Isaiah, Chapters 61-62

Good afternight. Alright, we're diving into this passage here in Isaiah 61. We're on, in our Isaiah study, the home stretch, we're calling it here. And this particular section of Isaiah is what is sometimes called the Book of the Anointed Conqueror, chapters 56 through 66. And we're here in 61 verses 1 through 7 will be our focus. And within a few short weeks here, at the end of the month, will be the end of our study of Isaiah anyway.

We want to take a look at the grand panorama of chapter 61 and 62. Our practice in general as we've gone through Isaiah is to take a look at a chapter or two or sometimes even more and to summarize those and then zero in and focus upon a specific portion, a passage within those chapters. And we'll do that this morning. So looking at the grand panorama of these chapters 61 and 62. We look at 61.

The first seven verses, of course, will be our focal point passage for this morning. Initially, it talks about the first coming of Christ, and we'll see that distinction as we look at it here momentarily. It shifts after that to the second coming of Christ, a time yet to come. And so we'll see how Isaiah describes that. We've been looking at various aspects that he has described. Now, when we get into chapter 62, which will be a passage that has some things of interest, but we won't be focusing on, here's what we find. It's entirely about the still future millennial reign. That's the thousand year reign of Christ. We get the thousand year figure not from Isaiah, but from Revelation chapter 20, the first half. Six times it says a thousand years.

It contains words and phrases you've seen elsewhere, I suspect anyway, including the book of Revelation. Let's take a look. There are some familiar themes in Isaiah 62. When we went through Revelation, and by the way, that series is thanks to our people working in the audio area. That's all available online.

When we went through Revelation chapters 2 and chapters 3, we had this phrase, a new name brought forward in both those chapters which are addressed to the seven churches. And that draws out of Isaiah 62 verse 2. The reward is with him, which is in the very last chapter of Revelation, the very last chapter in the Bible. That reward is with him phrase comes out of Isaiah 62 11.

So one of the points we made, and I keep referring to Revelation here, one of the points we made going through Revelation is that 70 percent of the book that many people find puzzling. But we said here is as easy as a piece of cake to interpret. OK, real easy. Revelation is 70 percent out of the Old Testament. Most of the book of Revelation over two thirds, slightly over two thirds is right out of the Old Testament. So we have lots of additional insights and commentary. All right.

Ever heard of Beulah or Beulah Land? Even some black spiritual songs using that talk about Beulah Land. It's often times thought of as a picture of heaven or the promised land or something of that sort. That's out of Isaiah 62, 4. And interestingly enough, it's the Hebrew word married. That's what it is. It's married. And the reason is that section of Isaiah 62 looks upon the wedding ceremony and being married as something over which people would rejoice. And so that's the reason for the use of the word. So the Hebrew word for married is Bula. You can remember that, right? Married, Bula. All right.

Now, we'll get into the passage here. And I don't expect you to either memorize or read that all from here, but We'll break it down almost verse by verse. The reason I say almost, we will split verse two and a half and we'll explain why in a minute. Other than that, we'll go through pretty much verse by verse.

Alright? And just in case you're tracking with us here, over in the corner, don't have it in this one, but have it here, over in the corner, that's the page number on your handout so you can look at it and track with us. Isaiah 61, 1 and 2. is the passage that Wayne just read for us.

And you might have pondered, you know, why did he stop in the middle of the verse? We'll explain again in a minute. The reason why Wayne stopped in the middle is because he was supposed to. And the reason is because when our Lord, that is Jesus Christ, read from this very passage that we're studying this morning, he stopped in the middle of verse two. He stopped right at the place that Wayne stopped.

And let's read about the circumstances there. It's recorded in Luke chapter 4, starting with verse 16. And it says, And he, that is Jesus, came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, as was his custom. He entered the synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read. And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Alright, here's Nazareth. We pointed out a little over a month ago at the Christmas Eve service. Nazareth was a little, I'll use the term, podunk town.

Now, immediately I looked and I thought, a little podunk town? That sounds like the place I went to high school. But actually, the place where I went to high school was even bigger. Because we had a record size graduating class of 30 at my high school. And there was about 80 people in Nazareth at the time Christ was there. A little town. Everybody knew way too much of everybody else's business. No question about it.

So in that little town with a small synagogue, and by the way, although it's not absolutely certain, this may well be and probably is the synagogue where he read what we're seeing here this morning. He opened the book and found the place where it was written. The very passage we're looking.

Now we think of books and we think of these things, right? where you've got papers and they're all trimmed off and you've got a cover front and back and you've got things, the papers are all attached on one edge. That's not the kind of book, you know, none of the authors of scripture ever saw a book like this. Because this idea of a book, where we have it and we've got them in your pew racks and we have them at our homes, that idea of a book was invented the century after the New Testament was completed. So we say book, it's not this.

What was handed to them was actually a scroll. The scroll, similar to what we have here in the picture. This is a picture of the great Isaiah scroll out of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Roughly two dozen copies of the book of Isaiah were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. This is one that's in the best condition. Some of them are mere fragments. But it was a scroll like this, and so Jesus rolled until he got to the place where what we call Isaiah 61 begins.

And he read the passage that Wayne just read for us. Notice here the way in which it is spoken. It's not spoken in third person describing something or somebody else. But me, what's clear from the context here, but together with the account in Luke 4, this is Jesus Christ speaking. This is the Lord Jesus Christ reading us.

So when he read this out loud, He was reading it as his own words. This is his own statement. Isaiah has been privileged to write the words of the Lord Jesus Christ seven centuries in advance of your fulfillment. Isn't that amazing? So, seven centuries in advance, Jesus stops in the middle of what we call, verse two, Jesus stops in the middle of the sentence. That was clear even reading it from the original language.

He stopped before the sentence was done, quit right there, handed it off to the attendant. So here he read about his first coming. He read about his first coming there that day in the synagogue in Nazareth. This is the point at which he stopped. He didn't read the next part. And it's interesting, it's just this part here. That's where he quit right before that and left it unread. And he says, and the day of vengeance of our God. He didn't read that. This must have puzzled people. What?

He rolled up the scroll and handed it back to the attendant and he says, today, this day, it's being fulfilled. He stopped there because that's about the second coming of Christ, when Christ will come again. He didn't read it because that was not being fulfilled in that day. So here in Luke 4 we get the rest of the account.

And he closed the book, which was not a... close the book like that, it's roll up the scroll, and then he handed it off to the attendant. He gave it back to him. He sat down and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And the synagogue wasn't that big, so it was pretty easy. The eyes of all were fixed on him.

He began to say to them, today this scripture, this one I just read, and not even the next line, the one I just read, has been fulfilled in your hearing. You heard it right now. This morning, I've read it. This is me. This is the me he's talking about. I'm doing this, exactly what it says. Here it is fulfilled right as you're hearing it. That's the truth.

Here's the timeline of this Isaiah 61 passage, and particularly these verses we're looking at here. Here's Isaiah about 2,700 years ago. And Jesus reads about his first coming, Isaiah 61, 1, and through the very first part, we call it 2A, of verse 2. That's the first coming.

That's the part that he says, this is fulfilled in your hearing right now, right as I speak to you, right as I've read this. You're hearing it, it's happening. Here's us right here, between the first and second comings. If you were to ask me privately, I might slide that arrow a little closer to the second coming. We'll leave that there. So here we are, okay?

Here is Isaiah 61, 2b, that is the middle part, the day of vengeance of our God, the period of time called the Tribulation. Take a little closer look at that in a bit. And then the rest of the passage focusing from the last part of verse 2 to the end of verse 7, on the future time when the Lord will reign upon the earth, some looking forward also to the new heavens and the new earth. OK, so let's talk about gaps here, because here we have a very curious thing. Not that kind of a gap. OK. All right. Different kind of a gap.

Here we have verse two in the first line to proclaim the favorable year of our Lord. That's where he stopped. And now They have about 2,000 years gap from there to the day of the vengeance of our God, and that's 2,000 years so far. It could be as close as seven years from now. If the Lord were to say, hey, it's time for you all to come home, we don't even get to finish the service, that's all right with me. But if the Lord were to call it then, that would be about 2,000 year gap. So here's our gap.

There's been about this 2,000 year gap between the first and the second line there, and we're not even done with the verse. Is it okay, is it normal for prophecies to have this sort of unexplained gap right in the middle of it, a couple thousand years in the middle? Is that typical? Is that alright? What do you think? Does it make you feel weird? I notice nobody's jiggling or anything. I was thinking maybe it was Wayne's pages that made him jiggle. But anyway, all right.

More about the time gap here. There are a great many other Bible passages where this time gap idea takes place. Again, going back to the Revelation series, we took a quick side trip to Daniel 9, verses 24 through 27. That has one of these time gaps in it. Big time gap. Centuries of time. Numerous examples, that would just be one of them.

It was actually a very common thing to make prophecies and have various phased stages. We saw earlier in the book of Isaiah, where Isaiah would make a prophecy, sometimes the prophecy was only a year or two out, and then others would be centuries later. So it was actually a fairly common thing throughout the Bible times. And the term that has been applied to these passages is called prophetic postponement.

It's not a biblical term per se, but it describes well. Here's the beginning of the fulfillment and here's the rest of it. I have a picture here of Dr. Randall Price, his fellow at put a lot of confidence in what he writes and he has an article that if you want to take a look at it online is available and so you can click on that that link and go to just a couple clicks and you're there to the article and read for yourself he gives more explanation so I'll leave it to you to follow through on that if you'd like all right back into this passage here 61 1 & 2 a Jesus in his first coming came with the Holy Spirit upon him.

That's confirmed by Matthew 3.16. He was both anointed and sent by God for the appointed purposes. Just the very same things that Jesus read there in the synagogue. Now, for us who believe, we should keep in mind that Isaiah's words here, while they were written, and spoken to the people of Israel. That was the target audience in both the case of what Isaiah wrote and what Jesus said.

There's also some application to us, and we want to take a look at that. We have the seal of the Holy Spirit. That's one thing that Paul has laid out we saw in our study of Ephesians. The seal was something that was put on documents and basically the seal guaranteed ownership. It guaranteed delivery. It guaranteed that a person took authority when he put the seal on it. In the Roman Empire, someone who was an official of the Roman Empire could only be the one to put the seal on and only be the one to break it on penalty of death. So it was a guarantee. The Holy Spirit is a guarantee for us. We who believe have also been anointed by God.

Now, you may have heard in some of your conversations with Christians, you know, they'll talk about, boy, that was anointed, or this was anointed, or you have an anointing, or something of that sort. It's interesting as we look at what does Scripture say in using this word anointed. For believers in the church, this anointed is used always in the past tense.

Believers are anointed. Why? The anointing is a picture of the Holy Spirit on the believer. We have the Holy Spirit. That's why we have the anointing. What does this anointing mean? Here are some of the reasons for anointing in the Old Testament, which would be the context that Isaiah would write in. Anointing was done to sheep to promote healing and provide protection.

They'd put various herbs and things like that, put oil and cleanse wounds, oftentimes with this olive oil and other herbs frequently added to it. Another thing that they would do, it was used as a symbol throughout both the Old and New Testaments as a symbol of the Holy Spirit. And thirdly, anointing was done to initiate the ministry or acknowledge the positions of prophets, priests, kings, and people who are sent on particular missions.

And ultimately, Jesus Christ fulfills all of those, doesn't he? Particularly what's focused on in this passage is he is one who is sent on a particular mission. But is he not also prophet, priest, and king? Yes, he fulfills all of those. Every reason for anointing that we give there, he fulfills everyone. Everyone is applicable, particularly the one of him being sent on a particular mission for this passage. OK.

In that passage, it says the spirit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord has anointed me. This is actually kind of a Hebrew poetry pattern. And it's it's echoing the idea. The spirit of the Lord is upon me. The spirit has anointed me. The anointing is a picture of the Holy Spirit being upon them. So here we have the Spirit of the Lord God being upon Jesus Christ. It pictures His anointing as having been anointed as one commissioned and sent by God for the particular ministry that He describes in the rest of the passage there.

Now, to bring good news to the afflicted. Ever feel like the afflicted? Alright. Jesus Christ in his first coming was to bring good news to the afflicted ones. Hope. Ever been in a position where you felt like something is hopeless? This doesn't feel very good, does it? Ever been in a situation where you felt like this is either hopeless or it's getting there? And then have somebody bring good news?

Oh! Oh! Wow! The relief is tremendous. The hopelessness felt so bad that good news just feels exhilarating in comparison. That's what he's laying out here. Hope. He also spells out he would deal with the really big hurts that we can't see. What does he talk about? The broken hearted. Now really, he uses a figure of speech here because you can't really bind up a broken heart, can you? But the idea is to look towards healing of a broken heart. And the next one, to proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners. There's another Hebrew poetry pattern where it rhymes, liberty to captives, freedom to prisoners.

Now, in one sense, that might be a little hard to fathom. My second son, Ed, is a prison guard. And that idea wouldn't be particularly attractive to him. But anyway, Jesus had a meaning to it that's different than what my son, Ed, would fear. Okay, the really big bondage that we can see. And so Jesus looked upon dealing with things that are visible and things that are invisible.

Things that need to be restored and repaired. How about us? We should keep in mind that Isaiah's words here, even though they were spoken to the people of Israel and fit in their context, there's a sense in which there's some applicability to us. Thinking about it, aren't we afflicted in this world? Didn't we come, even before we knew the Lord, to a place where we recognized, I've got an affliction and it's called sin. I've got an affliction and it's a sin problem and it's called the sin nature. And I've got a problem in that the very sins that I've committed have afflicted me. Are there not many among us who at least were broken hearted and maybe you might say I'm still mending? Isn't that true? Is that true of some or many of us?

Weren't we captives until we believed? The New Testament spells out for believers, Christ redeemed us. In various ways the New Testament spells that out. Redeemed means to be bought out of that captivity, to be bought out of that prisoner condition or that slavery. We weren't captives until we believed. The Lord has indeed redeemed us. So there is some application to us as well.

Finally, the start of verse 2, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord. Now, this is talking about proclaiming the time of God's favor, or we could put it, God's amazing grace. It's a favorable time. It's a time of God's amazing grace. That's what he came to proclaim. Grace! I'm not calling for grace. I hope I don't disturb her. But anyway. No, grace.

He's proclaiming grace. That's what he's doing. God's amazing grace. And as my brother told me recently, it's not grace until it's amazing. If we aren't amazed by it, we don't understand it yet. That's what he came to proclaim. The favorable year of the Lord. The Lord's favor. To use the acronym, God's riches at Christ's expense. That favor. That's what he came to proclaim.

Now we get into the last part of verse 2, into verse 3. The day of vengeance of our God. This is the seven-year tribulation period that will come on the entire earth. It'll be an expression of God's wrath because of His infinite and holy and just character. Now, you have on page one of your handout this timeline. I'll quickly refer back to it here. This middle part here, right before His second coming, that's the seven-year tribulation period. Okay?

Now, We studied through the book of Revelation, and again, the audio part of that's all online. Chapters 6 through 19 of the book of Revelation, all those chapters are all about this tribulation period that Isaiah sums up with the phrase, the day of vengeance of our God. That's the details on what's summed up there in Isaiah, and it is the reason the Lord stopped because He didn't claim that that was happening during the time that He was reading that passage. The tribulation period yet to come will be a time of phenomenal events, amazing events, We will not be present upon planet Earth to witness those things. Astounding and amazing events. The one part of it where we will have a part is at the very end when we come with the Lord. And we'll look at that here shortly. So we notice here, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord, the day of the vengeance of our God.

Which one of those is longer? Look at the description of the time. I think both of those are used figuratively in terms of year and day, but I notice there is, even at that, a comparison of length. The Lord uses figuratively the favorable year and figuratively the day of vengeance. But still, one's a lot longer than the other. The Lord is announcing grace, and it's a good thing that the grace is a lot longer than the day of vengeance.

Otherwise, none of us would make it through. So, the middle part of that, to comfort all who mourn, and then goes into verse 3, to grant those who mourn in Zion, giving them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a spirit of fainting. What Isaiah does is he paints a picture here. He exchanges this picture of gladness and rejoicing and praise as a kind of a festive dress, something you put on to replace the mourning and the ashes. And so he uses that as a picture.

This is what it will be like after this day of vengeance. This is the time when the Lord will reign. This is what it will be like. Remember all that mourning that you did and the sorrow that you had and the hopelessness that you felt? He says, I'll replace that. That will all be history. It will all be gone.

And then at the end of verse 3, so they will be called oaks of righteousness, the planning of the Lord that... what? that he may be glorified. It's because God's eternal purpose is to declare and reveal and to share his glory that he may be glorified. And that is why the Lord will do this with the people of Israel. That he may be glorified in fulfillment of his eternal purpose. Isaiah pictures here the people of Israel as deeply rooted in the soil of God's righteousness, drawing upon his resources. And who gets the glory? God gets the glory.

That's the way he spells it out. When we went through Colossians chapter 2, we saw something similar for believers, but it's carried out differently. The believer in Colossians chapter 2 is pictured as deeply rooted. Rooted in Christ is the believer. And Christ is righteousness. He's the righteous one.

The roots provide water, minerals, stability, and everything necessary for the life of the tree. Roots only provide water, minerals, and stability for the tree because they are an intimate contact with the soil, just as we are to be in intimate contact with the Lord and draw upon His resources.

We are in Him. Isn't that a message that we saw going through Ephesians and Colossians repeatedly? We are in Christ. So now, Christ is the soil that we are in. Now, we too have been made to draw our stability and resources from the Lord Himself. The Lord has said that He will never leave us or forsake us.

There's stability. And by the way, He uses a double emphatic in the Greek. He says twice, essentially, there's not a chance, and by the way, there's not a chance that I will ever leave you or forsake you. Not even the slightest chance. We know that Christ is our life. His life, not mine.

The fruit produced by the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience. By the way, that's patience with people. Kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. It's all the Lord's doing. It's His resources, not ours. Not our best efforts to love. Not our trying real hard to be patient. I'm trying to be patient. Don't. Him. His doing. God's accomplishment. Now, let's get into verse 4.

It'll rebuild the ancient ruins. What's amazing, Isaiah's looking forward to a time. Here's Israel, a place where there's been archaeology going on constantly for decades and decades, looking at lots of different things around the nation of Israel. Dr. Price that I referred to earlier that has that reference on prophetic postponement as one project over there. And they say all these places will be restored, built up. The land will be restored even to the point of restoring these ancient places that have fallen down and are all broken. So here will be a phenomenal rebuilding beyond what the slight restorations that we've seen have come to. Way beyond that.

Strangers will stand and pasture your flocks, and foreigners will be your farmers and your vine dressers." Now, we could take this as some sort of a, okay, you foreigners, come over here and take care of our sheep or I'll shoot you. It's not this kind of a thing. It instead, especially based on what we saw last week in Isaiah chapter 60, it instead comes across as, here are foreigners coming in, they're saying, how can I help?

And they're glad to help. Why? Or something we'll see here in a little bit. The people of Israel will be priests. They will be the ones providing access to God. Busy with that. Busy with the Messiah. So that the Gentiles, the foreigners, come and take care of the things like the flocks and the crops. Isn't that amazing? Here in verse five is a Hebrew poetry pattern.

Here we have strangers will stand and pasture your flocks and foreigners will be farmers and your vine dressers. And he's just trying to here's the idea of here's pastured animals and then dealing with all the crops, all the different aspects of agriculture, which in those days that was most of the people involved in agriculture. He says, you won't have to worry about that.

You know that work that most of you are doing hard all the time? That's not your job. Your job is going to be attending to the Messiah, Jesus Christ. Verse 6, But you will be called priests of the Lord. You will be spoken of as ministers of our God. You will eat the wealth of nations, and in their riches you will boast. How about these priests and ministers here?

What's a priest? A priest is one who represents the people to God. Since the priest is the one who has direct access to God, and that's a key aspect. A priest is one who has direct access to God and therefore can represent others to God. So in Jewish usage, the word minister was used as a synonym for priest. A phrase that occurs often in the Old Testament is minister as a priest. OK, so this word minister is used in this context as a synonym for priest. It's the first part of verse six. There is a Hebrew poetry pattern, a rhyming of priest and minister. There are similar words. So the question by biblical definition, are you a priest? How many of you feel like a priest? OK, biblical definition. Are you a priest?

The answer is yes. OK, Ephesians 2 18. It says we have access. Isn't that one of the definitions? We have access to God. Paul even put it a couple of times in his letters, Abba Father, we have intimate access. We can go to God with the familiarity and ease that gets called Papa. Papa. Access? Oh yeah. We've got it. Right away. 1 Peter 2, 5 and 9.

You're a royal priesthood. You, believers. All you who believe. You're a royal priesthood. Wow. Yes. The answer is yes. Israel looks toward a time when all of them will be priests and that they will be the ones who have access to God. The Gentiles will come through them.

We, right now, you, if you're a believer here this morning, are a priest. You have access to God. direct access, no waiting around. And you don't even have to put on special clothing. It doesn't have to be in a special place. You're it. You're the one that has access to God, direct access, nothing held back. You'll be called priests of the Lord. You'll be spoken of as ministers of our God.

Here the Gentiles, the nations, the peoples, the foreigners will look to the people of Israel, all of them as priests to God, a nation of priests. And all the Gentiles will come to the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, the one in whom we are. Isn't that amazing? All the Gentiles will come to the Lord Jesus Christ through Israel. but we will be in Him and with Him. Jesus Christ the Messiah, the one who is the beginning of the new creation.

In the end of verse 6, you will eat the wealth of nations and the riches you will boast. The last half of verse 6 underscores something that Isaiah chapter 60 explained in further detail. The Gentiles looking at the Jews as priests of the Messiah, as their access to God, will look upon the Jews and say, how can I help you? How can we support you? In the same way that Israel was told, look, you people with land have to put apart 10% of everything in order to support the priests, the Levites. The Gentiles will look upon all of Israel as their key to access to the Lord Jesus Christ, the Messiah. And so the whole nation of Israel will be looked upon as priests.

For us, we don't wait for that. Right now. You are the ones who have direct access to God. Right now, if you're a believer here this morning. You're a priest. And you may even have had it people come to you knowing you're a Christian and talk to you about things. Even things like, hey, can you get the Lord to stop this snow or something like that. See? Now, here's verse 7.

Now, a double portion. You know what that means, don't you? A double portion, okay? A double portions? No, probably not. Okay. The law of Moses In Deuteronomy 21.17, it said that the eldest son got a double portion inheritance. So, for example, if there were three sons, they would divide the inheritance into four and then give that eldest son a double portion. He would get half the others each a quarter. That would be the example. He used this here as a picture. The Lord will bless you abundantly. You will be so blessed. Every single one of you will think you've got elder son treatment. You got the very best. Abundant blessings. Extra. Biggie sized. The very best.

Now, what about us? You may think, you know, I've been seeing snow. I don't know if I ever see anything else. You've been seeing snow. You've been shoveling the stuff. It's all you see is this. That seems like that's all there is. Half the kids in town have been in this position. The fire department gets a whole bunch of calls to rescue these.

Alright. At any moment, however, the Lord could take us to be face to face with Him. We'll be rewarded by our Lord for the good works that He's already prepared for us and by His life lived through us. Not for our own efforts. Not because, well, I'm going to do good stuff today. I'm going to try really, really hard to be a good Christian. No. God does not reward that.

It's the good works that He prepared. It's His doing. And it's His life. That's what He rewards. He says, oh good, I see Jesus Christ in you. I'll reward that. And then, We will spend what will be measured on earth as no less than seven earth years beholding Him face to face. That's how it's going to be. That's how this is going to play out. And it's not a maybe and not a likely. Yeah, this is the way it'll be.

We'll return with Him, because remember, we will always be with the Lord. We will return with Him and a great multitude of others to planet Earth. Christ will return to reign. Isaiah has been describing that and we're not done looking at the description. He'll return with angels. Don't know if it's the whole troop or a great number, but angels will come. Old Testament saints, tribulation saints, Jew and Gentile, both. Resurrected.

We'll return with Him. And then, us. We who believe. the Bride of Christ. We'll be with Him. We'll come with Him down to the scene that Isaiah has been describing for us here. So isn't this an amazing thing? In a hopeless world, especially hopeless of the snow ever stopping, we have an incomparable hope. Our hope doesn't depend on how much de-icer the city has left. Okay? Doesn't depend on that. We will, and this isn't just hopefully, we will be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.

This predestination. God's called it. The one who will reign over Israel. We will be conformed to his image. Isn't that amazing? That will be astounding. It's something Isaiah never saw, but that's been revealed to us. When problems pile up like snow, And it appears that our problems are all we can see. We can still behold Him through His Word. And we can look forward to that time when we behold Him face to face. Never to end. Never to stop. Never to ask again, when is the snow stopping? And when does coffee break? Never to ask again.

Lord, as we look forward to this time that Isaiah describes, how wonderful to be able to add the insights that we have been given, that we shall indeed behold you. And we behold you now, as we have done this morning through your Word. And we look forward to forever beholding you, that time face to face. We give you thanks for that hope that we have, not just a And I hope so kind of hope, not just a hopefully kind of hope, but a certain hope. How good it is to have that certain hope in the midst of whatever circumstances we happen to be in. We give you thanks for it all. In Jesus' name, Amen.