Isaiah, Chapter 8
Isaiah 8:19-20 · Vern Peterman · Feb 26, 2006
Isaiah, No. 11
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/48262344333931

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Good morning. We have a lot to cover today. I want to kind of revisit something we talked about a couple of weeks ago, and that is we looked at chapter 7 of Isaiah and a couple of the places in there in the New American Standard, it says, Kurds, and this isn't speaking of those guys over in the Middle East, or butter in the King James, which we discovered is actually closer.

Most of us think of butter and we think of this cubicle thing, right? And what we discovered is that something more like ghee is what is intended, although most of us don't run into that. I don't know if you asked in a store if they'd even have any idea what you're talking about. It's a boiled filtered butter, kind of a lighter product.

The modern hand churns that you may think of, just so you know, that when Isaiah talks about this ghee stuff that you see in chapter seven, they would actually have an upside down goat skin. and shake it back and forth in order to produce this butter, and then they would boil it, filter it, and make the ghee. And you'll see that churning process mentioned in Proverbs 30-33. For the next part, we'll need to go to Harvard University. You ready? I hope you've all applied.

At Harvard University, they have a model on display. They have a Semitic museum, and they have a model on display of everyday life in Jerusalem during the life of Isaiah. This is the model that they have of the You can see in the lower right-hand corner, there's actually a little farm animal. Upstairs, some sleeping facilities. You see the bed rolled up there. And in the middle, this is part of your food preparation. Another thing that they have there is a depiction of Solomon's temple without the curtain. And so you can see in, including seeing the Ark of the Covenant there in the temple.

You can check it online, and you have on your handout Something that we haven't had before, but we'll try to introduce. A lot of times I'll have graphics and you don't have it on your handout. And one of the things we've tried to do here in order to make that more accessible to you is put links. And the process will be, you'll be able to go to the hollyhillsbiblechurch.org website. That's the link shown at the very bottom there and download the file. That's the handout and click on the link. And you'd be able to check those things out for yourself.

Look at it in more detail. Now. Something else, Isaiah is one of the list of things in the Dead Sea Scrolls. There are about 22 copies of it in varying degrees of preservation. This one's in really good shape. Some of it is mere fragments. Let's get into the passage. Here's Isaiah 19 through 22 and one of the comments, and we were through reading it, real uplifting passage. Well, yeah, it is. All right.

So let's take a quick survey through the chapter and then zero in on the passage. Isaiah chapter 8 is a follow-on to the background of chapter 7. Remember what happened in chapter 7 is Isaiah has just come from chapter 6 from the heavenly scene, actually seeing the Lord in the heavenlies, and now he's telling them, speaking to King Ahaz, telling them, look, some bad things are coming, but I want to tell you, a virgin will bear a son, and his name will be Immanuel. Isaiah had a second son. And God had told Isaiah to call him Meher-shal-al-hashbaz.

Okay? Oh boy. Believe it or not, there actually are people with that name. There's an actor by that name. Meher-shal-al-hashbaz Ali. The last name's easy. Swept to the booty, speedy to the prey. The meaning of the name was, and this may sound really strange, what they would do in the soldiers in battle would say this to one another to encourage one another in the battle. Isn't that amazing? They yelled this to each other.

So Isaiah was told, name your son that. Like the prophecy in chapter 7, Isaiah's second son was also a sign. So here we see in Isaiah 8.18, Isaiah says, my two sons are signs and wonders in Israel. My two sons are themselves very much a picture of what God is doing and a symbol and a sign for these people.

The Lord spoke to Isaiah about many among the people who were straying from God-revealed truth. Most of Judah was falling away from what the Lord had laid out for them to do. Most of Judah was falling away from putting their trust and confidence in the Lord. Isaiah was called to live as this small believing remnant. He says, there's a very small number, but that's how I want you to live. Not like the mass, but like that small number. that small number who puts their trust and confidence in me.

Verses 19 through 22, the passage we'll be looking at here this morning, called the people to gauge everything that they do and say by the Word of God. And then he spells out what happens when people don't. What happens when people don't turn their minds and hearts to the Lord.

One of the other things we'll mention briefly here is And we mentioned it, I think, the second week when we were studying, is this is the passage where it mentions the waters of Shiloh. This is the waters kind of at one end of Jerusalem that was called the Pool of Shiloh in Nehemiah and the Pool of Siloam in the Gospel of John.

One more thing, we looked last time at 7.14 which says, a virgin shall bear a son and she will call his name Immanuel, which means God is with us. As we get into chapter 8, Something very interesting happens. We look at verse 8, and it says, O Emmanuel, same words. And here's something that is kind of, I think, needs to be clarified. Most of our translations at the end of verse 10 will say, for God is with us. If you look at your translation, you may find that. That's what's in many of our Bibles.

It's the exact same Hebrew words as Emmanuel in verse 8 and in 7.14. Precisely the same. And so if we, instead of translating it into English, simply take it as it's been in Isaiah 714 and Isaiah 8, 8, then it comes across instead of, for God is with us, it says, because of Emmanuel, because of Him. Now, what are we saying?

God promised in Isaiah 714 to preserve the house of David. And what's to be the sign? He says, a virgin will bear a son. Until a virgin bears a son, the line of David will not be obliterated. They will continue to exist, and you shall be able to trace the genealogy until the birth of the son.

That's what he's telling them in Isaiah 7.14.

I will, God says, be faithful to my promise to David, regardless of how you behave. Even if you misbehave, and it will have its consequences, I will still preserve the house of David. Now, as we look through here, the same Hebrew words rendered at Immanuel in Isaiah 7, 14, and 8 translated, God is with us. But the overall message of this passage is that the house of David will be preserved because God will fulfill the promise of Immanuel. So what is that saying there in verse 10? Look at the verses right before it, and what you see is He's saying, make whatever plans you want. Any country can attack you. I don't care what they do. They can make any scheme that they have militarily. It's not going to matter because of Emmanuel.

I will preserve the house of David. I will preserve the lineage of David because Jesus Christ is to be born of a virgin until that happens. the house of david will not be wiped out and the evidence of his lineage will be maintained and the record of the genealogy of jesus christ is given in the gospel of luke and of matthew and it was maintained in the temple until forty years after the death of jesus christ so the jews could verify the genealogy of jesus christ so what was promised here was fulfilled to the letter We'll look next week at this passage here, Isaiah 9, 6, and 7.

The ultimate fulfillment of that promise to David doesn't end with the birth of the promised Son. That's not it. Because that promised Son will give His life and be buried and resurrected, and you will be identified with Him also in His ascension and His seeding. But, as Isaiah spelled out, He will reign on David's throne. That has not yet happened. So although the promise has been made, the ultimate and final fulfillment has not come about yet. God will be faithful to His promise.

Now the passage we were looking at, we're going to divide it in two. One of the things that comes up, it talks about mediums. There's even a TV show on about that today. One of the things I thought was interesting as I was looking at this Years ago, Nancy and I, we seemed to get this sort of private humor out of thinking about things that people said, little quips and quotes and cliches, and thinking in different terms. So one of them we thought about, well, people talk about striking a happy medium. Anyway, that was an odd, random thought.

So when they say to you, consult the mediums and the spiritists who whisper and mutter, And should not a people consult their God? Should they consult the dead on behalf of the living? In those times, and we actually have some of that going on now, they had both ancestor worship and consultation of the dead in order to get help, assistance, find out the future, all those things. Those were kind of built into the culture of the day.

There's a warning against that in Deuteronomy, and we find even an example of King Saul doing just that in 1 Samuel 28. It says, should not a people consult their God? Here's Isaiah questioning. He says, wait a minute. You guys are doing this aside from the prohibitions. Doesn't it make sense that you should be talking to God about what's happening? God, we need help. God, what do I need to do next? God, what's happening here? Can you give me some insight?

Shouldn't we be consulting God first? That's what Isaiah is saying. When we want to find out what's next, what's a wise move, what isn't, where do we turn? When we in the Church have been given God's completed Word, it reveals the Lord Jesus Christ, it gives us our eternal position in Him, the character of His life through us, that's spelled out. We can see the Lord about these things.

Who are you going to call? The people of this world have come up with all kinds of answers, haven't they? All sorts of things. Who do you turn to? Life is no problem as long as you can turn the TV on Monday through Friday at four o'clock. The world has gotten all kinds of answers to the questions and problems of today. The world has concocted a multitude of them.

But what scripture says is that there is one God. He has revealed himself in Jesus Christ and in his word. His eternal character is revealed from the first page to the last. That's something we saw in the apologetics elective where we met just before here. In the Koran, God has not revealed himself. He's only told us what to do in the Koran. In scripture, what we see is God has revealed himself in God's word and in the person of Jesus Christ. That's unique.

Scripture gives us the right answers to the human questions, not just the, what do you think or what do you prefer? This world has a whole bunch of different things that it's all called truth with a, well, lowercase t. Some of it will even claim to be Christian, and you might even find some of it in the Christian bookstore. But the reality is that Scripture and the Lord Jesus Christ are God's special revelations.

Truth with a capital T. One of the things we spelled out previously when Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life, He spelled it out so explicitly, I get the sense that reading those words, that they were stunned. He says, I am, and he said, ego eimi, which is the same words in the Greek Old Testament as when the Lord spoke to Moses out of the bush. I, the same one talking to Moses out of the burning bush, and the one talking to you, and I am the definite article of the way, the definite article of the truth, and the definite article of the life. In contradistinction and contrast to everything else in all of us. God's specially revealed truth is the final and ultimate test of everything else that claims to be truth. Here Isaiah says, to the law and to the testimony.

It's the Hebrew poetic pattern. You know what that means, don't you? The Hebrew poetic pattern? That is, there is a rhyming, not of sounds, but of meanings. The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul. We call that a hippie, a Hebrew poetic pattern. The law of the Lord and the testimony of the Lord are rhyming in meanings. Not sounds, but in meanings. The law of the Lord was seen as the Lord's own testimony. Here's Psalm 78 5. He established a testimony in Jacob. He appointed a law in Israel.

Rhyming the meanings. Okay. Bind up the testimony. Seal up the law. Let me ask this question. When you see bind and seal, does that mean nobody can look at it? No. Remember when we studied through Ephesians, there's two places in Ephesians where it talks about believers are sealed with the Holy Spirit. Remember, a seal was identification, a guarantee of security, and ownership. It says the Lord owns this testimony. The Lord owns His Word. It's His. It is something that He will preserve. He is identified with it. Now, he says, to the law and to the testimony. The law, this is the Hebrew word Torah.

Many of you have heard that for the first five books of the Bible, the books of Moses, Genesis through Deuteronomy. The rest of the Old Testament hadn't been completed at this time. So he's pointing to certainly these five books, possibly some subsequent, but just so that we have this. Only these parts of the Old Testament were completed by Isaiah's day. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus numbers, Deuteronomy. Notice the Psalms were not completed. Chronicles, 1 Kings, not completed yet. Daniel had not been written. So a lot of books yet to be done. These were not complete.

In case you're interested, that's something you can link and download. Get your own copy of that if you don't have one. So you can take a look at the chart and study it on your own. Once you get it memorized, let me know. We'll get the next one to you. Okay.

If they do not speak according to His Word. Isaiah makes clear that God's Word is the gold standard for what's true and right. It is the measure of what's right and true. God's word is the measure of everything else. It's the measuring cup, if you will. God's word is the measure of everything else. Everything else is going to be measured by God's word. If they do not speak according to this word, notice he gets specific. This word, not just some word, this word. He makes clear that God's word is the gold standard for what is true and right, the ultimate.

Now Moses gave two measures of a prophet. The first is called foretelling, that is, speaking forth what God says. Frequently we'll see in the Bible, thus says the Lord, or the Lord God says, some words of that kind. Speaking is God's mouthpiece about the present situation and speaking God's mind to the people in the current circumstances. The other measure of a prophet given in Deuteronomy 13 is the foretelling. So there's two things, the foretelling and the foretelling. The foretelling is telling ahead or advance of what's going to take place.

Typically a near-term prophecy in order to be able to verify, is this guy really telling us the truth? Is this guy really a prophet of God? And then longer-term prophecies. That's one of the things we notice going through chapter 7 of Isaiah. He gave a near-term prophecy that was going to be fulfilled in three years. The far-term prophecy was the one that took seven centuries, and that was the one, behold, a virgin will bear a son. So both short-term and long-term prophecy, you can verify, is this really a prophet of God by the short-term prophecy coming true? God's word, to use a term that we've come up with, is the acid test. We use that as this is the thing that tells us this is certainly true. This is certainly true.

Gold doesn't react to most acids. like other metals, but it reacts to nitric acid. That's the one acid that it does. So in the middle of the gold rush of the days of the mid-1800s, the gold rush that we had here in the Rockies, the gold rush in California, they used nitric acid as the acid test. And they would try different acids and compare, is this really gold or is this something else? So that was the acid test. And my great-great-grandpa wrote about coming through here in 1859. And that was one of the things that They did, as they went up into the mountains behind what they called Golden City in those days, and they went and checked out, is this really the real thing? The acid test on the gold that they found.

The application for us here is that God's Word is the acid test of everything that is around. Everything we hear, read, see, experience is to be tested by God's Word. God's Word is what we test things by and check things by. You see, these days there are lots of things to test by God's Word. Lots of them. You'll find things in the bookstores, things on the movie screens, things people are saying, things that come over the internet. It all needs to be tested by God's Word, including us. We need to check everything by God's Word. And that's why about every six months or so, I need to tell you, don't believe anything I tell you. Check it all out. You need to spend at least 80 hours a week checking out everything I say. Right? Okay. All right.

Nobody was an Old Testament or biblical prophet just because. Somebody couldn't be one just because they had an educational background. Here's Amos. He says, I'm a sheep herder and a fig farmer. And God says, I'm making you a prophet. It wasn't just educational background.

It wasn't having an ecstatic experience or some bold expression that really got people's attention. It wasn't because, boy, people like hearing it. Or it wasn't because of claiming to speak for God. It wasn't because of having some special revelations from God that made you God's prophet. That didn't do it. You see, there's lots of spirituality around, all kinds of it. Not all of it's from the Lord. We need to test everything.

And look what he says, because they have no dawn. No light in them is what the King James says there. You've heard the expression, the lights are on, but nobody's home? Isaiah turns this around and he says, the people are here, but they live in the dark. Okay? Alright. So, somebody is home, but the lights aren't on. So he says, they have no dawn. This is a Hebrew expression that means, basically it's referring to the sun isn't coming up on these people. There is no rising of the sun. We can look at kind of a contrast here. Proverbs 4, 18 and 19 gives a good perspective on this. It says, but the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn that shines brighter and brighter until the full day.

For those who have a relationship with the Lord, it gets better, even if times between now and then get rough. My grandpa, and of course he lived until 97 and had a lot of years, but my grandpa, I remember him saying, life is like a funnel. He says, if you're an unbeliever, it gets real small as you get towards the other end. He says, as a believer, it's the other way.

It gets bigger and brighter. The light is greater at the other end. And that's the picture that he has here. The sun's coming up if you know the Lord. If you don't know the Lord, it's a different perspective altogether. The way of the wicked is like darkness. They do not know over what they stumble. And that's the analogy. He's drawing upon this picture and then he's focusing upon they have no dawn. The sun isn't coming up for them because they're not looking to the Lord.

We see in verse 21, they will pass through the land hard pressed and famished and it will turn out that when they are hungry, ah, one of the things we've got to look at is remember we pointed out some weeks back, Deuteronomy 28, verse 14 verses, we quote some of them here.

The Jews were told, you'll be blessed if. Blessed if. What's the if? The if is, if you do this, if you do that, if you do this other thing, then you will be blessed. If you do this, then you will have food. If you do this, you will not have any diseases. If you do this, you will be sovereign nation, determining your own destiny. If you do not, what?

All of a sudden, here's all the things that will happen that are negative. all the way to verse 68. Fourteen verses on the blessings, verse 15 to 68 for the curses. In chapter 1 of Isaiah, Isaiah summarized it this way, If you consent and obey, you will eat the best of the lamb, but if you refuse and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword. How do you eat the best of the lamb? Consent and obey.

Is that what they were doing? No. So the consequence. When times get tough, it matters a lot what we think, doesn't it? Why am I going through this? Am I going through a tough time because of what God's doing or because of what I did or am doing? How should I look at this tough time? I've been going through a wild time. It's been difficult. How should I view it? How should I look at it? What should I think? Why am I going through this? That's the question to ask. Maybe it's not quite like that, but why am I going through that?

Troubles might come because a believer has been walking by the dictates of the sin nature from which we've been separated. Every believer has been positionally separated from the sin nature. The unbeliever has the sin nature joined to them and is separated from Christ. The believer is joined to Christ and separated from the sin nature. But we can still walk by the dictates of that deposed monarch. The monarch has been kicked off the throne, has no authority, but he can still yell and scream.

Or, a believer's troubles might be specifically by the Lord's custom-designed discipline, and they might go together. We can count on things working together for good as believers. All things work together for good. To the ultimate effect, we will be conformed to the image of God's Son. If you're a believer here this morning, that's true of you. We can count on that.

So what Isaiah is trying to tell these people as he's talking to them is, look, God's already told you why you're in this mess. Do you get the picture? Do you understand? As believers now, we have no reason to respond to the stresses of life in the manner that Isaiah wrote of these Jews. have a proper understanding of why they were going through the troubles that they were having. But we're not Jews.

How do they respond? They will be enraged and cursed. They will be enraged and curse their king and their God as they face upward. A great many people will get angry at God as they get in difficult circumstances. They won't understand the spiritual significance of what's happening to them.

As believers, We can count on this, having seen it in God's Word, having had it revealed to us, whether you're a Gentile, Jew, or among the church, any of those three groups, all difficulty has purpose. Remember that when you're up to here. All difficulty has purpose. God is not playing pain poker with us. Here's the hand you're dealt. Ow! God is not rolling the difficulty dice to see which hassle we're going to get next. This isn't a big game with the Lord.

He has purpose in every difficulty in our lives. Isn't that good? It doesn't make it easy, but it's good. It's wonderful because the Lord has good intent for everything that happens. It's not random. It's not God guessing, and it's not God wondering what's going to happen next to you.

Now, many modern Christians look at things with Jewish eyes, and in fact, many Christians have been kind of trained to look at things with Jewish eyes. Well, what do we mean by that? God's blessing in life is favorable outward circumstances. You ever run into people who think that? God's blessing is favorable outward circumstances. Sometimes even when we say in our culture, God bless you, that's what we mean, don't we? We want favorable outward circumstances. That's the Jewish view and it's understandable because that's what they were told in Deuteronomy 28. If it's good, first 14 verses, right? People want the stretch limo life. If I got the stretch limo life, that's God's blessings and that's great. Then I must be doing everything right. A lot of Christians will spiritualize this view and they will say something Well, like, oh, I really felt blessed by that. There's a real common sense that if I feel blessed by it, that it comes from God, and that's a good thing. And our culture has been telling us that.

You may remember back in, I think it was 1977, here's Obi-Wan tells Luke, what? Trust your feelings, Luke. Feelings become the verification. About the same time, Debbie Boone released a song, and actually I kind of like the song, and recently a remake was done on it by Leanne Rimes. There's one little set of words that comes out, it can't be wrong if it feels so right. Hmm, what are they saying? All of a sudden, feelings, how I feel about it, is the test. That now is the measure of what's right and what's wrong. How about this? Hamburgers. You've seen this. Do what tastes right. Is right and wrong determined by what's on this thing?

No. But our culture is continuously sending us that message, whether it's through song, magazine covers, TV shows, however. Biblical faith is founded in facts. We have the spiritual facts revealed by God. If you've got a Bible in your lap or in your hand or in the pew pocket in front of you, you have the spiritual facts laid out before you. We have faith in those spiritual facts. And the feelings are on top of that, not the basis. And they're not the test of what's right and wrong, and what's true and what's false. The solid basis of the spiritual facts is God Himself. He is the one who has revealed it, and the spiritual facts tell us about Him. Now, let's look at Ephesians 1-3.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. Let me ask you, where are the blessings? Where are the blessings? In whom are the blessings? Has God withheld any blessing at all? If I say, God bless you, is there some deficiency in the blessings that God has given?

Is God tight-fisted about it? So that in the ages to come, His blessings are so profound that it will take ages to come for Him to reveal just His grace. We'll be gasping in awe five trillion years from now. It's not God's tight-fistedness and they give you some blessings when you finally do something right. Instead, it is the Lord blessing open-handedly and then taking eternity to show us how much He's blessed us.

How do I know if these blessings are real? Oh, I feel it. I feel so blessed. You can tell when somebody is blessed on the television. They kind of go into that tremolo. I feel, I feel. They got certain electronic effects in there. I don't know where they push the button.

Anyway, can I do anything to enhance or improve or modify those blessings in any way? Better blessings, more of them. Do good or bad feelings or bad circumstances have any impact on those blessings? So look at Ephesians 1.3. Do you get that impression? Oh Lord, I feel so bad about my sin. I have done so wrong. Does that impact our blessings? No. Does the fact that I did something wrong impact my blessings? No. Isn't that amazing? We're talking grace here. This is phenomenal stuff.

When a person refuses to look to the Lord for answers, they have little left but to look at life's answers from an earthly viewpoint. They look within themselves. They look to other people. They look to experiences. They look to circumstances. They look at man-made religion. You name it. You choose. You pick it. They'll look at all kinds of things. The problem is, it's all fallen.

I want my blessings up there, not here. We studied in Ephesians, the first few verses of chapter 2, the terminal trio, the flesh and the world and the devil. Everything here on planet earth is gagging and choking in this noxious smog. I don't want my blessings here. I want them where that smog can't touch them. That's where the Lord's got them.

Behold distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish, they will be driven away into darkness. What's interesting, isn't that where they started? Darkness? They turn away into more of it. As people suppress the truth, as people turn away from the Lord, the outlook gets worse. Like my grandpa used to put it, the funnel gets narrower. After a first look into the darkness, it just gets darker.

As believers, however, the Holy Spirit has placed us into the church. We do not look upward, but we've been placed, notice the past tense, we've been placed upward. Our perspective is different, isn't it? Seated with Christ, Ephesians 2, 6. We have not only been called to look up. You ever have somebody try to encourage you by saying, look up? Not bad, but in truth, we're already placed up. You've been placed up. Look sideways. Look to the Lord. It is from there, seated with Him, that we're to look upon things here on earth. That perspective. That's the perspective the Lord's called us. From there, look upon things here on earth, down here.

1 Corinthians 12, 13, and 14, by one spirit you're all baptized, placed into by immersion, is the meaning of that, into one body where the Jews, Greeks, slaves are free. Similar message in Galatians 2, 26 through 28. But God being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you've been saved. and raised us up with Him, seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

That's where we're at. That's our eternal position. That's where we've been placed to look from. Let's pray. Lord, as we look here at Your phenomenal Word, we just are astounded at where You have placed us. And Lord, in contrast, the dismal darkness, the gripping gloom that grabs this world when they really begin to look at things realistically, from their perspective. And Lord, we thank you that we have not just an I hope so kind of hope, but we have an eternal hope, a fixed hope. We have blessings that are complete and total and absolute, every single one, and they're fixed in the heavenlies. There where we are, seated with you, gazing upon your glory. In Jesus' name, thank you. Amen.