To help you to get to grips with the book of Isaiah, we have dedicated
8 Sundays to it this year. In addition you have a leaflet which has 4 lists.
He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought
up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And
he stood up to read. 17The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him.
This
is what it would have looked like. This is a copy of the text that would have
been given to Jesus. It was found in a cave in Qumran near the Dead Sea and is
2000 years old! It is leather and each column was sewn into a scroll, rather
than a book or codex as we do today. As it was hand written with great care it
would have been very valuable.
Unrolling it, he found the place where it is
written:
There it is at the bottom of the page!
18"The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the
prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
19to proclaim the year of the Lord's
favour."
20Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back
to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were
fastened on him, 21and he began by saying to them, "Today this scripture
is fulfilled in your hearing."
So we know he was reading Isaiah 61:1-2 PAGE
748
But what Jesus is saying to his family and
neighbours is:
"If you want to know who I am, read
Isaiah!"
Jesus said as much when castigating the Jewish
leadership of his day for failing to acknowledge him.
You diligently
study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life.
These are the Scriptures that testify about me, 40yet you refuse to come to me
to have life.
This is why we are reading bits of Isaiah this
month. To find out about Jesus!
Isaiah is often referred to as the gospel
according to Isaiah as it says so much about Jesus.
So who was Isaiah and what did he write about?
2Kings 15-21 and 2Chronicles 26-32 are
background history, although 2Chronicles 26:22 says The other events of
Uzziah's reign, from beginning to end, are recorded by the prophet Isaiah son
of Amoz.
Which brings us to Isaiah 1:1
The vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem that
Isaiah son of Amoz saw during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah,
kings of Judah.
Isaiah was one of the Latter prophets which
means he wrote and lived at the end of the independent Judah and before the
city of Jerusalem was captured. Israel had become as decadent as 21st
Century England and judgement was about to fall. Isaiah writes over a 59 year
period from 740 BC to 621 BC. In other words 700 years before
Christ!
In his day there were two super powers Egypt and Assyria and Judah was piggy in the middle. Always not sure
which one to ally with. Judah’s strength lay in God and Isaiah prophesied that
they should not ally themselves with anyone. Eventually, in Jeremiah’s day and
after Isaiah, Judah became a vassal state of first Egypt then Babylon until it
was finally wiped out.
The book of Isaiah is 66 chapters long so we
will only touch on key elements. It would be good to read through in your own
time, but don’t expect to understand it all. Bits will jump out of the page but
a lot will remain strange stuff.
The main divisions of the book into three
books comes not from a belief that it was written by three different people but
that each section has a distinct theme.
The first 37 chapters are seen as the book of
the Kingfor example in ch29:1 page 712 Jerusalem is described as “the city
where David settled”. It ends with the challenge of Sennacherib against God and
its aftermath. Ch 38-55 talk about a servant. In this section we have some very
familiar passages referred to as the ‘Servant songs’ which speak about Jesus in
great detail. We also have Cyrus, king of Persia, who was not a power for
another 70 odd years described as a servant of God.
Then in ch56-66 the emphasis moves to an
anointed Conqueror, looking beyond the judgement of God to a future restoration
of God’s people. An example of this is the passage Jesus applied to himself we
read at the beginning.
So lets have a taste of the books in turn. In
the next month we will have time to get into the book in more detail.
Isaiah 1:1 is followed by a selection of
prophecies which reflect the whole of the book leading up to Isaiah 6 in which
Isaiah’s calling to be a prophet is described.
The themes of Isaiah can be seen in these
early chapters.
In the book of the
servant we see further themes developed
a. 42:1-9
b. 49:1-13
c. 50:4-11
d. 52:13-53:12
In the book of the Anointed Conqueror is
dominated by the themes of