Hello, my friends. It's Matt. This is the Ten Minute Bible Hour Podcast. And we are in the middle of what I'm guessing is going to be three days worth of us looking at the whole big timeline of the Old Testament and all the stuff in there where God talks about his plan for what he's doing with the Jewish people, but also that he intends to redeem the not Jewish people like me, and maybe like you, which means this is pretty important to us if you happen to be not Jewish, because hey, most of the Old Testament is about Jewish stuff and Jewish people. But you and me, if you're non-Jewish, if you're a Gentile like me, we do come up in the Old Testament, and it seems like God kind of has a soft spot for us. So we're gonna pick up right where we left off last time around. If you didn't catch yesterday's episode, you might want to go and catch that one. This one will make more sense. But either way, it's cool. I'm gonna have my friend Jeff play some cool music, and then we're gonna pick up right where we left off. Here we go. Now we're gonna jump forward another 300 years in time, from the time of David, around roughly 1000-ish BC, to the time of the prophet Isaiah in the 700s-ish BC. Now, shortly after the time of David, there's a civil war, and the kingdom broke up. It's terrible. The northern kingdom had 10 tribes that went up that direction. There's a dumpster fire up there. The southern kingdom has two tribes, more or less, left of God's chosen people. It sometimes goes a little better down there, but man, so much has changed, so much has happened between David and Isaiah. Maybe the plan is off. Maybe God's gonna do something different now because of choices that people made. Nope. You turn to the book of Isaiah, and what you find is that the plan is on. The promise that God made to Abraham about him being blessed and being a blessing to all the nations and his descendants, it's still the deal. Isaiah 42, verse 6. I the Lord have called you in righteousness. I will take hold of your hand, I will keep you and make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles. Boom. There it is. You heard him. Covenant's still on with the descendants of Abraham. Also, the plan to redeem everybody is also still on. Let me give you a couple more examples from Isaiah over here in chapter 56. There's a whole big chunk about God including outsiders during this time, the time in which Isaiah is writing before Jesus. And it also looks toward a later time when they'll be fully included. Maintain justice and do what is right, for my salvation is close at hand, and my righteousness will soon be revealed. Blessed is the man who does this, the man who holds fast, who keeps the Sabbath without desecrating it, and keeps his hand from doing any evil. Those would have been boundary markers for righteousness in the Old Testament. Let no foreigner who has bound himself to the Lord say, The Lord will surely exclude me from his people. And let not any eunuch complain, I am only a dry tree, for this is what the Lord says. And then he goes on to describe a bunch of the blessings for these outsiders, and very specifically says, These I will bring to my holy mountain, and give them joy in my house of prayer, their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar, for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations. The sovereign Lord declares, He who gathers the exiles of Israel, I will gather still others to them besides those already gathered. Again, the deal is still on, clearly in this language, there's a special place for God's chosen people, the descendants of Abraham. Also, even within the context of the covenant here, there's an allowance in this time, the seven hundreds BC, for the way before Jesus, even for the Gentiles to be in. But then as the passage goes along, there's an anticipation of a future epoch, this is after Jesus, where his house will be called a house of prayer for all nations. This is more than just a few stragglers here and there. This is a future vision of what was hinted at in the promised Abraham all the way back in Genesis chapter twelve, all the nations, that same language right there. Well, let's look at a couple other ones because I'm having fun. Isaiah sixty where is it? It's right at the beginning. Here we go. Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you. See, darkness covers the earth, and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the Lord rises upon you, and his glory appears to you. Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn. I've already spelled it out enough times that you're catching the pattern at this point, surely, but there it is. Both parts of this promise, both sides of this vision, are still in place. Let's do one more from Isaiah. Isaiah 66, 18 through I should have written down the specific references. What am I doing? Wushle. Uh here it is. Uh is it eighteen? Yeah. Isaiah 66, 18, and I'll stop reading when it makes sense to. And I, because of their actions and their imaginations, am about to come and gather all nations and tongues, and they will come and see my glory. I will set a sign among them, and I will send some of those who survive to the nations, to Tarshish, to the Libyans, to the Lydians, famous as archers, to Tubal and Greece and the distant islands that have not heard of my fame or seen my glory. They will proclaim my glory among the nations, and they will bring all your brothers from all the nations to my holy mountain in Jerusalem as an offering to the Lord on horses and chariots and wagons and on mules and on camels, says the Lord. They will bring them as the Israelites bring their grain offering to the temple of the Lord in ceremonially clean vessels, and I will select some of them also to be priests and Levites, says the Lord. Well, dang, it almost sounds like he's talking about the disciples. It almost sounds like he's talking about Paul himself. This is very specific, very explicit language, and really for the first time here in Isaiah 66, as we've been going through the Old Testament and God's relationship and plan for the nations, what we're hearing here is some specifics about how he's gonna pull it off and where. Sure, hit me with the questions. And God gives good answers to the questions. He's like, No, you know, I'm still keeping my promises to my people. Also, I'm going to use the nations to judge my people. And then we get this gem in Habakkuk 2 and what is it, 14? Yes, 214. For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea, even after two giant cataclysms, the northern kingdom, conquered in seven twenty-two by the Assyrians, the southern kingdom, soon to be conquered at the time of Habakkuk, in five eighty-six BC by Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians, even after that. There's not going to be any temple left, it's going to be toppled stone from stone. There's not going to be anybody left living in Jerusalem, it's going to be a ruin. All of God's people are going to be in exile, in captivity, in Babylon. How is this going to work? Surely God's going to change the plan? Nope, he's not. The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. I'm starting to get the impression, as we've covered going on two thousand years of Old Testament history, that this plan is unconditional. It's going to happen regardless of people's behavior. It's going to happen regardless of the ebbs and flows of history. Humanity has a problem. There is a curse. There is the surge coming. And Jews, Gentiles alike, we are all born into and earn ourselves being on the unprotected, bad side of the surge protector. Yet it looks very much like deliverance is inbound for Jews and Gentiles alike to move us from the bad side of the surge protector to the protected side of the surge protector. Sure enough, I wasn't able to cram all of this into two episodes, so I'm going to hit pause right here, and we're going to finish this jaunt through the Old Testament off next time around. I promise. Thank you so much for being willing to go hardcore down these rabbit trails into other parts of the Bible with me. I'm telling you, you get into stuff like Galatians, where it's really important, really deep dive, but also really big picture theology and truth of God. You kind of just have to dart all over the place in the Bible if you want to chase down everything that's there. Hopefully we're doing this in a way where it makes sense and it's all hanging together. We'll pick it up right where we left off tomorrow. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.