His Perfect Love

Guest (Male): We embark on a verse-by-verse study of the Old Testament book of Isaiah today on His Perfect Love, and it contains a message we need to hear as the people of God.

Calvary Chapel Harrisburg West Shore presents His Perfect Love with Pastor Matt VanderVen. We're excited to begin a new book today, the Old Testament prophetic book of Isaiah. The primary focus of the book is the holiness of God, judgment, and salvation, and that's a message we really need to be reminded of today.

We'll observe a great vision in the first five chapters and a huge prophecy that can't be ignored. So let's get right to it. Here is Pastor Matt with the first of many studies in Isaiah.

Matt VanderVen: Well, many of you know that the Old Testament is divided into five sections. When you really begin to study it, you have the law, you have the historical books, you have poetry, wisdom, you have the major prophets, and certainly the minor prophets, right?

Tonight, we're going to begin, and I'm excited about this, ten years into the Bible since a little bit more since the Lord brought me down here and we started teaching right through Genesis all the way to the Revelation, and we're making it to the major prophets. So I'm very excited about that as we begin to study this tonight.

Now, obviously Isaiah, he was a prophet in the Old Testament times. He was a person that God would speak to. That's what a prophet was. He was a mouthpiece. They didn't have the full counsel of God at that time. So when a prophet came forward, they were also known as a seer, one who had the ability to hear from God but also have visions.

And that's going to make sense because if you just look down with me here at chapter 1, verse 1, it says, "The vision of Isaiah." Now, what's really interesting is we're going to read this here and the first five chapters is all about this singular vision that Isaiah has. Certainly he had multiple visions, or a continuation of the vision. Some even suggest it was actually one vision for the whole book. Some suggest two. There are scholars that say, "Well, no, there might be a break here."

But nonetheless, we can see that through this initial vision that we're going to read about, the first five chapters is that vision. Now, as a seer, seers were known to have visions. It doesn't necessarily mean it's a dream like you and I when we go to sleep at night. We might have a dream. It doesn't necessarily imply that.

A vision could be something where upon an Old Testament prophet, they could be sitting there and then often they would look off to the side and it would almost be as though the Lord was downloading Scripture right into their mind through the Holy Spirit giving them literally a visual, much like we're reading about John in the book of Revelation. That too was a vision, and it's very graphical, it's very intense, and it usually is important when God will do that.

We know today the primary way that God speaks with His people is through the word of God. We have the entire counsel of God, all 66 books. At the time of Isaiah, that was not the case. God predominantly after the judges and including the judges, you might say, almost exclusively spoke through the prophets and they would be the mouthpiece of God.

And it's really an important endeavor if you think about it. Now, prophecy, when we say a prophet, many people are going to think, "Well, that means Isaiah is going to talk about things that were to happen in the future." And that is true. I mean, just looking at some of the data, we know that it's well-referenced over 200 times in our New Testament, things that were prophetic that had been accomplished as part of the book of Isaiah.

But there is also a foretelling of the future, but then there is what we call a short-term, long-term idea behind that, a near-term maybe. And so much of what we're going to read about Isaiah, I'm going to spend some time tonight also as we go through the scripture to look at what does all that mean in the context of what was happening in Israel.

This is a very significant time, one of the most significant times, because it's really right on the cusp between the Assyrian and the Babylonian. And Judah, who Isaiah is going to predominantly speak to, the south. There is the north and south, right? And there's a lot going on at that time because the kings were wicked and the northern tribes mostly, the northern kings, were worshipping not in Jerusalem.

And I'll get into that a little bit more, but Isaiah was put on the landscape to help the people realize, for the northern tribes, they're going into judgment. That has already been decreed, it's happening, he is actually going to see some of the primary invasion. He's going to be alive and he's going to see some of these things happening to the north, and he is supposed to be a mouthpiece to the south to come and say, "If we don't turn from our ways, Israel, this is what's coming to a nation near you."

And that's exactly what he was prophesying and declaring to the people. And that's what a prophet did, but not exclusively. Again, some of the times it was just a word from God that was going to be happening in the real-time context of the ancient times in that regard.

So it's important to understand that. It's quoted 21 times in the New Testament. It's interesting, more than any other prophet Isaiah is quoted. He was a contemporary of Hosea and Micah, just so you can get an idea of what's going on there. There are 66 chapters.

He had a different role than the priest. Sometimes I think people get confused between a prophet and priest. Isaiah was not a priest. It actually was more difficult to be a prophet at the time. When you were a priest, a priest was a blood-given calling by God. It's something that you were born of the tribe of the Aaronitic priesthood and you had the bloodline to support that and because of that, you were then taken care of.

What I mean by that is your financial—you certainly had priestly duties, but all of that was taken care of for you. You had no worries in regards to you or your family. That was taken care of by the temple and by all of the taxes and different things that were provided, the worship. That was all for the priest.

Not so for the prophet. The prophet was on his own. As we're going to read actually in the future when we read other prophets, there was a well-known prophet that actually was from a priestly line, but he chose to let the Lord honor his prophetic calling as a prophet.

And so instead of taking what would have been a very comfortable maybe at that point since he had the bloodline, he chose to go and live a very impoverished life, knowing that he was going to be more effective as a mouthpiece for God. And so we're going to see that as we get through many of the other prophets as we'll read in the major and minors.

But I want us just to see here that this is not a priest. This is not someone through a bloodline, but a prophet often, as we're going to continue to read and find out, would pay very dearly with their lives. Because they would be coming and they would be the mouthpiece of God, they would speak to kings, they would speak to dignitaries, they would speak to the common people, and many times people didn't want to hear what God had to say.

And actually we can't even get through the first five verses without Isaiah saying that very same thing. He's going to literally look and say, "Who am I going to talk to? I'll talk to the heavens and the heavens will declare it because the people of earth are not listening. The people of Israel have turned a deaf ear to God, to His prophets." So better to call on heaven to testify.

That's the condition that Isaiah is writing in. It is a very sobering book. Let's look at chapter 1, verse 1. We begin and we see the vision. And as I mentioned, this is a single vision he's going to have for the first five chapters here. It's a huge prophecy. Again, the northern tribes in that area are still there, southern tribes, but he's predominantly going to express this vision to Judah.

The vision of Isaiah, the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah—that's the primary audience for this prophetic message—and Jerusalem, in the days—now this helps us understand what was the time of his prophetic ministry—of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

So minimally, just doing some math here, minimally, some have said as many as 60 years Isaiah was a faithful prophet. Minimally just based on the numbers that we can get from kings, we know minimally it's 41 years he was commissioned. And that would be right around somewhere around 740, 730, somewhere in that area he would have been commissioned. 742 some scholars suggest.

And you can go to 2 Kings 19 if you want to kind of understand sort of maybe at home more of a detailed of the things that were going on, but I thought it was pressing to just before I go that much further, just what is the exact state of affairs? Much like as if somebody came into a church today and said, "What's the church up against?"

Well, you couldn't answer that question without explaining the context of what's going on around you, right? And then it would make all the sense why you're praying the way you're praying, why the missions and the missionaries you support, why all the things that happen within the church that we do, it would make sense when you have the historical context of what's going on.

You cannot study the book of Isaiah without understanding the historical context to get everything out of it. So I'm going to go through this pretty quickly, but it's in a way to just give you a foundation. We went through some of these, but maybe you weren't with us, so I just want to take maybe five, maybe ten minutes at the most and just go through this pretty quickly, but to root every one of us in the historical narrative of what was going on.

Well, the chapters of 2 Kings is where we would begin to ground ourselves. You have Amos, Hosea, you have Micah, they tell us a lot of what was going on, those prophets, the minor prophets, in regards to the national-international situations in Israel's time or Isaiah's time.

See, Isaiah was contemporary of these other prophets, these minors. And by the way, when I say major and minor, it doesn't mean like one's in the varsity team and one's on the JV team. What it's really talking about when you think about the majors and minors—the majors has to do in degree of length.

Isaiah is the second longest book of your Bible outside of Psalms. That's what it's talking about. That's why he's classified in the major prophets. Forgive me for not explaining that earlier. When we talk about minor prophets, it's only in regards to the length of the book, not their pedigree or spiritual pedigree.

So certainly as we look at this, he's a contemporary of some of these other prophets at that time. And it's presumed, again, some of you know the name Sennacherib. Isaiah chapter 37, verse 38, within the book of Isaiah from his own hand inspired by the Holy Spirit, we're told about a life of ministry that Isaiah had, but specifically about a death of this man that would come somewhere between 745 to 680 BC.

So we know that Isaiah was there because he was able to say, "This man died." So that kind of helps us with some of the dating here. But it's important because in Isaiah's times there was nothing less than a watershed of history in the people of God.

Another name, Tiglath-Pileser. You may have recognized his name or heard his name. He was actually one of the kings of Assyria. And we talked a little bit about how Assyria is going to come in and judge the north. God is going to use them as an instrument. Well, he came to the Assyrian throne in 745 BC. You know Assyria doesn't go into captivity until 721.

Well, he came in and he initially was concerned with Mesopotamia and Urartu. By 740 BC he had conquered all of Northern Syria. So by that time he is really gaining power, Tiglath, and by 738 he had gone and subjugated the Armenian city-state Hamath, and he forced all the small kingdoms in that area to begin to pay tribute.

Do you know what that is? It's where you'd pay almost like a tax or a loyalty so that he wouldn't come in and destroy you or take your family and move you guys and put you into forced labor. So he would start to do this. So they're definitely coming into power. Now, included in this group was Israel.

So even on the scene already they have experience with Tiglath, they have experience coming under that oppression again. And they find themselves, as 2 Kings 15:19 tells us, that Menahem and one of the Assyrians, many believe the name is Udi, but many believe they take that to be Uzziah or Azariah of Judah.

In 734 Tiglath-Pileser led an expedition to the Philistine territory and set up a base of operations in the river near Egypt. Several small states allied against him and it was called the so-called Syro-Ephraimite War and that happened in 733. So a lot of fighting, a lot of war, a lot of death. That was what was going on in the scene.

Now, Israel under Pekah participated in this war, but Judah didn't. Now this is important because Ahaz as the king refused to go into war but the northern tribes did, and that says a lot of things because then they're standing back and they're going, "What's going on here?" Judah's paying attention, but they're not engaging into the war.

There was still an opportunity for holiness there in Judah that they wouldn't engage in these other things. Well, the coalition then turned against Ahaz himself, and they hoped to overthrow the Davidic dynasty and put someone on the throne that would join their allegiance. In other words, because Ahaz wouldn't join them, they said, "Let's get rid of Ahaz, let's take him out, and then we can all go against this and overthrow this king from Assyria." And you read about that in 2 Kings 15:37, chapter 16, verse 5, and we'll even touch on that actually in Isaiah chapter 7, verse 1.

Now, rejecting Isaiah's advice, Ahaz turns to Assyria for help. Isn't that interesting? So instead of trusting God, which is what Isaiah's advice was, he runs to the Assyrians and he says, "Hey, can you help me because the northern tribes are coming against me because we won't join them in this war."

Isn't that interesting? Well, Tiglath-Pileser invaded the Upper Jordan region, he takes Gilead, he takes Galilee, and he carries off many of the people of Israel to Assyria. So this is actually even before the 721 BC, he goes in and he starts already taking people from the northern tribes and relocating them.

So word is getting out in that area at that time that Assyria's coming in and they're going to just take everyone and basically move them. Your common person living in Israel at that time, you're part of the tribe of Judah, you're nervous, you're seeing what's happened to your cousins up north. You know it's not going to be long before it comes your way.

So there's a lot of uncertainty, there's a lot of fear, there's a lot of fighting and war, there's a lot of different things going on in the north and the south is trying to stay out of it. So again, mistake, goes and tries to say, "Well, let's partner with the enemy because at least maybe the enemy can protect us," instead of going to who? God. And that is one of their gravest sins, it's idolatry.

It's worshipping what you can see, what you can trust in, like a military, like all these other things. And that's what Isaiah's going to speak to them, and that's going to make sense in context. Well, the people of Israel were displaced. We read about that in 2 Kings chapter 15, verse 29. When I talk about the people of Israel, I'm talking about the people up north, the other tribes, northern tribes.

And Assyria was eyeing the borders of Judah. So right even then now if God does not intervene, we're not waiting for Babylon to come in. If God did not directly intervene at this time, they would have been taken right when Assyria was taken right around 721.

But about this time Pekah of Israel is overthrown, his successor Hoshea paid tribute as well to Tiglath-Pileser and after the Assyrian king had inflicted horrible devastation on Damascus around 732 BC, he dies unexpectedly, 727 BC. So Hoshea refused to pay the homage to his successor, so Shalmaneser the fifth instead what does he do?

He turns around and goes to Egypt and starts to court them. And that's in 2 Kings 17:4, Hoshea does that because he says, "Well, he's dead, I don't have to keep paying tribute to them. So let me go partner with Egypt and see what happens there."

Well, Assyria moved against Israel because he failed to pay that tribute and they seized the king and his land, but they couldn't take Samaria the capital at that time. Now after a three-year siege goes on, Samaria falls. When does Samaria fall? Makes all the sense when you know this now, in 721 BC.

What else happens in 721? That's when they're all taken captive. That was the last holdout. Now almost all the northern tribes have now been taken out of the northern area of Israel because what Assyrian part of their government model and their conquering model was they would take the people out and they would allow them to move into different locales.

They would want them to remarry the people of that locale so that they would forget their homeland, forget their loyalty, never want to uprise against the Assyrian government. It's brilliant from their perspective because they basically resettle you, they get you distracted and you start a new life, you get married, you have kids and you forget about your God.

And that's exactly what happened. And from that we get a new group of people ultimately that we read about in our New Testament and their name is the Samaritans, which are a mixed breed of Assyrians, other populations at that time, and northern tribe Jewish people.

Now, Shalmaneser and his successor, maybe you've heard of Sargon II, claims the victory. Well, then a host of the Israelites were then carried into captivity as I mentioned, they're resettled by their captives in other lands and including, guess what? Even the Babylonians start to show up on the scene at this time.

And that partially explains why, as we're going to read here in Isaiah, because people have questioned this, scholars even: how could have Isaiah known 200 years earlier, or close to that, about Babylonia? I say Babylonia because it wasn't called Babylon yet. It's Babylonia because it means Babylon and the surrounding territories.

So when you hear somebody say Babylonia, you're talking about Babylon proper and the surrounding regions. Like if we said Harrisburg, we could be talking about the West Shore, East Shore, and everything in between, or we could be talking about just the city downtown. It depends the context.

Well, Babylonia encompassed all of that for us. So we could say the Susquehanna Valley, the region of the area. Otherwise how would Isaiah have any idea of a Babylon? Oh yeah, he's a seer and he's a prophet of God. And that's also part of that.

So with the fall of the northern kingdom, Assyria extends its empire in the northern boundary of Judah. They actually get as far as the northern boundary of Judah. If you're alive at that time, it's easy for us to look back and go, "Yeah, yeah, they're good to 605 BC." Well, they didn't know that. They're literally coming down and they're on the northern boundary of Judah.

Now this crisis provides the backdrop to the entire message you and I are going to read in Isaiah chapter 7 through 14 is right at that time. So historically now you understand why I'm saying you need to know the context because it explains what they're going through, their rebellion, why they're not listening to God, how they think they can partner in the military strategies, they're under pressure because the enemy is right on their own territory and boundaries.

They're willing to do anything and sell out to anyone except go to the one true God. And God put the prophet Isaiah to say, "What are you doing? What are you doing? Trust in me." And oh by the way, they have a momentary revival and they do, and because of that God is faithful and guess what happens to Assyria?

Well, in 720 some of the city states of Syria and Palestine rebel but they're immediately suppressed. Gaza tried to revolt with the help of Egypt. In the ensuing battle the Assyrian forces drove the Egyptians back into their land, leaving Judah practically an island at that point.

Now Ahaz, he dies in 715. Hezekiah, who acted as a ruler for the 12 years, succeeded him. That's in 714. Now you have, just to understand Egypt, you have the 25th Ethiopian dynasty which comes into power in Egypt at the time. Again, all of this is extra-biblical, but it's also certainly grounded biblically in Isaiah chapter 18 verses 1 through 8 is going to mention that.

Well, in 713, somewhere between 713 and 711 BC, there's an anti-Assyrian uprising in Ashdod in which Edom, Moab, and Judah begin to participate. Sargon of Assyria sends Tartan to Ashdod, and Ashdod and Gath become the Assyrian province. Judah was becoming increasingly vulnerable.

They thought, "We're done." Sargon just up and dies. He's young, he comes into power, he up and dies, 705. What does that do? That sets an immediate rash of revolts against Assyria, including Hezekiah's effort. And that's in 2 Kings chapter 18, verses 4 through 8 in our Bibles, which doubtless encouraged Egypt to join in and go into battle.

So then what happens is there is an uprising in Babylon, and that was most likely when they sent the envoys to Hezekiah, remember, and he shows them all around, and what are you doing showing them all of the temple and all the artifacts and everything in that? What are you thinking, right?

Well, they were laying the groundwork for a two-pronged attack. Now, Sennacherib of Assyria was busy stamping out the revolts, so he couldn't focus on Judah until 701 BC. In that campaign he crushed Sidon, Ashdod, Ammon, Moab, Edom, and they all have to pay tribute to him. Isn't that the same people that God said he was going to kick out of the land anyway and give to Israel? God can use anything and anyone.

Guest (Male): That bears repeating: God can use anything and anyone. There you have Pastor Matt VanderVen's introduction of the book of Isaiah. We look forward to going through each chapter and verse with you in the coming weeks here on His Perfect Love.

Catch a replay when you visit hisperfectlove.org. That's hisperfectlove.org. We're also at oneplace.com and look for us wherever you get your podcasts. We also have a mobile app. Now, this is a great way to take Pastor Matt's teachings with you wherever you may go. You can learn more about the mobile app and start your download when you visit our website, hisperfectlove.org.

Thank you for your prayers and financial support. You can make a contribution to the ministry and send us your prayer requests through the website, again at hisperfectlove.org. Those of you that live in the Mechanicsburg, PA area or will be visiting the area, we want to cordially invite you to join us for a worship service.

Just like on the radio, Pastor Matt teaches verse-by-verse through the Bible here at Calvary Chapel Harrisburg West Shore. Sunday morning services begin at 8:30 and 10:30. We have a midweek service on Wednesdays at 7:00 PM. You'll find us at 28 North Locust Point Road in Mechanicsburg, PA.

Go to ccharrisburg.org for more information. Set aside another half hour to join us tomorrow at the same time on the same fine station where Pastor Matt will pick up where we left off in Isaiah, here on His Perfect Love.

His Perfect Love is brought to you by Calvary Chapel Harrisburg West Shore.