The book of Isaiah is the Romans of the Old Testament and what some have called the fifth Gospel. It is the third-longest book in the Bible. Isaiah is the first of the Major Prophets in the sequence of the canon of Scripture. More is revealed about Christ in Isaiah than any other Old Testament prophetic book. 

Isaiah is the Bible in miniature. There are 66 books in the Bible and 66 chapters of Isaiah. There are 39 books of the Old Testament, and 39 chapters in the first section of Isaiah. There are 27 books in the New Testament and 27 chapters in the second half of Isaiah. Similarly, Isaiah 40 begins with a voice crying in the wilderness and the New Testament begins with John the Baptist, the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Further, Isaiah 1 is equivalent to the first book of the Bible, Genesis. Isaiah 40 is equivalent to Matthew. Isaiah 66 is equivalent to Revelation; and Isaiah and Revelation contain the seven verses where God reveals Himself as the first and the last. 

Let's pray. Father, I thank you for giving us the words that are here. They're so helpful, they're so beautiful, and sometimes hard to understand. We thank you for blessing us, for helping us to think the thoughts after these words that you have. And I pray now that you would help us to understand more of the greatness of your salvation through the prophet Isaiah.

Amen. Okay, so open your Bibles to Prophet Isaiah. Isaiah's focus is salvation for sinners, and I struggled with what to quote at the very beginning, because there's so many marvelous things to recite in Isaiah. I think Isaiah 40, verse one stands out. Comfort.

Yes, comfort my people, says your God. Speak comfort to Jerusalem and cry out to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned. Anyway, that sums up so much of what Isaiah is saying. Now let's talk about the significance. You have an outline in front of you there.

The significance of Isaiah is that it really, it's the Romans of the Old Testament. Some have called this the fifth gospel. It's the third longest book in the Bible, and it's the first of the major prophets in the sequence of Scripture. You know, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, that's kind of the sequence of the major prophets. And in this book there's more about Christ than any other Old Testament prophetic book.

It speaks of His birth, His substitutionary atonement, His resurrection, and it speaks in significant detail about His suffering. And it's quoted in the New Testament 66 times. This was the book that thrilled the heart and confused the Ethiopian eunuch when he was going down the road. And Philip came and cleared up his thought about it in Acts 8, verse 26. In Luke chapter 4, we learn that a scroll was handed to Jesus Christ when he was in the temple.

It was the prophet Isaiah. And he read from it, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because He has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted. It's just such a beautiful book. This was a book that was very instrumental in my conversion.

There are lots of verses that come to mind when I think about the days that God was changing my heart. One of them was in Isaiah 40 verse 7, surely the people are grass, the grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever." That really struck me when I first read it. I haven't been able to get over it since. So let's talk about Isaiah is the Bible in miniature, And here's what I mean by that. There's 66 books of the Bible, and there's 66 chapters in Isaiah.

The 66 chapters correspond to the 66 books of the Bible. There are 39 books of the Old Testament, and there are 39 chapters in the first section of Isaiah. The first 39 chapters in the Bible, very much like the first 39 chapters in Isaiah, are confrontations to idolatry. There are 27 chapters from Isaiah 40 through 66 and there are 27 books in the New Testament. And these final chapters, like the 27 books in the New Testament, declare a message of hope.

Isaiah 40 begins with voice crying in the wilderness, and the New Testament begins with the voice crying in the wilderness. It's John the Baptist, and he's proclaiming, all flesh is grass. So it's fascinating to see just the very structure of Isaiah. Let's talk about the prophet himself. His name means Jehovah saves or Jehovah is salvation.

His name literally means the Lord saves sinners and that really is the heart of everything that he says. His social position is fascinating. He had personal conversations with the highest leaders of the land. He maintained relationships with four different kings. He was speaking into the lives of four different kings.

It's remarkable to see what he was allowed to do. He was called at age 20. It's recorded in Isaiah chapter 6, and he began to prophesy at age 20. He was a young man at that time. He was very astute in political matters, economic, legal, social issues, and he was in touch with the shallowness of high society.

Let's talk about his family. He was married and he had two sons. And their names were representative of his life and his message, like father, like sons. And the sons' names really summarize the two parts of the book of Isaiah. His first son's name represents the first 39 chapters of the book and his second son represents the second part from chapter 40 forward.

And we read about his family in Isaiah 8 verse 3, then I went to the prophetess and she conceived and bore a son. Then the Lord said to me, call his name, Mahershalal Hashbas. Great name. And he was to represent the judgment of God upon the nation. And Shieh Ar-Jashub in Isaiah chapter 7 verse 3, and his name represents salvation.

So one day he went and he spoke to a king with his son. He took his son, Mihair-Shalal-Hashbaaz, to proclaim judgment. He talked with Ahaz, the wicked king, with his son. Let's talk about his life and times. He prophesied from approximately 740 BC to 680 BC.

That's 60 years of prophetic activity. You know, he began prophesying at age 20, so he may have died around 80 years old. But he's prophesying of the dangers of alliances with Assyria and Egypt, and he's telling of the fall of Jerusalem at the Babylonian captivity. And these kings, you know, Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, these were the four kings that he prophesied to. And he ministered in the southern kingdom.

He was born in Judah, probably Jerusalem at about 760 BC and you know he witnessed some remarkable military situations. He witnessed Assyrian king Sargon laying siege in the Northern Kingdom in 722. It was one of the largest deportations in the history of Israel. There were several deportations by Assyrian kings, but as the northern kingdom was composed of the ten tribes, this is the story of the ten lost tribes of Israel. It was here that we get this term, the ten lost tribes of Israel.

Assyria came in and they took everybody home and scattered them about and the northern kingdom was destroyed and then its people scattered throughout Syria. His purpose is to preserve a remnant. He's talking to the remnant mainly. He's talking to both but you know he's telling the remnant that if they didn't turn to the Lord they'd become like Sodom he acknowledged that there was a remnant and he said that the remnant was like a hut in a cucumber field just this little nothing this frail nothing This is what the people of God often look like in the world. And they're misunderstood just like the Lord Jesus Christ is misunderstood.

He was despised, He was rejected of men. You know, He's a root in dry ground. He's nothing. This is what the world thinks of Christ. This is what the world thinks of Christ's people as well.

You know, a lot of times we think, well, if I just fix this in my life or I just do this or I discipline myself for that, that's gonna help me. It's gonna fix me. Nope, not true. Beholding God is the center of everything. Behold your God, the theme of all of Isaiah.

You know, he holds that out as really our only hope, is behold God. And he doesn't say that until chapter 40, but he's saying that all the way through. Behold your God. And it's really, it's the heart of everything we need. Having a sense of His majesty, His glory, that's what makes life worthwhile.

No matter what you do, if you don't have that, you don't really have anything. Because there's no inspiration of your soul towards something that is greater and more majestic than you and everything else in the world. And a lot of times I think we get confused and we get discouraged about our lives when really we need to behold God. That helps the most, especially when you're discouraged. Let's talk about his relationship with the church and the state.

It's obvious that he believes two things, that the Word of God should be preached to the church and to the state. And I bring that up because you know in modern times there are many people think that the church doesn't really have a right to speak to the state Or to tell the state it has sinned Isaiah Would be very unfamiliar with that idea he believed that the state should submit to the Word of God. And so he speaks the Word of God. He had a keen understanding of foreign affairs and he believed that the law of God applied to foreign nations not just Israel. And I'll get to that later.

His contemporaries, he lived at a time when there are other prophets. Amos, Micah, Hosea, and Jonah. He probably knew these men, and so when you read Amos, Micah, Hosea, and Jonah recognize Isaiah was probably their friend, and they talked about things, and that's why you find some really similar things, even some similar language in the things that they say, and he's prophesying of coming destruction. He's prophesying of two great impending cataclysms, and one is the sacking of Jerusalem, the sacking of the Northern Kingdom by Sennacherib in 722 and the Babylonian captivity at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar at 586 BC. His theology, he leaves no stone uncovered.

God, man, mercy, creation. There's Christology, there's eschatology, there's theology. The main categories of systematic theology are found in this book. Okay, let's walk through the book. Now first of all, you see the outline there in front of you?

The first 39 chapters have a theme, and it's the theme of woe. And it's about judgment. And there's a Syria and there is Egypt. Alliances with these two nations was a threat. The people wanted to find their security in these great nations.

And Isaiah was there to say, don't trust them. Don't rely on them at all. Don't go down to them for advice, nothing. And so these first 39 chapters have four parts to them, and you can see it on your outline. Part one is the vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the first 12 chapters.

Here we learn judgment begins in the house of God. Here Isaiah is speaking directly to the people of God, and he is telling them how God has chastised them in the past and how he is going to continue to chastise them in order to turn them to him. And in chapter one he says, "'Why should I strike you again? "'You'll revolt more and more.'" In other words, God is saying, I've stricken you many, many times, but you're not listening. I caused this to happen, I caused that to happen, but you won't listen.

And this often happens to us. Calamities come, disappointments come, and we think it's just a natural disaster. God's speaking to us and God may be saying to us, why should I strike you again? You think that the things that happen to you aren't because of you, because you want to flatter yourself so much it's like your brain dead your head is like a rock and I strike you and you don't get it please you know when I strike you understand I want you to turn to me So that's the first section in chapters 1 through 12. Then in chapters 13 through 27 is the testimony concerning the nations.

And here Isaiah turns to specific nations and he pronounces judgment on them. He uses the same measurement of the Word of God to judge the nations. And then the third part is that he declares that God is to deliver in chapters 28 through 35. In the final section is this historical interlude where you get the story of Hezekiah and Assyria. It's such a dramatic and amazing story in chapters 36 through 39.

So the theme of these first 39 chapters is woe. The theme of the next chapters, chapter 40 through 66, is comfort. It's the comfort of the suffering servant. And there's also a lot of prophecy about Babylon. Now, in chapters 40 through 48, the theme of this is the one true God in the face of the idols and this section ends in chapter 48 verse 22 with there is no peace for the wicked and you'll see this pattern the coming sections end with and there is no peace for the wicked, and there is no peace for the wicked, and the book ends the same way.

There is no peace for the wicked. God is trying to say in these chapters, the idols are nothing. Turn from the idols. They hurt you. You get wounded when you follow the idols.

And it's amazing to see Isaiah's method for belittling the idols. He doesn't speak very kindly of the idols. So you'll enjoy reading his thoughts about the idols. And you should think about your own idols the same way. We often think our idols are just so cool.

Isaiah removes all coolness of idolatry. So that's basically the thrust of those chapters. You're going to read about Jerusalem. Jerusalem is a type. You'll read much about the discipline of the Lord.

You'll read about social injustice, lack of care for the poor. You'll read about syncretism in chapter 2 verse 6 Isaiah says you're filled with Eastern ways. Not my ways. You're filled with Eastern ways. I think that's one of the critical matters of idolatry.

Part of idolatry is that we want to be like other people. We don't want to get our life from the wells of salvation. We want to think, look, act like the nations. So he says, you're filled with Eastern ways. In chapters 1-39, the word woe is found 18 times.

In chapters 40 through 66 it's only found twice. The word comfort is found only twice in chapters 1 through 39, it's found 13 times in chapters 40 through 66. That's why I've said that the theme of the first section of Isaiah is woe and the second section is comfort. Punishment is the theme of 1 through 39 and God's mercy is the theme in chapters 40 through 66. So let's take a look at some of these chapters here.

In chapter 1, if you could just turn there, this is all about God's judgment and His love toward His vineyard. It begins with these words, Hear, O Heaven. This is quoting Moses in the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 31 and he's speaking about a people that's just laden down with iniquity. He says, "...I've nourished and brought up children and they have rebelled against me. The ox knows its owner and the donkey its master's crib but Israel does not know my people do not consider so there's this stupid blind in gratitude of the people they're just blind he says alas sinful nation a people laden with iniquity a brood of evildoers, children who are corrupters.

They have forsaken the Lord. They're unresponsive in verse 5 in the first chapter. Why should you be stricken again? You'll revolt more and more. And then he speaks of perhaps one of the most instructive verses in Scripture about why you should hate worldliness and sin and turn to righteousness.

He says, the whole head is sick, the whole heart faints from the sole of the foot even to the head. There is no soundness in it, but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores. That's the result of worldliness. And if a person doesn't understand that, then they will have wounds and bruises and putrefying sores. Sin is ugly and it's uglifying.

And Isaiah makes that clear in the very first chapter. In that same first chapter, he speaks about the worthlessness of fake worship he says you know what's the purpose of all your sacrifices to me this is in verse 11 he says I don't even want to see or smell your burnt offerings anymore why because you're not obedient It's just a fake religious thing that you're doing. He says I'd rather not see it. So that's chapter one. You get into chapter three.

Chapter three is a picture of a culture in collapse and if you read chapter 3 you'll see our own culture. Cultures that are in a state of collapse all look the same and Here you find the wise leaders are disappearing, the judges, the prophets, the diviners, the elders. He mentions all these kinds of leaders. They're worthless. Even the skillful artisan, the experienced workers in stone.

It's just a society that's fallen into silliness and stupidity. And the relationships of authority are all broken down. Verse 4 is iconic. I will give children to be their princes and babes to rule over them. The child will be insolent toward the elder and the babes toward the honorable.

It's just a picture of a society where there's no authority, there's no leadership, there are no men, and the women are just as bad. The Women are silly. All they care about is their bangles and jangles and their accoutrements. They just care about their outward appearance. And they are irrelevant women.

That's what happens when a society turns away from God. You have men that don't lead and you have women that are stupid and silly and all they care about is their outward appearance. So that's chapter three. You can see what happens when feminism grips a culture and male passivity is in play. It's a terrible thing.

It's really is a terrible thing to lose manhood and womanhood in Chapter five we find some really critical Information about the way God sees his people He sees them like a vineyard and he says, I built a vineyard. He said, I built this beautiful vineyard and it was so well appointed. It was expensive. It was, you know, it was built for production. It had all the best equipment and guess what?

It's been ruined. In chapter 5 verse 1, a song of my beloved regarding his vineyard, he says, My well-beloved has a vineyard on a fruitful hill, and he dug it up and cleared out its stones and planted it with the choicest vine. He built a tower in its midst and also a wine press. He goes on and on about how well he built the vineyard and he expected it to bring forth good grapes, what did it bring? Well stinky, literally stinky grapes, wild grapes, but the word has to do with just stinking lousy rotten grapes.

And So that brings us to chapter 5, and then in chapter 6 we find the account of Isaiah's conversion. You see a man who's humbled. He's cleansed. He sees the glory of God, and when he sees the glory of God, he sees the deceitfulness of his own heart. And this begins with, in Chapter 6, Verse 1, In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up.

And when that happened, there were several things that occurred to him. He saw his sinfulness. He said, woe is me for I am undone because I'm a man of unclean lips. And then he saw God's provision for his uncleanliness. A coal touches his lips and cleanses his mouth.

And he hears the Lord say, your iniquity is taken away and your sin is purged. So he sees his sinfulness, He sees God's provision in the coal, and then God shows him his usefulness in verse eight. He said to the Lord, here am I, send me. This is the progression of usefulness. It begins with seeing the glory of God, seeing your own sin, being cleansed from your sin through the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ.

And then because of that you see that you are actually useful to the Lord. That's what happened to Isaiah. And then God says to him, go and tell this people, Keep on hearing but do not understand in other words go out and preach and by the way nobody's gonna listen How about that? You know how encouraging was that? Well, this was his lot in life.

So this forms, you know, the beginning of, you know, these first 12 chapters. And then there's a new section, chapters 13 through 23. This is how God rules over the nations and God begins to disclose his position toward the nations. And he says that his hand is stretched out and no one can turn it back. He says, I will break the Assyrian with my hand.

And here in this section, he declares his sovereignty over to all the nations. Now, when you read this about Philistia and Moab and Damascus and Ethiopia and Egypt and Edom and Arabia and Tyre recognize they all represent certain things. And of course you can listen to a sermon about just these things here if you want to, but there's a very clear message here and that is that these nations are typological and like for example Babylon. Babylon is big in this section. God is going to destroy Babylon wherever he raises his head But Babylon is symbolic for everything of the pride of man.

And to operate in the spirit of Babylon, what you hear your heart saying is, my will be done, not God's. It's to live according to your own preferences. This is Babylon. You know, we're seeing people, they just want to live according to their own preference. Oh, they want to marry a man.

That's my preference. You know, I'm a man, I'm going to marry a man. This is Babylon, no question about it. It's living to exalt your own thoughts rather than to put your thoughts under the scrutiny and the judgment of God. That's Babylon.

You know you live in Babylon when you just want to do your own thing. You don't care about what God says. You don't care what your parents say. You don't care about what your elders say. You don't care about what the government says.

You just don't care. You just want to do whatever you want to do. That's the spirit of Babylon. And like Isaiah 13 makes it really clear, God is going to completely destroy Babylon whenever it raises its head If you ever wonder why all these nations on all of history are now gone like where are the Assyrians? Now where are the Babylonians today?

You know They've been destroyed God allows kingdoms to rise up in pride, and then He throws them to the ground. And He does that with every kingdom. Where's Rome? Gone. You know, this is what God does.

And He's demonstrating that He's he's going to bring the pride of man down. And then in the next section in chapter 28 through 35, there are five woes, it opens with these five woes. And it begins with the woes, but then it continues on to speak about the Deliverer. God is going to deliver you from your woes. Chapter 30, I'll just read a couple of these.

Chapter 30 verse 1, woe to the rebellious children says the Lord who take counsel but not of me and who devise plans but not of my spirit. This is manifested in the situation where you're getting ready to do something but you don't call on the Lord. You're getting ready to go somewhere. You're getting ready to have a phone call. You're getting ready to study something.

You're getting ready to go to church. Whatever. You know, you're getting ready to go home, right, like you will after the session. The spirit of rebellion says, I don't need God's counsel for anything. I'm on my own.

I am sufficient. Chapter 31, verse 1, woe to those who go down to Egypt for help. So the spirit of rebellion is looking elsewhere for your help rather than moment by moment looking to the Lord for all your help and for all your sufficiency. There's nothing sweeter. There's nothing more helpful and calming than to look to the Lord for everything.

And that's what we see Isaiah appealing for. Then in chapter 36-39 is one of the most interesting parts of Isaiah. It gets a little bit easier to interpret in chapters 36-39 because it's history. And the stories of Hezekiah and Sennacherib and the Rab Shecheh and all these different personalities there, the meetings that they had. So in chapter 36 verse 1 We find the people of God are threatened, that the nations are raging against the people of God.

And so we read, Now it came to pass in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, that Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and took them. Then the king of Assyria sent the Rabshakeh with a great army from Lakish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem and he stood by the aqueduct by the upper pool which is on the highway to the Fuller's Field, that classic place. So there they had their little conference, and it was there that the Rab Shaka is telling Hezekiah, why do you have confidence in God? Don't trust God, trust me. You're trying to trust in Egypt?

Forget Egypt, remember me. God, forget him, trust me. That's the whole thing. And then, sometime right in that season, Hezekiah falls ill, really ill. He's gonna die.

And the Lord says to him, set your house in order because you're gonna die. And Hezekiah turns his face toward the wall and he prays to God. And God gives him 15 more years of life. And so there are just remarkable things to learn from his prayer particularly in verses 4 through 8 there in chapter 38. So concludes this historical section.

And what's the meaning of the historical section? God is sovereign over your nation, over your health, and over everything that happens in this world. God is in control. And then we get to chapter 40, chapters 40 through 66. So as we move from chapter 39 to chapter 40, the prophet changes from the perspective that the captivity has already happened.

He's no longer speaking to Judah about either what has happened or what's going to happen. Now he's talking about a future day, and the whole message is God has not forgotten you. He's gonna save you. You're gonna go into the Babylonian captivity, but I'm gonna save you. That message rings out over and over from chapters 40 through 66, and it pictures the coming of the Messiah, and he starts in chapter 40 right where the gospel writers start with the coming of John the Baptist, with the voice of one crying in the wilderness.

So, make sure you understand the historical flow here. From chapter 40 to chapter 66 gives you the whole sweep of history from the time of Jesus Christ. It begins with John the Baptist and his announcing Christ and it ends with the new heavens and the new earth that's chapter 66 verse 22 got that so when you read this think about the progression from the time of Christ to the time of the new heavens and the new earth. There are three parts to this section. Part one runs from chapter 40 to 48, and this is a disclosure of the one true God and the idols and here is where Isaiah is so sarcastic to the idols and he ends this section in chapter 48 verse 2 there's no peace for the wicked it's kind of the summary statement.

You like your idols? Okay, there's no peace for you. That's what you get. Chapter 40 is one of the most important and remarkable chapters in the whole Bible. And it really brings out the true essence of Christianity.

And you see the majesty of God here. You see the power of God's love in chapter 40. And in this whole section you see the coming of the suffering servant. You see the word redemption. You'll run across the word redemption 27 times in these 27 chapters.

There's the whole thing of the spread of the gospel and missions and the salvation of the Gentiles, the pagans, the people that have just been defiled by their paganism, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. All this is in this section. Now, in this section there are four servant songs, and the first one is in Isaiah 42, 1 through 4. And this is about the Spirit-filled servant who builds his kingdom through what? Through gentleness.

Verse 1 in chapter 42, Behold my servant whom I uphold, my elect one in whom my soul delights. I have put my spirit upon him." God puts his spirit upon his son and what does his son do? His son speaks to his children. And then the second servant song is in chapter 49 verses 1 through 12. This is the merciful servant who comforts his people.

And in this one he speaks of his dependence upon his father. And then the third servant song is in Isaiah 50 verses 4 through 9. And this one is so compelling and so beautiful because it speaks of Jesus Christ's love to hear his father's voice and he has an ear ready to hear And what does he do with what he hears? He speaks. He has a tongue of the learned.

In other words, his father teaches him, and his tongue has something to say. And what does he do? What does he say? He has a word in season to him who is weary. This is the love of God.

You know, God is so good to lift up the weary from their tiredness and to speak words of life to the weary. And then the fourth servant song is in chapter 52 verse 13 through 53 verse 12. This is the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ. This servant song is the center of the doctrine of justification by faith and the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ. It's the reason for all of history.

It's the reason why the Bible was written. This suffering servant song is the critical one that brings all the servant songs together. It answers the questions that the other servant songs don't answer at all. Here's verse 5. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement for our peace was upon him, Here's verse 5, Now, a couple things about that.

When you read this servant song and it says that something happened to Christ, what you ought to do is think, Why did I deserve this? So, why did I deserve to be wounded for my transgressions? Why did I deserve to be bruised for my iniquities? Why did I deserve to be chastised? Why did I deserve stripes?

Because Jesus Christ was wounded for what we deserve. He took the punishment for our sin. How do you grasp that? How do you calculate how free that makes you? How helpful it is to have that burden lifted?

Because you know yourself, you know your sin, and to think that someone actually took your punishment for you is what's being said here. You know, how free are you? Totally free. This is probably the most important matter in the whole testimony of Isaiah. It's the reason he wrote everything here is to bring us to this point to understand the substitutionary atonement of Christ.

That while you deserve chastisement, you deserve being wounded and bruised, He bruises His Son. It's miraculous. It's wonderful. And then we get to chapter 66 and we find again, you know, the reason for which the world was made and that is for heaven. But I'd like you to look at chapter 66 verse 2 and let's read it.

For all those things my hand has made and all those things exist says the Lord But on this one will I look, on him who is poor and of a contrite spirit, and who trembles at my word." This is really the heart of the matter in Christianity, that the Lord is looking for those who tremble at his word. He's looking at the poor and the contrite at heart. This is the way that His Son operated before His Father. Christianity is putting yourself in humble submission to your father and to be poor and recognize that he makes many rich, to be contrite in spirit and to recognize that he lifts you up and to put yourself under the instruction of His Word and you actually tremble at His Word. You know, how proud, how overconfident we are is really the heart of our problems.

But the Lord desires to to be a blessing to those who tremble at His word. You know, you're going to read this book, and what will you do when you read it? Will you tremble at it? Will you read it slow enough? Or you know, it's a lot of chapters to read, but make sure you don't read it without trembling.

Ask the Lord, how should I tremble at this one thing that you just said? Read it slow, soak it in. A lot of times we think that we should be fast readers. I don't buy that. We should be slow readers.

God has given us a reading so that we would take it into our soul and it would change our lives, not just to get it done. Now if you have a lot of books to read, it's really easy to start speed reading and skipping and then it doesn't have any effect in your heart. And you put that book down and your heart is not changed about anything. So read slow. It's better to read slow than fast.

Don't think that the fast readers are better. They're really not. You know, often when you read fast you're just missing the diamonds and the gold along the way. And when you're done, you're unchanged, unmoved, unhelped, uninspired. And God has given us His word for all those things.

And that's why He says that He desires those who tremble at his word. And then at the very end of chapter 66, he speaks of the final destiny of the wicked. And they shall go forth and look upon the corpses of the men who have transgressed against me. For their worm does not die and their fire is not quenched. They shall be an abhorrence to all flesh." This is a picture of hell.

For those who do not, cannot tremble at His Word. It says here that their worm does not die and their fire is not quenched. And so Isaiah is bringing extremely weighty matters, matters of great sobriety to us, that we would first of all see that God is a judge. He does bring chastisements to us, to turn us, and often God looks at us and He says, why should I strike you again? You'll revolt more and more.

And then When our hearts turn to Him and we repent, He comforts His people and He blesses them. And He feeds them like a shepherd. And He gathers them in His arms. And He carries them in His bosom. And he gently leads them.

And this is just a whole testimony of the Good Shepherd. He strikes you so that he would hold you. He chastises you so that he could comfort you. And He causes you to tremble so that you would be moved and you would love Him and you would be inspired by Him. And these are all elements of the power of the Gospel in a person's life.

And Isaiah speaks of the whole gospel. That's why this book is often called the gospel according to Isaiah, because he presents everything from beginning to end, from the word from heaven to the word from hell and everything in between. So there you have Isaiah.