The sermon by Scott Brown focuses on Isaiah 40:1-8, emphasizing the comfort and transformative power of God's word. Brown describes the Book of Isaiah as the 'Romans of the Old Testament' and the 'Fifth Gospel,' highlighting its significance in revealing Jesus Christ's life and mission. The speaker stresses the duality of comfort for the faithful remnant and judgment for the wicked throughout Isaiah. The sermon outlines Isaiah's historical, literary, and theological context, underscoring the prophet's role in speaking God's truth to the nations. Brown discusses the transformative impact of engaging with Isaiah, emphasizing that God's word challenges and changes believers, leading to personal and communal renewal. The sermon concludes with a focus on the servant songs in Isaiah, which prophesy the coming of Jesus Christ as the suffering servant, bringing salvation and comfort to God's people.

Isaiah chapter 40 verses 1 through 8. 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, for she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare the way of the Lord, Make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill brought low.

The crooked places shall be made straight and the rough places smooth. The glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken. The voice said, cry out, and he said, what shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field.

The grass withers, the flower fades, Because the breath of the Lord blows upon it, surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. Let's pray. Oh, Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for your promises that it stands forever.

Father, that it's a perfect light to our feet. We pray for the preaching of your word this morning. Father, that you would send your comforter to be with your people today. Father, that you would grant us grace to hear your words and be changed and to go forth into this world as your ambassadors. Father, we thank you and praise your name.

Amen. In turning to the prophets of Isaiah, as you've just done, you've opened up your Bible to what many have called the Romans of the Old Testament, some have called the Fifth Gospel. It's the third longest book in the entire Bible, and it is the first of the major prophets in the sequence of the canon of Scripture. Not the first prophet who wrote, but the first in sequence because of the significance and the length of it. You turn to a book where more is revealed about the Lord Jesus Christ than any other Old Testament book, from His birth to His substitutionary role as the suffering servant to His victory in His Kingdom and to the final judgment where the worm shall not die.

You've turned to the book which is quoted or alluded to 66 times in the New Testament. You've turned to a book that has thrilled the heart of the Ethiopian eunuch when he was reading Isaiah 53, when he was going down the roadway recorded in Acts chapter 8. You turn to the book that was handed to the Lord Jesus Christ recorded in Luke chapter 4, the scroll of the book of Isaiah was handed to Jesus. It was as if His Father had told someone to hand Him the book. And he opened the scroll and he read, after teaching in the synagogues and being glorified, he came to Nazareth in Luke 4 where he had been brought up, and as was his custom, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read.

And he was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah, and when he opened the book, he found the place where it was written, 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, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. Then he closed the book and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on him, and he began to say to them, Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. So all bore witness to him, and they marveled at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth, and they said, is this not Joseph's son?

You turn to the book that was instrumental in opening my eyes as a young man, as a young teenager, when I read the words, surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever." Those words struck to my heart, and it helped me to see what a great kingdom, what a great shepherd the Lord Jesus Christ is and how insignificant man apart from Him is. It's a vision, it's a vision spoken of very clearly in the first two words of the book, the vision of Isaiah, the son of Amoz, which he saw. It's a vision. God is speaking.

God comes and He reaches out His hand towards sinners. The prophecy of Isaiah is a parable of every other prophecy of Scripture. It's a parable of the work of God in the world where something external to the world reaches into the world. There's a voice coming from outside, outside of yourself, outside of your confusion, outside of your thoughts and your meditations, something different from you, something beautiful, something perfect coming from outside. It's a vision.

It's a vision from heaven. And it's a vision of salvation. Isaiah's name means the Lord saves sinners. The significance of this book is hard to try to calculate. I've tried to frame it in some way in just the last few minutes.

But if you could boil every single word of the prophet Isaiah down. I think you boil it down to four words, the Lord's save centers. That's the summary of the book of Isaiah. Now, let's go home. No, not really.

One of the great questions in my mind as we begin this journey has to do with what will be the effect on us. What we found in this church is that there are hearers and doers of the Word of God. What we found is that when we go through a testimony of Scripture, that it changes us. It changes individuals, it changes families, and it changes our church. We've found the Lord changing us.

He's transformed our thinking on so many areas as we've gone through various books of the Bible. Here's what we've learned. It's dangerous to open this book Because it cannot leave you the same. You may think that it has left you the same, but it actually may have just left you harder. In truth, this book is designed to crash into our lives, to work its way in to this room of our house, that room of our house.

Maybe we haven't let Him in the living room like we ought to, and He wants to go into that living room and build out His kingdom. Maybe in our bedroom is the place where His kingdom is not growing like it ought to be. Or maybe it's in the library. Or maybe it's in the yard. But what God desires to do is to come into the house and take possession of the house and to clean it up and to find His presence filling the whole house as His presence fills the temple with His glory and calls people by name.

And when he calls them, he first hurts them, like he did Isaiah, where Isaiah had nothing to say except, I'm a man of unclean lips. I live among a people of unclean lips. But oh Lord, oh Lord, send me. How will this affect our church family? How will it affect your family?

I hope it makes transformation in all of us. We'll be engaging the words of a prophet. We will be engaging the words from heaven. We will be hearing words that have come from the perfect heavenly vision. Paul said that he did not set aside the heavenly vision, but he loved the heavenly vision.

And I pray that's what we will do. We will hang upon this vision word by word, paragraph by paragraph, section by section, to the end of the book. If we take it to heart, it will change us. It will do a further work of sanctification, of mind cleansing. It will come to us and it will change the way that we consider different matters.

Our minds will be renewed as a result of it. It's a very, very dangerous thing to open up this book and take it to heart. Because God is so disruptive, He's the great transformer. This book says that He raises up the valleys, He puts down mountains, He makes the crooked places straight, He takes the bumpy places and he smooths them out. He makes these geophysical, radical earthquakes of the soul happen so that you say, Oh Lord, woe to me for I am ruined, for I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips.

Isaiah speaks to those whose hearts are turned toward him. He speaks to preserve a remnant. Here we learn that If it had not been for God's mercy, that we would have been like Sodom, we would have been like Gomorrah, we would have been like that remnant. We are a remnant. We are actually a remnant that's keeping the world from being destroyed.

Those whose hearts are turned toward God have the effect in the world of holding back the judgment of God. And we would have become like Sodom, at least the people of Israel would have, and so would we as remnant. As Isaiah is speaking, comfort to a remnant and judgment to those who are not. He's telling the story really of all of history because in every era of history there's a remnant that exists in the world. And Isaiah is speaking to comfort the remnant and to disturb those who are not.

And what happens in times in history, it happened in that time, and it's happening today, where the remnant is so small. And the picture of it in Isaiah is like this. Picture a cucumber field, and it's just completely destroyed. And the only thing that's left is a little hut, and that's the remnant. There's just one little thing left among all of the abundance that used to be.

And the only hope for any of us is to become that remnant through repentance. So the Prophet will speak directly into our souls. He'll unmask us, He'll provoke us, He'll chide us, He'll correct us, He'll comfort us, He'll take us apart, He'll put us back together again. This is the purpose of our time. God knows He desires to heal His people.

God knows He desires to take them further. I was taken by what Dana said a few minutes ago about the progress of the soul, about how God is so patient to take us along the line, how He meets us here and we run and then He meets us again and then He meets us again and He continues to help us. He's so gracious, He's so kind. Without cutting us off, He continues to meet with us, even like He's meeting here today with us. So the purpose of our time is to come before God and to lay our lives open before Him.

You know, it was interesting to read Martin Lloyd Jones, one of my favorite commentators. He's speaking about the chief end of preaching, and he refers to what he calls being Isaiah-nic, Isaiah-nic, like Isaiah, okay? And the goal of our instruction is the love of God that expresses itself in the authority of God in our lives. And here's what Lloyd-Jones says that we ought to be doing when we're preaching. He's speaking to preachers, but he says this, that a faithful preacher, his approach is habitually isianic.

Having surveyed man's pretensions, his fancy greatness and adequacy, moral, religious and cultural, intellectual. He punctures them, humbling man and exposing his weakness, futility and sin in order then to exalt God and the only Savior. That's why when you sum up everything in Isaiah, you can sum it up as God saves sinners and He cries out, comfort, comfort my people says your God. Speak comfort to Jerusalem and cry out to her that her warfare has ended, that her iniquity is pardoned." This is the message of Isaiah. As we move into a prophet, I think it's important that we understand the spirit of prophecy in the book of Isaiah.

As we begin this journey through Isaiah, one of the major prophets, We need to understand Isaiah's prophecy in the context of the other prophets, because there are many prophets that have spoken, and as God says, they rise up early and they rise up often to speak to his people. And God has always spoken through prophets. And now we are dealing with one of the truly marvelous prophets that he has sent. God always speaks into our world from the outside. In Matthew we learn that Abel was the first prophet killed by his brother.

He was a prophet from God. We learn in Jude 14 that Enoch was a prophet. We know that Noah was a preacher of righteousness, qualifying him as a prophet. We know that Abraham was a prophet. Jacob foretold things to come.

All the patriarchs were called prophets. And of course, Moses was the greatest of the Old Testament prophets who spoke face to face with God. And when the prophecy from heaven came upon the children of Israel, they said, no, no, we can't hear from God. It's too great for us. Send us a man.

And God continued to send prophets, men who would speak. But there were no prophets during the period of the judges, even though Deborah's called a prophetess. Then with Samuel, prophecy is revived and continues for many years, all the way up to Malachi. During this period, Hosea is the first prophet to actually write. Then Joel and Amos and Obadiah, and about the same time Isaiah.

And he's the first in sequence in your Bible because his is the longest prophecy. But then after Malachi, prophecy ceased for 400 years until John the Baptist. The intertestamental period is what that's called and there were no prophets for 400 years for the people of God. What did they have? They had Moses and the prophets, as we still do today.

It sounds very romantic to say that somebody is a prophet or wants to be a prophet. Perhaps there's some young men here today who desire to be prophets in their generation. But the prophets of the Bible would straighten your thinking out about that, showing that instead of exaltation in this world, they're despised, they're thrown down, they're ignored, They're thought of as buffoons. They speak to people with deaf ears as if they have mud stuck in their ears. Tradition has it that Isaiah was sawn in two during the reign of Manasseh.

Christ and all his prophets are despised. They're rejected of men. They're men of sorrows. They're acquainted with grief, even the very best of them. Matthew Henry states the importance of prophets and the secret of their lives and really of their effectiveness.

He says, a prophet is one who has a great intimacy with heaven and a great interest there and consequently a commanding authority upon the earth. I pray that God would give us mighty prophets in our generation, but we have many mighty prophets, and the prophet Isaiah will be speaking among us for many months as we go ahead. There will be a prophet among us as we gather. And his words will speak to us. And I pray that we will have ears to hear.

We would not be stopped up in our ears, but the Spirit of God would give us such ability to hear. A man can't hear unless God helps him to hear. We need help from heaven. We need an outpouring of the Holy Spirit here in our church to hear the words of the prophecy. We are so hopeless without him.

We cannot know. We cannot hear. We cannot act unless God has mercy upon us. And I do pray that God has mercy upon us as a church. I know He has had mercy, but oh, I pray that He gives more mercy to us, because we need it so much.

What prophets do is that they say what's gone wrong, they pronounce judgment for the wrong, and then they proclaim the way to deliverance. That's what all prophets do. They name names and they give the details. But when we think of prophecy, there is one thing I want us to remember. And it fits with this prophecy, and it fits with every single prophecy in the Bible.

And I'm going to now say something that is really, really significant. I'm going to say something that I hope will help you form an interpretive grid of all of Scripture, that it will give you a hermeneutical principle that will help you to see everything rightly when you read the prophets. Are you ready? It really comes out in Revelation 19 verse 10, for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. There it is.

That's the hermeneutical principle. The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. And what that means is that the prophets really are only speaking about one single personality, Jesus Christ. And that's why it is that when history finally comes to a conclusion, everything in history will zoom in, zoom in to one single person sitting on His throne, the Lord Jesus Christ. He's come with His angels, with all of His holy angels in His glory, and everything will come down to Him.

The spirit of prophecy is the testimony of Jesus. And the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. So everything that the prophet Isaiah says has to be drawn as a chord to the Lord Jesus Christ. Every word of the prophecy moves toward the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the hermeneutical principle of Isaiah that we have to constantly remember.

And while we do that, we should always be thinking what prophecy is. It's God speaking to our times. It's His speaking to our hearts. It's given to us so that we might discern the times in which we live. And He calls us out.

Over and over again the prophet will say, God save sinners. He'll say, comfort, yes, comfort my people, says your God. Speak comfort to Jerusalem and cry out to her that her warfare has ended, that her iniquity is pardoned." This is the great call of Isaiah. But it's not the only call of Isaiah. Because implicit in that call of comfort is also a declaration of the destruction of the wicked.

You cannot save sinners without destroying the wicked. You cannot have one without the other. So when you say that God saved sinners is the summary of all the book of Isaiah, you're also saying at the very same time that God punishes the wicked. It's interesting that when you get to the end of chapter one, which actually is a summary of the whole book of Isaiah, and you get to the very end of the book of Isaiah, the very last paragraph, you find the judgment of sinners. So you have the salvation of sinners and the damnation of sinners proclaimed regularly in this book.

And you'll see it over and over again. Let's now talk about the prophet Isaiah. And I want to drop many, many little stones here before you markers of remembrance I'm going to drop 14 stones that tell you about Isaiah The first stone that I want to draw up is the stone of his name, the meaning of his name. Jehovah saves. Jehovah is salvation, which really sums up the book.

The Lord saves sinners. Stone number two, he is the son. He's the son of Amos. He may, he was a man of royalty, but he was a son. Stone number three, his social position.

He had personal conversations with the highest leaders of the day. He maintained minority political positions during his lifetime. But he was very much like John the Baptist, who had a lot to say to the civil government. John the Baptist lost his head over it by speaking directly to the moral environment that existed in the court in his time. And Isaiah does what every every man of God, every prophet of God ought to do and that is to speak to the nations.

Yes, the Bible And God's people do have something to say to the civil government. It's not a separate realm. It is a separate category, but it does not escape the voice of Almighty God. Isaiah demonstrates that for us by his very social position. Stone number four, His Call.

His call was delivered from the mouth of God while He was in the temple. He was 20 years old. It's recorded in Isaiah 6. When you map out the book of Isaiah, There are several Mount Everest chapters in the book. One of those Mount Everest in Isaiah is chapter 6, where he is called by Almighty God at age 20.

He's a 20-year-old man and he's in the temple. He's doing what godly men ought to do. He's there to worship Almighty God. The whole concept of the temple is that God is brought near. And God brings Himself near in the temple.

And A young man, Isaiah, is in the temple to meet with God. And there is a meeting, it's a very powerful meeting, that changes his life. Stone number five. His knowledge. One of the things that you recognize about Isaiah is that his knowledge is so broad.

My view after reading Isaiah is that if you met him in person, you would be astonished and you would probably say, this is one of the most brilliant men I've ever met. He's so broad. He understands the political environment all over his known world. He understands the thoughts and the meditations of the hearts of the political leaders. He has a vast understanding of the economic environment in which he lives.

He understands legal matters. He understands the social environment. He was in touch with the shallowness of high society. Isaiah had such a grasp of everything that was going on around him. He was a renaissance man at the same time he was a prophet.

He speaks brilliantly and so wisely about things. Stone number six, his family. He was a married man and he had two sons. Their names, the names of the sons, are representative of his life. Actually the names of his two sons actually represent the whole outline of the prophecy of Isaiah.

One son represents chapters 1-39 and the other son represents chapters 40-66. In chapter 8 verse 3 we read, Then I went to the prophetess. That's his wife. We'll talk about that later. And she conceived and bore a son.

Then the Lord said to me, call his name, Mahershalal Hashvaz." Can we say that together? Mahershalal Hashvaz. Mahershalal Hashvaz. I just think Every nine-year-old needs to know how to say that. And the other sons, Shere Jeshu, and each of these sons' names had significance.

Some of the most remarkable things happened with these sons. Isaiah would take his sons into the court of the king. Actually, God commanded him to do so. In chapter 7, verses 1 through 3, Isaiah is commanded to go out and meet Ahaz, the big bad wolf king of the region, and he's supposed to take his son with him. He wants his, God wants his son to meet this king.

Of course his son is all wrapped up in the story. This is the way fathers ought to operate. Their sons are wrapped up in the whole story, all the smoke and the fire and the conflict. But he was a married man who had two sons, and he named those sons with significant names. I have a friend who just today is in a hospital and a son is going to be born to him in another state.

And I was talking to him yesterday and he's wondering about the name. And he played before me some of the most glorious names. Ah, they were so inspiring. I know many of you have named your children after the inspiration of Holy Scripture in order to make connection with the greatness of God and the principles and the personalities that he has ordained to be in the world. It's such a marvelous thing, but Isaiah named his son Maher Shalal Hashbaz.

I haven't actually met a boy by that name in this generation. Number seven, stone number seven, his times. 740 to 680, most likely. 60 years, quite possibly. We're not sure of the exactitude, but it's most likely that he lived about as long as I've lived, 60 years.

And he was called as a young man. He served under Judean kings Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, the kings of Judah. And he witnessed the great Assyrian kings, kings Sargon, who laid siege, Sennacherib, who came in and destroyed everything in sight. You know, There are a number of dates that all children and families need to know. Here are some of the dates.

2000 BC. Anybody know who was alive in 2000 BC? Abraham. Moses, 1435 ish. David, 1000 BC.

Ah, 722 BC when Sennacherib came in and 586 BC when Nebuchadnezzar came in. Isaiah actually covers the 722 attack and the 586 completion at the hands of the Babylonians of the destruction of Jerusalem. So he served during this time, during the Assyrian Empire. Tiglath-Peleser, Shalamaneser V, Sargon II, Sennacherib, S.R. Haddon, Asher Banipal, I love those names, Nabopalassar, here's why I love those names.

When I was in college, I was reading history books, mainly affected by the great German critics. And they were all saying Tiglath-Pelezer, Shalomenezer, Sennacherib, Asher Haddon, Asher Bannapol. Those are all mythological figures. They're just made up. And then right about that time, there are all these discoveries that were coming out of some of the great archaeological excavations in Israel right about that time, right when I was reading these things, and what to know?

Esserhade and Tiglath-Pelisor, Shalamaneser the Fifth are written over all these obelisks and fragments all over the ancient Near East. It was like almost, it seemed to me, every week, a whole library of German criticism was blown up by one archaeological discovery. Stone number eight, his relationship to the state. It's very clear from the testimony of Isaiah that the word of God does apply to the state, and the idea that the state should somehow be separate from the voice of the church is not an idea that really exists in the book of Isaiah. And he is weighing in on the evils of the nation itself.

He pronounces six woes on the nation. When people read the woes, they often just take them so personal. And they think, yes, this is a personal love letter to God, to me. Well, it's actually a little bit more than that. It's the word of God to correct the nations for their evil.

He speaks of the wrath of God that will be meted out against those who attack Israel in Isaiah 9 verse 8 and Isaiah 28 verses 1 through 29. Stone Stone number nine, his understanding of foreign affairs. Isaiah believed that God was ordaining and amending the ways of the great nations of the world. Babylon, Isaiah 13. Moab, Isaiah 15 and 16.

Damascus, Isaiah 17. Ethiopia, Isaiah 18. Egypt, Isaiah 19 and 20. Tyre, Isaiah 23. Isaiah has a vast knowledge of foreign affairs.

He knows what the other nations need, and he speaks of it. And he knows the fate of those nations. God reveals it to him. Stone number ten. His contemporaries.

He serves among other contemporary prophets, Amos, Micah, Hosea, Jonah. When we get a little bit further in the book, we're going to short circuit to one of those prophets and we're going to take a look at one of those prophets in the month of September. Stone number 11, his message. His message is really directed at two great calamities, the sacking of Jerusalem by Sennacherib in 722, and the Babylonian captivity and the final deportation of certain Jews to Babylon in 586. And finally, he speaks of the glorious kingdom that he's establishing, this marvelous kingdom.

He speaks of it over and over again throughout the prophecy. You will be exposed to the doctrine of heaven in this book, and your heart will be so thankful as you read the descriptions of heaven. Stone number 12, his location. One of the interesting things about the prophecy is that you don't see Isaiah anywhere else but in Jerusalem. He ministers there, there in that southern kingdom, his whole life long, as far as we can tell.

He takes a few steps outside the city, it seems, but mainly He's in Jerusalem. Number 13 is literary style. It's hard to escape the beauty and the power of his style of writing. It's complex. We will have to work hard.

We'll have to read slow. We'll have to turn the dial down and think and pray, and then read it again, because there's some difficult phrases. And they're difficult because of the brilliance of the way that God was working through Isaiah. And the literary genre that is used is poetry. He's a poet.

He's not only a political theorist, he's not only a master of economic theory, he's not only a social commentator, he's not only a prophet of God, but he's a poet. He's one of the most marvelous poets who ever lived in the history of mankind. And of course poetry makes you slow down, doesn't it? And this poetry will slow us down. Figures of speech, parallelisms, he excels in broad vocabulary, remarkable, remarkable stuff.

Number 14, his theology. Well, all of the main subjects of systematic theology are here. The corruption of man, the holiness of God, the mercy of God, God as Creator, Christology, eschatology, all there, all jammed into this book. The soaring doctrine of substitutionary atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ, It's explained from a hundred different angles. It's beautiful.

If you want to dwell on salvation and what it looks like, this is the place to go. Because it is the book of salvation. It's the book of comfort, yes, comfort my people with the wells of the waters of salvation. Let's talk about the people you'll meet in Isaiah, because you're going to meet many people in this book. You will meet in chapter 9 verse 2 the people walking in darkness.

In chapter 3 verse 12, you will meet a generation of youth. In chapter 3 you will meet women who are rulers. You will also meet silly women. In chapter 62 you will meet a holy people. And throughout, you will hear dissertations about the people who have lost all of their earthly possessions because they are remnant.

In chapter 1, you're going to meet kings, Amoz, Uzziah, Jotham, Hezekiah. In chapter 2, you're going to meet Jacob. In chapter 4, you're going to meet the branch. You can guess who the branch is. That's a code.

In chapter 7, you're going to meet Pekah and Rezin and Shiar Jashub and David. In chapter 11, you're going to meet Jesse and the root of Jesse. In chapter 20, you're going to meet Sargon. In 29, Abraham. In chapter 36, the Rabshaka.

In 37, Sennacherib, the Assyrian king. In chapter 38, you're going to meet an Assyrian god worshipped by Sennacherib. His name is Nisrock. In chapter 39, you're going to meet a father and a son, Baladan, king of Babylon, and his son Meradock Babylon, who engaged with King Hezekiah. Some of the nations you'll encounter in Isaiah, Judah, Sodom, Gomorrah, and in chapter 9, the windows of heaven open, the light shines in the darkness, and you're taken straight to Galilee.

You're taken to Jordan. You're taken to Naphtali. You're taken to Zebulon. And you can guess where that is. It's the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and His ministry.

In chapter 13 you're taken to Babylon and chapter 65 to Zion. And all of it will be to say, comfort, yes, comfort my people says the Lord. Speak comfort to Jerusalem and cry out to her. And now we turn to the message of Isaiah. You have an outline in front of you.

It's a simple, very simple outline. You'll see a more elaborate detailed outline as we unfold our studies in the book. But you see a simple outline. The simplest outline breaks Isaiah down into two parts, chapters 1 through 39. 1 through 39 are summed up in the name Maher Shalal Hashbaz.

And the theme is woe, the woe that comes upon the people who reject God and His ways. Now it's not just about woe, But it's primarily about woe. Because there are numerous places where the Messiah is spoken of. Chapter 7, Chapter 9, Chapter 11, and other places. In the first 39 chapters you see significant references to the Messiah and His work.

Maybe it will be helpful to think of it this way, at least for now. In the next couple of months, the next few months, we're going to be in chapters 1 through 12, which is the message to Judah and Jerusalem. And what we learn here is that judgment begins in the house of God. Judgment begins at home. That's the way God designed it.

It should begin in your heart, it should begin in your household, and in your church, and in your nation. But it has got to begin in your household. And here, this principle is really illustrated. In these first 12 chapters, the main issue is idolatry. Idolatry is always our greatest danger.

And here Isaiah explains what idolatry looks like in really every part of your life, in your heart, in your family. Here's what it looks like in womanhood. Here's what it looks like in manhood. Here's what it looks like in a nation. And he explains it in such detail.

And then in chapter 13, there's a shift to chapter 27. And the attention of the prophecy is given to the nations. And again, we just affirm the idea that God has something to say to the nations. There are people around here, around today, who are saying that God doesn't really have anything to say to the nations. It's known in some places as two-king in theology that God really only speaks to His church, He doesn't speak to His nations.

And as we go through Isaiah, we'll see some contradictions to that principle that God does have something to say to the nations. He has a lot to say. He judges nations by His law. He measures every nation according to its obedience to Almighty God. He destroys nations if they do not worship Him, or right.

If they worship Him in their own way, He destroys them. This is the testimony of the Old Testament. And then there is this brilliant explanation of the deliverer in chapters 28 through 35. And then chapters 36 through 39 is a historical interlude, very helpful, very insightful, about the sickness of Hezekiah and his prayer to God to lengthen his life, and God answers that prayer affirmatively and gives Hezekiah 15 more years of life. Well, there's a lot to learn from that event.

So the setting here in this first section is the judgment of God that will come down upon the nation through an Assyrian invasion at the sword of Sennacherib in 722 BC. Now, we're going to be in Chapter 1 next. Well, actually, not next week. Next week, Dan Horn is going to give a message on the history of the Jews, the historical context, just so that it's clear in our minds what the history looks like. The kings, the judgments, the prophets, and how they all weave and sort together along a timeline.

That's next week. We want to try to recalibrate or calibrate us in terms of the historical matters. God is a historical God. He speaks about real things that happened on real dates with real live people. It's not mythology.

And so Dan is going to come and give a historical spread of the history of the Jews so you can see where Isaiah and Uzziah and those kings of Israel fit and the significance of it. That will be a very helpful time. But when we get to chapter one in that following week, what we'll find in chapter one is that it actually consists of a complete outline of the whole prophecy of Isaiah. In that first chapter, Isaiah reveals the flow of the book. And so that will be a very formational chapter.

And as we go through the prophecy, we'll always be hearkening back to that basic outline that you see in the very first chapter of the prophecy. And it begins with this sinful condition of the people and God's judgment. Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth. Oh, he's quoting, he's quoting Moses. He's quoting Moses in the song of Moses.

He's really relating what's happening in his day to the prophecy that Moses issued in the last month of his life. In that song of Moses in Deuteronomy 31, God commands Moses to write a song to teach Israel as a witness against Israel. And he writes the song in just the last few days of his life. God says, Moses, write a song. And he writes a song and sings it to Israel.

And the song is a prophecy and Moses is reminding the people that God is bearing witness of their sin, that they have been warned. And it's meant to teach Israel that God blesses obedience and He curses disobedience. He's really affirming that principle that if your heart is turned toward the Lord, blessed shall you be in the city, Blessed shall you be in the country. Blessed shall be your basket in your kneading bowl. Blessed shall you be when you go in and when you come in and when you go out." He's proclaiming that principle to Israel in his song And he's actually prophesying that the people of Israel will turn away and it will rather be, cursed shall you be when you come in and cursed shall you be when you go out.

Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl when you reject the Lord. He's really proclaiming that God's ways always outperform the ways of the world. You can't beat the system. But God is good. All His commands are commands of love.

They all produce joy in the heart. They nourish you, they cherish you, they help you. And Isaiah is really harkening back to that formula. If you love the Lord your God with all your heart, then your life will be like a watered garden. And you will drink of the wells of salvation.

And He will bless your soul. He'll heal you. He'll heal your emotions and He'll bless your relationships. He will make life so different, so good, because He is so good. Blessed shall you be.

Whether you live in the city or whether you live in the country, He will bless you if you turn to Him. That's the issue that's set before us in chapter 1. And then the judgment that comes and then the hope of salvation that comes. All of that is loaded into chapter 1 and we'll go through it. In the second section of the book, chapters 40 through 66, the theme is comfort.

That's why I had us read at the beginning of this service, Isaiah 40 verse 1. Comfort, yes comfort my people says your God. Speak comfort, cry out to her. This is the comfort of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ said come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest." That's the message of the second part of the prophecy of Isaiah.

This second part of the prophecy is really set in the latter years of the Babylonian captivity. The temple has been destroyed in 587. The decree to liberate the captives in Babylon has been issued and this section from chapters 40 through 66 explained that. Now through this section there are a number of declarations of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's where I want to take you now, until we're finished.

There are four servant songs that we're going to read together now that are in this second section. Because this book really is about the fact that the Lord saves sinners. Now the first servant song is in Isaiah 42, 1-4. Please turn there. Isaiah chapter 42, verses 1-4.

These are servant songs. All of them are about the suffering servant, the Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 1, chapter 42. The first thing that we hear of is the relationship of the servant with his father. Behold my servant, whom I uphold.

Of course, God is speaking. My elect one, in whom my soul delights, I have put my spirit upon him. He will bring forth justice to the Gentiles. He will not cry out, nor raise his voice, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. And then in verse 3, you see his treatment of the weak, a bruised reed he will not break, and smoking flax he will not quench.

He will bring forth justice for truth. And then in verse 4, the victory that he has, he will not fail or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth and the coastlands shall wait for his law. Thus says God the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread forth the earth and that which comes from it, who gives breath to the people on it, and spirit to those who walk on it. This is a declaration of the victory. If you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, if you trust that He has suffered for your sins, If you see the fruit of the work of the Holy Spirit in your life, if you see that He has changed you and He is continuing to change you, then know this, do not be discouraged.

He was not discouraged. He did not fail. He does bring salvation to those who love Him. He will not fail. You might fail.

You might not feel like you have victory, but it's not your victory. It's His victory that saves you. Not how you felt when you got up this morning, but what he did in his unfailing, unfailable victory in bringing salvation. And then in verse 6, his presence. I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness and will hold your hand." You know, there's so much of this in the Bible.

He holds your hand. He keeps your tears in the bottle. He lays His hand upon you. He hands you in from behind and before. This is your Savior.

He holds your hand. I will keep you and give you as a covenant to the people, as a light to the Gentiles to open blind eyes, to bring out prisoners from the prison, those who sit in darkness from the prison house." And then his purpose in verse 8, I am the Lord, that is my name, and my glory I will not give to another, nor my praise to carved images. Here is the declaration of the overall purpose of everything that Jesus Christ is doing, and that is to bring glory to Himself and to His Father. So there you have the first servant's song. Behold your Savior.

Behold your God. Here's the next, Isaiah 49 verses 1 through 6. Please turn there. Isaiah chapter 49 verses 1 through 6. Soak it in, drink it in, drink in the vision of Jesus Christ.

There's nothing more helpful to the soul than to meditate on the Savior, to see His beauty, to behold Him in His temple, to delight in Him. That's what we're doing here, I pray. Delight in the words, savor them, soak in them. Verse 1, Isaiah 49, Listen, O coastlands, to me, and take heed, you peoples, from afar. The Lord has called me from the womb, from the matrix of my mother.

He has made mention of my name. And He has made my mouth like a sharp sword. In the shadow of His hand, He has hidden me, and made me a polished shaft and His quiver. And in His quiver He has hidden me. Think of that.

The Son of God is seen by His Father like a sword hidden in a quiver. He's hidden. Hidden in shadows of the Old Testament. But then there will be a day when he will be revealed, and that sword will come out flashing bright. And then verse 3, what his father said to him, and he said to me, You are my servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified." And then in verse 4 he speaks of his dependence upon his father, which we read of particularly in John chapter 5 and John chapter 8 and John chapter 14, and other places.

Then I said, I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and in vain, Yet surely my reward is with the Lord, and my work with my God." And then the Lord God speaks to him. And now the Lord says, "'Who formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him, so that Israel is gathered to him. For I shall be glorious in the eyes of the Lord, and my God shall be my strength." Indeed, he says, It is too small a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved ones of Israel. I will also give you as a light to the Gentiles that you should be my salvation to the ends of the earth." Here, Here you get this vision of God restoring some of His people to bless a remnant, to keep them alive, but also to bring in the Gentiles. It's a vision of the Gospel.

It's a vision of the Great Commission. Here's the third servant's song, chapter 50, beginning in verse 4 through You know, when the Lord Jesus was in the temple in Luke 4, everyone was amazed at the gracious words that were falling from his lips. Here's a picture of it in chapter 50. It speaks of how the Lord prepared him to comfort the weary. In verse 4 we read, The Lord has given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in the season to him who is weary.

He awakens me morning by morning. He awakens my ear to hear as the learned. The Lord God has opened my ear. I was not rebellious, nor did I turn away." Here's a picture of the Savior who's learned from His Father, and His Father has taught Him to speak. Jesus says, I only speak what I hear my Father saying.

And here we get a prophecy of how that worked. That His Father gave Him a tongue that was learned, so that He would know how to speak a word in season. And what was that word? It was a word to Him who was weary. You remember what that was like.

When your soul was weary, you were tired of the abuses of the devil. You'd been living in Egypt and he was tearing you apart and he was messing everything up in your life as you were submitting to him, giving you some semblance of some microscopic joy that was followed up by sorrows that were overwhelming. And somehow you kept going back to that microscopic jag of joy, but then you kept getting abused by Pharaoh in Egypt. And He gave you no rest and He gave you no hope. And then you heard a word, you heard a word from the tongue of the Lord Jesus.

And it was from the tongue of the learned to him who was weary. But it came because he was obedient to his father. He was only saying what his father had said. He was an obedient son. And it was through his obedience that you were saved, because you heard a word and you were saved.

And it melted your heart and it changed your life forever. And then you heard another word and another word and another word and your soul began to be fortified. It happened because God sent His Son. It happened because His Son was obedient to His Father and He spoke a word. He spoke a word in due season to those who were weary.

It's so interesting to talk to people who've been saved and you ask them, how did it happen? Often, it's a word of Scripture. It's one verse. They were hearing the word of God and faith came by the hearing of the Word of God. It's a miracle.

It's such a marvelous thing. And then in verse 6, it speaks of the suffering. I gave my back to those who struck me. This is Matthew 26 and 27. And my cheeks to those who plucked out my beard, I did not hide my face from shame and spitting." Notice, he took the shame.

He took all of the shame upon him. He turned his back to be beaten, beaten for you. Every time you deserve to be beaten. He was before the civil authorities to take their accusations so that you would be relieved of the accusations that any civil government could ever have against you. Not that you should necessarily escape their wrath, but he has taken the punishment for every rebellious person.

Every heart turned away, every thought of immorality, every theft, every lie, every word of self-exaltation, every twisting of the truth, every single one. He took it on His back. He took the spitting. His beard was plucked out. He took the shame.

This was his work. He bore your shame. Verse 7. And then God's help. For the Lord God will help me.

Therefore I will not be disgraced. Therefore I have set my face like a flint. And I know that I will not be ashamed. He is near who justifies me, who will contend with me. Let us stand together.

Who is my adversary? Let him come near me. Surely the Lord God will help me. Who is he who will condemn me? Indeed they will all grow old like a garment.

The moth will eat them up." And then the final servant's song in Isaiah chapter 52 verse 13. Isaiah 52 verse 13. And we'll cross over into Isaiah 53 up to verse 12. Isaiah 52, Verse 13. His Father is speaking, Behold, my servant shall deal prudently.

He shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high. Just as many were astonished at you, so his visage was marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men. So shall he sprinkle many nations, kings shall shut their mouths at him. For what had not been told them they shall see, and what they had not heard they shall consider. Who has believed our report?

And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground. He has no comeliness, and when we see him there is no beauty that we should desire him." And then his rejection in verse 3, he was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from him. He was despised and we did not esteem him." And then in verse 4, his suffering, "'Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted.

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for Our peace was laid on him, and by his stripes we are healed. All we like sheath have gone astray. We have turned every one to his own way. And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth. He was led as a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before its shearers as silent, so he opened not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment, and who will declare his generation? For he was cut off from the land of the living. For the transgressions of my people he was stricken." And then in verse 9, his burial, and they made his grave with the wicked, but with the rich at his death, Because he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth." And verse 10, his punishment, "'Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him.

He has put him to grief. When you make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper his hand." And then finally, his victory in verses 11 through 12. He shall see the labor of his soul and be satisfied. By his knowledge, my righteous servant shall justify many. For he shall bear their iniquities, therefore I will divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul unto death, and he was numbered with the transgressors.

He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors." This is a picture of the suffering servant. And it should be so obvious to us how it is that we could say, God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. God does save sinners, but first He hurts them by showing them their idolatry and convicting them of their sin and turning their hearts toward Him. And then he sends a prophet to cry 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.

And so there you have a summary of the prophet Isaiah. The Lord Jesus Christ exalted in every page. Our greatest need, our greatest hope is on every page of this prophecy. We have such a privilege to be able to consider, to meditate upon what is our greatest hope. Week after week together as a family, I'm grateful that we're at this juncture now And I look forward to how God will come and and He'll change us He'll help us His servant will come and speak and heal and save.

Would you pray with me? Oh, Lord, come and heal, come and save. Come and declare Your righteousness in the congregation. Come and let the gracious words fall from your mouth to us. That our mouths would be open.

Fill us, Lord, fill our mouths with these things from heaven. Lord, we thank you for your kindness in sending prophets to speak to us directly, to our hearts, for our families, in behalf of our churches, and for the healing of the nations. Amen.