The Book of Isaiah serves as a profound prophetic testament, with the Lord Jesus Christ as its central figure and the ultimate fulfillment of all prophecy. The sermon highlights how Old Testament prophets, guided by the Holy Spirit, diligently searched for the grace and glory of Christ, even though they did not fully comprehend the significance of their own words. Isaiah's prophecy, spanning the reigns of four kings and written in exquisite Hebrew, offers a detailed, divinely inspired message that transcends human understanding and speaks to God's unwavering purpose. The book's structure, divided into two volumes mirroring the Old and New Testaments, reveals God's deep concern for His people, His judgment on nations that oppose them, and His ultimate plan for salvation that extends to the Gentiles and culminates in a new heaven and new earth.
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I was asked to give a resume of the Book of Isaiah, the longest of the Old Testament major prophets, the prophets in the deepest. Pretty hard to do a thing like this in thirty or forty minutes. I shall like to begin tonight by saying a little bit about prophecy in general. I want to turn to a couple of verses in Peter's epistles. I Peter chapter one, first of all, that we might understand the value of prophecy. At the end of a very long sentence in the first chapter of I Peter, We have this statement in verse nine, receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls, of which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you, searching what
or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow. Now that tells us what we can expect to find in Old Testament prophecy. We can expect to find the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the sinner of all prophecy. Furthermore, we can expect to learn something about the sufferings of Christ and of the glory that shall follow. Unto whom it was revealed, that is, unto the prophets, it was revealed that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you, with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, which things the angels desire to look into.
This tells us of the value of prophecy, these marvelous things not understood by the prophets themselves. are the envy of the angels, for they desire to look into these things. You and I then have the privilege of understanding what neither the angels nor the prophets ever understood. Shame on us that we don't know more about prophecy. Second Peter, the first chapter, Peter has just been telling about his being on the Mount of Transfiguration and about how a voice came from the excellent glory in verse seventeen, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, and this voice which came from heaven we heard when we were with him in the Holy Mount.
I don't think that you and I could think of any event in the life of Peter quite to be compared with this. I don't know of anything so convincing as to be permitted to stand on the Mount and see the Lord Jesus transfigured until his garments had the glory of heaven about them. and seeing with him two of the most prominent of the Old Testament characters, Moses and Elias, and hearing them discuss his decease, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. I don't know how you could think of any event, of any privilege that would surpass this, but he says in verse nineteen, we have also a more sure word of prophecy.
Whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place. This word for dark here is similar to our word for squalid. It means that not simply a dark place, but a dark, dirty hole. And that's what this world is to God. And prophecy is like a light which shines in this squalid place. until the day dawn and the day star arise, in your hearts knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation, that is, no prophecy is to be taken by itself, We have to take them in their context, and we have to take them in their relationship to each other.
If you're going to understand any prophecy, you must look up in other prophets the things that are said about the same event. This, of course, is a principle of interpretation of Scripture in general. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man. And this tells us of its divine origin. It wasn't simply man's idea, but holy men of God spake as they were moved or carried along by the Holy Ghost. So this tells us of the divine origin and divine value of prophecy.
Now... The Lord Jesus must be the same. I think that if we have studied anything, any passage, any chapter, any book, and failed to see the Lord Jesus, that we ought to go back over it again. We have spent fifteen months now, about, in the book of Isaiah. I don't know how much of Christ you have seen. I don't know how many chapters in Isaiah have failed of their real purpose to you. But I suggest that before the subject is too cold in your memory, that you go back over the book of Isaiah, and then he helps if you can get, and see how much of the Lord Jesus you can see.
I hope to speak of a few such places tonight. Now, as for the book of Isaiah itself, it begins with this statement, The vision of Isaiah, the son of Amos, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. I take it that this is the preface to the first twelve chapters, where they form a very distinct section. A little bit later I may say something about the various sections of the book and how it's divided up.
But I believe that this is a definite statement that the first things that he's going to tell us were given to him in the days of these four kings. There's been a great deal of question about the authorship of this book. I waste no time in trying to answer critics. Anyone who doesn't believe that Isaiah was the writer of this book has his quarrel with the Lord Jesus Christ and with the writers of the New Testament and with the Holy Spirit who inspired them, and not with me. Because the Bible tells us plainly, In Luke chapter three, and speaking of John the Baptist, in verse four, we read these words, As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.
Now that's good enough from me, as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet. Isaiah is quoted forty-some times in the New Testament. In over half of these quotations, the New Testament writer attributes it to Isaiah, as the prophet Isaiah says. In all of the Gospels, every one of the Gospels, every one of the writers of the four Gospels, tell us, that Isaiah was the writer of the things which he quotes.
Our Lord Jesus himself quoted twice from Isaiah, And you may recall that in the synagogue in Nazareth, he read from the prophecy of Isaiah and said that it was Isaiah's prophecy. And he said, This day is this scripture, and that identifies it as being holy writings, for that's the meaning of the word scripture. This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears. Now, let the critics say what they like. I believe the Lord Jesus knew what he was talking about. I believe the New Testament writers knew. Paul quotes by name Isaiah five times in the Book of Romans alone.
It might be interesting to know that the Book of Isaiah we believe was written about seven hundred years before Christ. If, as Usher figures, it covers a period of about sixty-two years, then he began to prophesy about seven sixty-six BC and died perhaps about six-ninety-eight BC. So the book covers a period of some sixty-two years. It covers the reigns of four kings, two of whom were good kings and two were not. Isaiah then would be a contemporary, that is, he lived at the same time and prophesied at the same time that Hosea and Micah and Nehemiah.
These men were living at the same time with Isaiah. A little while after Isaiah's death, Jeremiah comes on the scene, and then Jeremiah is followed by Ezekiel. You have to learn the order in which the prophets prophesied, and if you have a Schofield Bible just preceding the book of Isaiah, you will find a table of the chronology of the prophets, and read it and get to know something about it. Now, let me say a little bit about the setting of Isaiah's prophecy. He began in Uzziah's day.
Tradition, whatever it's worth, says that he was the cousin of Uzziah. This is quite likely. The language that he uses, so the Hebrew scholars tell us, is the very finest. Hebrew syntax. He knows how to express himself well. He must have been a highly educated man. His writings are entirely different from many of the other writings in the Old Testament. Or remember that whenever the Spirit of God took up a man and used him, he used his vocabulary. When he used the Apostle John, he used a very simple vocabulary, and you won't find anything in John's Gospel in the language in which it was given, but what he would expect the fishermen to be able to say.
On the other hand, when you read the writings of the Apostle Paul, who was a much more highly educated man, the Spirit of God used his wider vocabulary. Now, this doesn't militate against the doctrine of inspiration, because the Spirit of God used the man and whatever he had, just as he has done whenever he's made use of any of it. What about Uzziah, the king, and the beginning of Isaiah's prophecy? Well, Uzziah was a very progressive king.
He was probably the greatest builder who ever reigned over Judah. He made a lamentable mistake. He committed a terrible sin. He went in and tried to offer incense and was stricken with lepers and had to spend the closing days of his life isolated from his people. But you mustn't forget that he was a good king up until that point and that he was a mighty king. He was the man who made the nation of Israel great. He fortified many of the cities. He built towers.
And he lived in a very prosperous age. He made it a prosperous age. It's hard to prophesy in a prosperous age. Those of us who try to preach the Word today know how difficult it is to preach in prosperous America with our materialistic viewpoint of things. It's so difficult to get people to rise beyond mere materialism. There was a time in the early days of the Roman Empire when materialism was a religion, a philosophy that actually reached the proportions of a religion.
And now we've repeated history, and in America we believe, I mean the American people as a whole, definitely believe that things are what come. This was a difficult day in which to preach. He prophesied through the days of Ahaz and Jotham, and finally through the days of Hezekiah. Hezekiah was probably the best of the Judean kings. There certainly was a great revival in the days of Hezekiah. And Isaiah, whether he outlived Hezekiah or not, we don't know.
Some say that Isaiah was put to death by Hezekiah's son, Manasseh. It's quite possible, because Hezekiah's son, Manasseh, was a wicked, wicked man. But in any case, most of Isaiah's closing days were spent in the days of Hezekiah. And there was a great revival among the people of God. And when you remember this, you wonder at the things that Isaiah has to say in this book. Isaiah is constantly calling to their attention the things that are wrong. He's constantly telling them that they are not right at heart. And I think what we're to learn from this is that God is not concerned about exteriors.
God is not pleased with our keeping up a front. God demands truth in the inward parts. God wants to see reality, not simply what would pass for revival on the outside. And God knew that these same people who joined Hezekiah in the revival would follow Manasseh as soon as Hezekiah was dead in one of the most degrading periods in the history of Israel. For it said that Manasseh made the people of God to do worse than the evil. These were the same people that were supposed to be joining in the revival with Hezekiah.
And this shows you what the human heart is capable of doing. Unless you're genuine, brother and sister, unless you're really in touch with the Lord, the sham that's on the outside means absolutely nothing to him. Now, Isaiah saw all this, and his prophecy has a great deal of rebuking in it. Now, as to the structure of the book, A great many people have criticized this book because of what they call the confused order. Well, if anybody is confused, it isn't the Word of God, and it isn't the prophet who wrote it down.
The confusion lies in the minds of those who criticize it. You've got to be spiritually minded in order to apprehend spiritual things. Only spiritual people can discern spiritual things. First Corinthians one makes this very clear. It's true that the Book of Isaiah does not lend itself to a mechanical order, but after all mechanical order is not spiritual order at all. Take for instance in the Book of Exodus. Did you ever wonder why that in between the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth chapters of the Book of Exodus, God all of a sudden stopped talking about the tabernacle and begins to tell about the priests and their garments.
Then he goes back to describe the tabernacle. This doesn't make sense, does it? Not to a man of the world. What it does to a spiritual Christian, he sees that we've reached the point where a priesthood is absolutely essential. You can't go on with these things until there has been a priesthood established. and read. And so it is with much of the Old Testament and the New Testament, too, for that matter. I have been studying the Book of John with a young man. And he said to me today, this is the first time in my life that I ever understood the connection between chapter one and two and three of the Book of John.
I never saw the order before. I wondered why these things are stuck in at random here. It seems to be a piece and it's chopped off and then another piece is set in. But he said, I'm beginning to see now the beautiful order. The Spirit of God is teaching something. Remember this when you read any of the Word of God. Now, I think you all remember that in going through the book of Isaiah, we saw that it is actually in two volumes. It has been called a miniature Bible. There are sixty-six chapters, just as there are sixty-six books in the Bible.
The first thirty-nine chapters very closely correspond to the subject matter of the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament, while from chapter forty through the end the last twenty-seven books very closely correspond to the subject matter of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament. And I think all commentators on the Book of Isaiah divide it that way to begin with into two volumes. Volume one, chapters one to thirty-nine. Volume two, chapters forty to sixty-six. Those of you who use the Schofield Bible might do well to study the divisions that he places in the preface to the book, you know that at the heading of every book, Mr.
Schofield gives some pertinent information, and you might read the seven divisions that he gives. They're very helpful. However, I have been more helped by the divisions as set forth by Mr. William Kelly, who was a great Bible teacher of the last century. He's been dead now almost a hundred years. He was a man that God used to open up the Word of God very wonderfully. I have, I think, everything that he has written, and I read his writings more than almost those of any other writer.
And I've gotten a great deal of help from him. He divides the book into seven divisions, too, just as Schofield does, but his divisions differ a little. Let me give them to you. The first division is chapters one to twelve. And this is the kind of a general survey in which he talks about Jehovah's Glory and about his care for Israel and about his judgments of Israel because he cares about them and promises the coming kingdom. In that you have the wonderful vision which Isaiah saw in chapter six.
In the year the King Uzziah died, he saw the Lord high and lifted up. seated upon the throne, and His glory filled the temple. So you have a wonderful introduction to the book in those first twelve chapters. Then from chapters thirteen through twenty-seven, you have the burdens, they're called, of judgment on the nations as they touch Israel. Now, A good thing to remember is that God is not concerned about nations except as they touch His people and His purposes. Whenever, for instance, you read North or South or East or West, and it doesn't state of what, you know immediately that He's talked about Palestine.
because Palestine is the center of the world, so far as God is concerned. Jerusalem is the capital city, and in the coming day God is going to yet make that his capital city. Ezekiel tells us that the name of the city then is going to be called Jehovah Shema. The Lord is there. So God is concerned about the nation of Israel and about whatever nations touch that nation. That's why you don't find very much said about some very important nations that existed. They simply didn't touch Israel, and God leaves them out. But these nations that are mentioned in chapters thirteen through twenty-seven are the nations that especially touch Israel.
Now, it closes with a song of victory. I might have said that chapter twelve was also a cheerful song. It ends, the first section ends with a song. The second section ends with a series of songs, three of them in fact, the last three chapters, twenty-five, twenty-six, and twenty-seven. So there are some things to sing about when God says that he's going to judge the enemies of the people of God. Then you have a section, twenty-nine through thirty-five, and this tells us about the end of the age, and he comes back to Israel to tell about the judgment on Israel as well as her enemies.
And there again, the last chapter is a song, this time not a song of victory, but a song of joy. And then we conclude volume one with the last four chapters, thirty-six through thirty-nine, and this is a kind of a historical summary and a warning about the Babylonian captivity. Now, that's volume one. That's the section that corresponds to the Old Testament. You'll notice that it's all about God's dealings with these people, Israel, and whatever nations touch there. Then in the second section, or second volume, you have verses or chapters forty to forty-eight, forty through forty-eight, God's controversy with Israel about idolatry.
Now he introduces the Messiah, the true servant, and he does this to show them how wicked their idolatry is. Well, you say, didn't they put their idolatry away? Yes, king after king gathered the idols together and burned them and cut down the groves, and the very next king brought them all back again stronger than ever. The people never gave up their love of idols. They never gave up their idolatry, which was within their hearts. And Ezekiel tells them about this. He said, I dug through a wall and found a door, and I went inside.
God said, come in, and I will show you the abominations which are done of them in secret. And then he goes on to tell them that this is what is happening in the imagery of their hearts. We would say they, in the imagination of their minds. These people, even though they pretended to give up idolatry, never gave it up until God picked them down into Babylon and gave them a dose of it that made them sick of it forever. And Israel has never worshipped idols from that time to this. That's a remarkable thing. God said that would happen. He said, you will never have another idol after I take you down into Babylon. And for all of these twenty-five centuries, nearly the...
The Jews have never worshipped idols from that day to this. They were still doing it, and so chapters forty through forty-eight is God's controversy over idolatry, and he presents the Messiah, the true servant, and promises deliverance, and he says it's going to come through the fall of Babylon. They must go into Babylon, but God is going to bring them out of it. Then chapters forty-nine through fifty-two, almost through fifty-two, actually the last three verses I think of chapter fifty-two belong with the next section. The division doesn't come right on the chapter, but roughly chapters forty-nine through fifty-two, you have another controversy that God has with Israel, and this one is much more serious.
You say, how could there be anything more serious than idolatry? Well, God's controversy with them now is over their rejection of his true servant. He presented his true servants in chapters forty through forty-eight, but because they were rejecting his true servant, he knew them, he knew their hearts, he knew what they would do. They were showing it by their Old Testament actions, and this is exactly what they did when the true servants, the Messiah, came. They rejected him. And in this section, blessing is promised to the Gentiles, and it ends with a very solemn appeal to the people. Now the book closes with chapters fifty-three through sixty-six, and of course you know very well that chapter fifty-three is the suffering Messiah, and then he shows that blessing is offered, and hypocrisy is rebuked.
He says, I want to give you reality. I want to give you blessings. I want to satisfy you. Ho everyone that thirsts. Come to the waters. I want to give you the real thing. Why do you spend your labor for that which is not bread? Why do you waste your time on things that don't count? This is the appeal in this closing section. He says a great deal about the coming glory. He talks about the millennial reign and about the new heavens and the new earth as well. And then the book ends with two chapters of the prophet's supplication and the last two chapters of God's very gracious answer to that supplication.
So, chapters sixty-three and sixty-four are the prophet's prayer for his people. Chapter sixty-five and sixty-six is God's answer to that prayer and his wonderful promises about what he's going to do. Now, I would just like to conclude this by speaking a little bit about the scope of Isaiah's prophecy. Isaiah saw deeper than anybody else. He saw higher than anybody else. He saw wider than the people could see, and he saw further. First of all, he saw deeper than the people.
They saw the exterior. They saw what seemed to be prosperity and revival, and he saw the inward corruption that had never been corrected at all. And furthermore, he saw the judgment that was bound to come because of that inward corruption. I tell you, brother and sister, you and I can learn a lesson from this. We ought to pray the prayer of the hundred and thirty-nine psalms, and we ought to pray it often. Search me, O God, and try me, and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. Don't you take anything for granted. There may be something hidden away in that deceitful heart of yours that you don't even recognize.
There may be something hidden away there that you refuse to recognize. How many times have I tried to talk to someone about some fault in his heart or life, shown up by his speech perhaps, or by his actions, and he's immediately begun to justify himself and refuse to look? The Lord helped us to be honest. Isaiah allowed the Lord to show him what the real conditions were, so he saw deeper than any of the others. Then he saw higher than the rest of the people. They saw Uzziah on the throne. He saw God on the throne. What do we see? What do we see as the...
as the important things in life. What do we see for an aim, for a motive in life? Who do we serve, one another? Do we do what we do heartily as unto the Lord and not unto man? Well, he saw not only the throne, but he saw the spiritual blessing that God was offering. They could only see material things. They said God has given us plenty to eat, God has given us a good land. We're well fortified now. He has built all these towers and all these fenced cities. We're doing just fine. But he saw deeper than all that. And he saw higher than all that.
He saw that their trust ought to be in God and not in these things. He saw that God wanted to give them spiritual blessings and not merely the material ones. Then he saw much wider than the people saw, because he saw that God was not satisfied simply the blessed little nation of Israel. Now Israel has been known for their bigotry from almost the beginning. God said to them plainly, I didn't choose you because you were more than the other nations or greater than the other nations. I chose you because I loved you. I said, I love upon you, and I wanted to make you a blessing to the others. They said, where is? And when the Apostle Paul came and stood on the stairs to talk to the nation, he told them who he was and why he was there, and then he said, The Lord said to me, Come and I will send thee far hence to the Gentiles, and it says they listened to him right up to that word.
When he said that word, Gentiles, they began to throw dirt in the air, and he yelled, and they had to take him back into the castle to save his life. This was the bigotry of this nation of Israel. God intended to bless them instead of their accepting this as from God and passing it on. It was just like Jonah. The Lord said, Jonah, I want you to go down to Nineveh, a Gentile city, and tell those people, give them a message from me. He said, I'd rather a fish would swallow me first, and off he went, into trouble. When he finally came back and gave in, He still wasn't happy about it because he said, I knew that's what you do.
You'd have me pronounce judgment on these people, and then you'd give in and save them. Think of a man being unhappy because God loved a great city. He was more concerned over that gourd that died than he was over the death of all those thousands of people in that city. Now, this is typical of the Jewish nation. And let me say that this is exactly what we fall into if we forget that all that we have is by grace. What do you and I have to be proud of? Paul wrote to the Corinthians and he said, What has thou that thou didst not receive? And he says in the first chapter that God has chosen the poor, the base, the weak, even things that are nothing at all, in order to confound the mighty so that no flesh might glory in His presence.
God wants us to see wider than just our own middle selves. Some of the disciples of the Lord said, we saw some people casting out demons in thy name. We told them, stop it. He said, don't do that. Don't do that. If they're not against us, they must be for us. Well, they didn't go with us. They didn't move in the same circles with us. They didn't follow with us. You see, we've got to watch this wicked thing in our hearts. Isaiah had a vision of the salvation of many Gentiles, of God's reaching out to the whole world and blessing them through the Lord Jesus.
And then Isaiah saw further than any of the rest of the people. Isaiah saw not simply what was directly ahead. They saw the prosperity and the revival of their own day. And then when he began to tell them about a captivity that was coming, they barely were able to stand on their tiptoes and see that coming. But he looked on beyond and saw the coming of a greater captivity, which we call the Great Tribulation. He saw that there would be a much wickeder man than Nebuchadnezzar or any of the other kings of the captivity. He saw that there was yet to come the beast and the false prophet and the days of the terrible captivity that lie ahead.
They saw the prosperity of their own immediate kingdom. He saw that there was a kingdom coming, the millennial kingdom, the kingdom of David's greater son. And he said a great deal about that. And then he even looked on beyond that, the close of his prophecy, and he saw the new heavens and the new earth of a happy eternity. Oh, I tell you, Isaiah was a tall man. He could see a long, long way. I wonder how far we can see. Peter says to some of the people, he that has, he that fails in these things, these seven things that he said we ought to do, he said he is blind and cannot see afar off.
That's the word myopia. He's near sighted. He can't see any farther than the end of his nose, we say sometimes. and have forgotten that he was purged from his old seeing. So Isaiah leads us to see farther. Now there are some things Isaiah didn't see. Suppose that there was a range of mountain peaks stretching on out before me here. And I'm able to see the first one, and it looks pretty big because the foothills always look high or closer to them. And then beyond that I see there's another range, and then I see, and the higher I get, the more I can see, and I can tell way on there there are some great and wonderful peaks, but then in between there are some valleys which I can't see.
And the valley of the church lies in between the peak. of the coming of the Messiah the first time, which he told about in the fifty-third chapter, in between that and the closing chapters where he tells the Messiah coming back, there was the Valley of the Church, which Isaiah never saw. None of the Old Testament prophets ever understood it. Well, the Lord helped us to appreciate this very wonderful book and want to study it more.