Finding Strength and Hope in God's Promises

And the first twelve chapters are okay because they contain some of the great vision, the "holy, holy, holy" vision. It's got the Christmas, "His name shall be called Immanuel, God with us," and so on. And then you come to chapter 13 and all the way to 37, and it's all judgment on all the surrounding nations. [00:03:14]

And I decided that this time around I would just look at the second half of Isaiah for this reason: that a number of folk in the church on a pastoral level were passing through difficult seasons of their life, and some of them were a little dejected and despondent. And I thought that they need a series, but not six years. [00:04:04]

Isaiah is seven hundred years or so before Jesus, and he's in Jerusalem and he's a prophet, and he's a prophet who moves in exalted circles. He moves in circles where the king is, and he's living in a really, really bad time because in the north the Assyrians have devastated Samaria, and they're threatening to come down to Jerusalem, and they will. [00:06:19]

But 150 years into Isaiah's future is Babylon and that's bad news, because what Assyria failed to do Babylon will do, and folks like Daniel and Ezekiel will be taken into captivity in Babylon and Jerusalem will be wiped out, temple will be destroyed. The judgment of God will come down upon His people. [00:07:34]

There are people like Job maybe in here who have lost a great deal. Your business has crashed. Your marriage has crashed. Your children have rebelled, and who knows where they are. You've lost a daughter, a son. You're on your break between the third and fourth round of chemotherapy, and life is hard and life is difficult, and it's hard to get up in the morning and it's hard to go to bed because you can't sleep. [00:08:50]

The comfort of a God who makes promises and keeps those promises and keeps them even through periods where it looks as though He's forgotten the promise. The second half of Isaiah contains those four servant songs in chapters 42 and 49 and 51 and then 52 and 53. And you've got these four Servant Songs, and they're about Jesus. [00:11:55]

Isaiah is seven hundred years before Jesus, but he's talking about a servant, and this servant who's going to be a deliverer and a Messiah, and He's going to be the restorer of God's people, and He's going to be the One who ensures that God's promise to His people will never be forgotten. [00:12:47]

When you read the Gospels really, really closely, you get to see that Jesus shapes His understanding of His role as mediator after these four Servant Songs. He quotes them a lot. There are bits of them that pop up in statements that He makes over and over, "I came not to be served but to serve and to give My life a ransom for many." [00:13:27]

At the end of the second half of Isaiah, in chapter 65 and 66, Isaiah who is looking to the future, he's looking 150 years into the future to Babylon and then he's looking 700 years into the future, and he's seeing the coming of the servant, and then he looks right into the end. And what does he see? [00:14:44]

And what he sees is a new heavens and a new earth, chapters 65 and 66, a new heavens and a new earth. And it's language that is picked up again by Peter, and it's language that's picked up again by John in the closing chapters of Revelation. It's important to ask the question, and it's even more important to have an answer to the question, "What happens five seconds after you die?" [00:15:00]

So Isaiah looks into the future, and what does he see? He sees Jerusalem restored and a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells and in which the promises of God are fulfilled. So the second half of Isaiah is a bit like the closing of the book of Revelation, strength for the weary. [00:21:24]

I wrote this for those who find themselves in seasons where they just feel tired and weary and need reassurance that God hasn't changed because He doesn't change. I need reassurance that the gospel is the same today as it was yesterday, that the promises of God are yes and amen in Jesus Christ, that I can trust Him when the lights go out, when the floor gives way, and I feel I'm falling. [00:24:50]