what would happen should they yield themselves to God.
Doug McMasters: That God would lead them into curses and doom if they denied him, and yet would lead them into blessings beyond their ability to imagine if they trusted him, ability to imagine if they trusted him.
Doug McMasters: And so the prophets continue to speak about those matters, calling them by way of warning and calling them by way of promise to respond to the Lord.
Doug McMasters: So, when you think about these major prophets and minor prophets and when you think of the book of Isaiah individually, as we will in the next several weeks, just remember very simply that they're there to remind the people of who they were, of who they are and what their future might hold.
Doug McMasters: That's a very simple way to look at it.
Doug McMasters: And that leads us to our last question how did the prophets operate?
Doug McMasters: How did they operate?
Doug McMasters: Well, christopher Wright wrote a book called how to Preach and Teach the Old Testament for All Its Worth, and it's part of a very good series that has for all its worth as part of the title, and he has a very good way of helping us understand the prophets by way of our own bodies.
Doug McMasters: He said the prophets had mouths.
Doug McMasters: They spoke for God.
Doug McMasters: So when you read the prophets, you will hear them say often this is what the Lord says.
Doug McMasters: They're spokesmen for God, they're messengers for God.
Doug McMasters: They're mouthpieces for God.
Doug McMasters: They're not simply very, very vocal religious people who want to speak words of promise or judgment based upon their own perspectives or their own understanding of justice.
Doug McMasters: They are God's mouthpieces and they are speaking to the people directly what God wants them to know.
Doug McMasters: Now here's an important thing to remember about the prophets they were speaking to the people about their present more than they were doing any.
Doug McMasters: Speaking about the people, about their future.
Doug McMasters: Even when they did speak about the future, by way of warnings or of encouragements, of blessing, those were future elements meant to affect the present so that they would amend their lives.
Doug McMasters: Today, when the prophet was speaking to them, it wasn't so they could just sort of sit back and gaze off into the distance and say I wonder what that would mean.
Doug McMasters: It wasn't that, it wasn't that they were God's spokesmen for the generation they were living in, so the people who lived around them would give their life to God.
Doug McMasters: We somehow think that the prophets were mainly just seers of the future and diving into it with this sort of crass curiosity of what will it be like to it, with this sort of crass curiosity of what will it be like.
Doug McMasters: Sadly, a lot of Christians have got themselves wrapped up in that sort of mentality about prophecy today, trying to dissect the days that are ahead of us rather than giving concern about their lifestyle in the present.
Doug McMasters: So the prophets had mouths.
Doug McMasters: They were spokesmen for God.
Doug McMasters: The prophets had mouths.
Doug McMasters: They were spokesmen for God.
Doug McMasters: The prophets had ears.
Doug McMasters: They heard God's word.
Doug McMasters: This is what we mean when we use the theological term of inspiration.
Doug McMasters: These weren't necessarily dynamic speakers.
Doug McMasters: They weren't inspired like painters or poets or writers and that sort of idea.
Doug McMasters: When we talk about somebody being inspired or someone being quite gifted, like a musician or an athlete, what we mean is that they received God's word, as God wanted it to be said.
Doug McMasters: So they were receivers of God's word.
Doug McMasters: The prophets also had heads, which meant that they have a mind of their own.
Doug McMasters: They weren't simply dictation machines.
Doug McMasters: They weren't simply mindless spouting mouths, sort of feed it in and feed it out, as though it didn't work, through their personalities.
Doug McMasters: When we read the major prophets and the minor prophets.
Doug McMasters: We understand that every one of them are different, just as every one of us are different.
Doug McMasters: They all had their particular personalities, their particular characteristics, their particular situation and the people that they were speaking to.
Doug McMasters: They emphasized different things, they focused on different things, they used different means of communicating, just like we all do and this is one of the benefits for us, on Sunday nights, of hearing from different guys going through Route 66, realizing that God's Word is unchangeable.
Doug McMasters: But Ethan is going to speak differently than Mike is going to be speaking differently than Micah is going to be speaking differently than Walter or Ted or me or Bob or any of the other guys who have been sharing God's Word with us.
Doug McMasters: God's Word is true, and we may find the style of Banu better than we find the style of Doug, but it doesn't mean God's word is any less necessary for us to hear Right.
Doug McMasters: So these men were like that.
Doug McMasters: They were different men, they had different vocabularies, different skill sets, different interests, different ways of communicating, but they all emphasized the same thing the prophets also had hearts.
Doug McMasters: Not only did they have mouths and ears and a head, but they also had a heart.
Doug McMasters: Listen to Jeremiah.
Doug McMasters: Oh that my head were a spring of water, my eyes a fountain of tears.
Doug McMasters: I would weep day and night for the slain of my people.
Doug McMasters: That's an emotional person.
Doug McMasters: Right, jeremiah was distraught by the sufferings that he saw coming on his own people, and it was as if he could have his tears turn into a spring that would continue to run.
Doug McMasters: He felt like this is so horrible, I wish I couldn't stop crying.
Doug McMasters: This is deeply emotional language and it shows us that the prophets had feelings, deep emotions.
Doug McMasters: They didn't just think about their messages, they felt their messages.
Doug McMasters: But they also communicated God's word and by communicating it through their emotions, they're also helping us to understand something about the character of God.
Doug McMasters: God, their words, expressed with human feeling, give us an understanding of God, his person, his character and His determinations.
Doug McMasters: So we use terms that we're used to speak about God.
Doug McMasters: God loves and longs for His people.
Doug McMasters: God's angry at sin.
Doug McMasters: God is compassionate and cares for the poor, the needy.
Doug McMasters: God is grieved when he's rejected.
Doug McMasters: He's filled with joy when his people are blessed.
Doug McMasters: These are all emotional words, they're all human words, but they all have for us a way of connecting in the reality of who our God is, a way of connecting in the reality of who our God is.
Doug McMasters: The prophets also had hands.
Doug McMasters: They had mouths and they had ears.
Doug McMasters: And they have a head and they have a heart, but they also had hands.
Doug McMasters: Sometimes they turned their words into actions.
Doug McMasters: Sometimes you'll see the prophets doing some rather peculiar things, because those prophets turn into object lessons for God's people.
Doug McMasters: When we get to Isaiah, chapter 20, isaiah will run around either in his underwear or naked in Jerusalem to portray the shame of captivity that lies ahead of the people of Judah.
Doug McMasters: Or Jeremiah, jeremiah 27, who's told to put a yoke upon his own shoulders and burst into the United Nations, an international diplomatic meeting, a conference in Jerusalem, and to talk about to all the ambassadors that are there that they need to give themselves to Babylon or else they're going to be brought to nothing.
Doug McMasters: Imagine somebody breaking into the United Nations today and doing that.
Doug McMasters: Ian would have to shoot them, right.
Doug McMasters: But the prophets, last of all, had eyes.
Doug McMasters: They're often called seers, right, not just prophets, they're called seers and sometimes the prophets actually did see things.
Doug McMasters: You remember the time when Elisha could see the armies of the angels right when nobody else could?
Doug McMasters: Or when Samuel could tell Saul where his lost donkeys were.
Doug McMasters: They could see things literally, but it also meant that they could see things insightfully.
Doug McMasters: They could understand things with a spiritual perception that the sinful people around them didn't understand.
Doug McMasters: But then there's another aspect of being able to see they could see into some unspecified day about a future, and so they would use terms like in that day or in the day of the Lord, and they would speak about something in the distance.
Doug McMasters: Now we know by reading 1 Peter that they knew the certainty of these things, but they didn't understand necessarily the certainty of these things, but they didn't understand necessarily the timing of those things, and they longed to look into the future, what those things might be.
Doug McMasters: And so that leads us to our last little part of this is how to understand these prophets is by recognizing that when they were seers, they were seeing, and they're helping us to see the future in three different horizons.
Doug McMasters: If you've ever been to California or a place where there's mountains, it's beautiful to look at the horizon and to realize that there are layers of distance there, the horizon, and to realize that there are layers of distance there, especially at the sunset when those mountains sort of turn into a monochromatic color of purple or gray, depending on how colorblind you are, and you see the end.
Doug McMasters: But then you see a range and then another range, but it's all flattened out because you can't really get any depth of field from that kind of distance.
Doug McMasters: So you know that there's mountains behind mountains, behind mountains behind the flat part that you see, but how far away is all of that?
Doug McMasters: How far away is one range behind the other one?
Doug McMasters: You can't really tell.
Doug McMasters: And so when we read the Old Testament, particularly the prophets, we're dealing with something that has horizons to it.
Doug McMasters: Three of them particularly.
Doug McMasters: There's the horizon of the Old Testament era.
Doug McMasters: The prophets would speak about their day, and they would speak about things that would be fulfilled in their day.
Doug McMasters: So you have Jeremiah Jeremiah 28, prophesying that Hananiah would die.
Doug McMasters: Well, hananiah dies.
Doug McMasters: That happens along the first horizon.
Doug McMasters: You have the prophets speaking about the exile, and that happens in 721 BC and 587 BC.
Doug McMasters: All of this fulfilled during the Old Testament historical time period.
Doug McMasters: Horizon one Several prophets also predicted that the people would come back from the exile, and so these prophecies speak about a return to the land even before they left the land.
Doug McMasters: But it's still during the Old Testament historical time period.
Doug McMasters: But when you read some of these prophecies of horizon one, you get a sense that maybe it's not all finished yet with these prophecies, that something is still being carried forward.
Doug McMasters: A good example is when we get to Isaiah, chapter seven, when Isaiah gives a sign to Ahaz about a child being born, a child that would predict the future in the close range, but also speaks with some words that seem to stretch beyond that first horizon.
Doug McMasters: And in the midst of the danger and the threat of those months it was good for them to know that God was with them.
Doug McMasters: But did they really understand it all quite?
Doug McMasters: When we read Isaiah 7, we realize that there's something yet to come, still out of that prophecy, and it's horizon number two, the New Testament era.
Doug McMasters: And when we pick up the Gospel of Matthew, we realize that Isaiah was speaking not only to the king in his day, but he was speaking about a king who was to come, a king who would himself be Emmanuel, god with us.
Doug McMasters: And so horizon number two, as the prophets see, brings us into the ministry of Jesus Christ that there are things that were pointing toward him in messianic prophecy, still had application to the day, still had meaning for the people of the day still might, even had some measure of fulfillment for people of the day, but spoke yet of a horizon beyond them, of another day.
Doug McMasters: So when we read Jeremiah, chapter 31, and we read about a new covenant, and we feel the comparisons of the old covenant still there, old covenant language, and yet it talks about something that the old covenant couldn't do.
Doug McMasters: Promises to God's people that complete forgiveness would come, that lasting knowledge of God would be implanted in their heart, that God's law would be drawn inside of them instead of outside of them, that their hearts would be changed from hard, stony hearts to malleable ones in which they willed to will God's word.
Doug McMasters: We recognize that only that can be accomplished through Christ inaugurating that new covenant.
Doug McMasters: So horizon two when we read Isaiah, chapter 53, we read of the servant.
Doug McMasters: We recognize that Israel was called to be the servant of the Lord, but that there was coming a servant who would be the perfect servant of the Lord.
Doug McMasters: And so we find ourselves reading in Isaiah 53 particularly about the very life and ministry, death and resurrection and the ministry of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: But then that leads us to a third horizon.
Doug McMasters: As these major and minor prophets would look forward, they would speak to that first horizon, stretch into the second horizon, to that first horizon, stretch into the second horizon.
Doug McMasters: But then we would read the prophets speak of the future in terms that none of us had yet seen in any kind of history, even to this day.
Doug McMasters: Words of judgment engulfing the whole earth in cataclysmic destruction of the wicked and evil encompassing the whole entire world, even creation itself.
Doug McMasters: We can only relate that to the ultimate horizon of the second coming of Christ and the creation of the new heavens and the new earth.
Doug McMasters: But then there's that exalted vision that we read at times where things are overflowing with joy, to an extent we could only call perfection, nature full of abundance, earth itself rejoicing in its creator Human life.
Doug McMasters: All of us safe, all of us fulfilled, all of us free, absolutely free from violence and injustice and hunger and danger.
Doug McMasters: War ended, everyone, even with the animals, living in perfect harmony.
Doug McMasters: Never, ever again to turn away from God in disobedience.
Doug McMasters: Our hearts completely transformed, People from all over the world and all nations having absolutely rejected every false God or every idol in the heart, to turn to the living God and to worship him.
Doug McMasters: We'll see those in Isaiah.
Doug McMasters: What is this?
Doug McMasters: It's the third horizon.
Doug McMasters: It's the third horizon which we still look to and long for, and it's called our hope.
Doug McMasters: The second horizon has inaugurated and given us the strength to put our very eternal souls into the hands of this God who has claimed for us participation in the third horizon.
Doug McMasters: It is ours.
Doug McMasters: It's not here yet, but it is ours.
Doug McMasters: And so when we read about that perfect peace and that perfect transformation and that perfect harmony and that perfect life of justice, we can rest our souls in a God who has spoken truthfully to horizon one, already, given us the answer in horizon two, and gives us every reason to continue to trust him when we haven't yet seen horizon number three.
Doug McMasters: These are the prophets.
Doug McMasters: This is who they are, this is when they spoke, this is how they communicated and this is what they have to say to us.
Doug McMasters: When you read Isaiah, you may find yourself puzzled over its contents.
Doug McMasters: Remember the three parts of the remember communication.
Doug McMasters: Remember what God has done, remember your obligations, remember your warnings and your promises, and remember the three horizons and you'll go well down the road to being able to read it a lot better.
Doug McMasters: Let's pray together, father.
Doug McMasters: Thank you for your beloved promises to us, lord, when all of us should really take to heart and hear nothing but words of future judgment and condemnation.
Doug McMasters: You've granted to us a deliverer, jesus and everyone who is in him.
Doug McMasters: There can be said of them there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ, jesus.
Doug McMasters: Father, we thank you for your wonderful way that you've interjected into human history, as sinful and disobedient as we are, to bring us something that we don't deserve.
Doug McMasters: We thank you for these promises that are granted to us even hundreds and thousands of years before we ever stepped into this world, so that we might hear them and know who you are, and to be able to rest our soul in everything that you've accomplished.
Doug McMasters: Father, help us to understand better these writings that you've granted us in the prophets and Lord, in the weeks to come, help us to understand the strength of your character and the depth of your love in Christ as we step into Isaiah in a few weeks, and we pray this in Christ's name Amen.