JOHN185 - Isaiah Weighs In

0:18 Hey my friends, it's Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. And let me tell you who was very good at being a prophet. Isaiah. He was super. He lived in the 700s BC, and people still read his stuff all the time today. And I have to think that one of the reasons people liked and continue to like Isaiah so much as a prophet is because of how much he was right about things and was clearly speaking with the authority of God when he said stuff.

0:45 So when Isaiah shows up in the text of the Bible, in the flow of the story, speaking to the court of King Hezekiah as the evil Assyrians have come knocking and threatening, it's a huge deal. There's really very few characters that I can think of after you know the patriarchs and Moses and the guys from way back in the day.

1:08 There's very few Old Testament characters I can imagine who could show up post-David and have more authority than Isaiah, the great prophet himself. But he does show up and issues an amazing oracle from God about present circumstances that Hezekiah and the people of Judah are facing in the moment, and also stuff about the future.

1:32 And I think it kind of sets a trajectory and has a lot to do with how things work out for the southern kingdom of Judah, but also kind of as a contrast to what's left, the little bit that's left of the northern kingdom of Israel, which includes the Samaritan tradition. So with all of that lined out, let's look at what Isaiah said to Hezekiah in this moment.

1:55 It goes like this, 2 Kings 19:20. Then Isaiah, son of Amos, it's definitely him, not some other Isaiah, sent a message to Hezekiah. This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says. I have heard your prayer concerning Sennacherib, king of Assyria. This is the word that the Lord has spoken against him. Quote, The virgin daughter of Zion despises you and mocks you.

2:18 The daughter of Jerusalem tosses her head as you flee. Who is it you've insulted and blasphemed? Against who have you raised your voice and lifted your eyes in pride? Against the Holy One of Israel. By your messengers you've heaped insults on the Lord, and you've said, With my many chariots I've ascended the heights of the mountains, the utmost heights of Lebanon, I have cut down its tallest cedars, the choicest of its pines, I have reached its remotest parts, the finest of its forests, I have dug wells in foreign lands and drunk the water there.

2:48 With the soles of my feet I have dried up all the streams of Egypt. Have you not heard? Long ago I ordained it, in days of old, I planned it. Now I have brought it to pass that you have turned fortified cities into piles of stone. Their people drained of power are dismayed and put to shame. They're like plants in the field, like tender green shoots, like grass sprouting on the roof, scorched before it grows up.

3:15 But I know where you stay when you come and go, and how you rage against me. Because you rage against me, and your insolence has reached my ears, I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth, and I will make you return by the way you came. This will be the sign for you, O Hezekiah. This year you will eat what grows by itself, and the second year what springs from that.

3:40 But in the third year sow and reap, plant vineyards and eat their fruit. Once more a remnant of the house of Judah will take root below and bear fruit above. For out of Jerusalem will come a remnant, and out of Mount Zion a band of survivors. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this. Therefore, this is what the Lord says concerning the king of Assyria.

4:02 He will not enter this city, or shoot an arrow here, he will not come before it with shield, or build a siege ramp against it. By the way that he came, he will return. He will not enter this city, declares the Lord. I will defend this city and save it for my sake, and for the sake of David, my servant.

4:21 Very next verse. So Sennacherib, king of Assyria, broke camp and withdrew. He returned to Nineveh and stayed there. Okay. Why did I give you the bonus stuff about Hezekiah and Isaiah and all of that? Well, here's why. Because the quest we've been on this week is to understand the age-old tensions between the Samaritans and the Jews.

4:54 And the origin story all happens between about 750-ish and about 700-ish BC, with the fall of the northern kingdom and the plague of lions, and the one lousy priest who was brought in by the misunderstanding dolts who were the Assyrians, and the whole Samaritan Jewish tension derives from this era because of how God spared Hezekiah and the people of the South, with guidance delivered through the great prophet Isaiah at the exact same time.

5:28 So let's just look back at this. Imagine that you live in the first century AD and you are a normal Jewish person who is aware of your history and aware of the Samaritans and their claim to authority and all of that. Which claim do you think is more legitimate? Which one do you think makes more sense?

5:47 The one that God supernaturally condemned, prophesied against, and then followed through on that prophecy to bring about total ruin and judgment? The one that is an ideological religious mingling of the worst bastardizations of sloppy pseudo-Judaism in the north, where it was all mashed up with pagan junk and was barely recognizable as the stuff of the worship of God?

6:16 Or the tradition in the South that was born out of the reforms of Hezekiah, the reinstitution of the sacrificial system and the life of the temple and the Passover, the one that was born out of the prophetic words of the prophet Isaiah that kept turning out to be true, the one that included the miraculous defeat of the most powerful army in the history of the world up to that point, in keeping with the powerful prophecy of Isaiah.

6:45 Which one of these two traditions are you gonna look at, even as a fair-minded person in the first century with no religious bias? Which one are you gonna look at and say, proofs in the pudding, that makes more sense and is better? Look, the thread that goes through Hezekiah and the prophet Isaiah, the one that affirms the kingship of David and the line of David, is just the better-looking tradition.

7:14 It makes more sense with all the Bible that came before it. It makes sense with all the Bible that came after it. But at the same time, I understand why the Samaritans at the time of Jesus come at it the way they do. I mean, what of the life do they know? They didn't ask for all of that stuff to happen 700 years earlier.

7:33 They didn't ask for their ancestors to be idiots and get everything wrong and play their cards wrong and lose to Assyria, and all of them get hauled away except for a few, probably manage to hide out and linger about. They didn't ask for the other half of their family tree, which is made of transplanted Babylonians and Syrians who got moved into their ancient homeland and married and had kids with the remaining Israelite.

7:59 I mean, they didn't ask for any of that. It's just where they're from, it's who they are. Any more than I didn't ask for Vikings to invade Scotland and Ireland and pillage and for my family to be born out of that story. It's just, I don't know, I'm just here. That's just what I am. That's just what they were.

8:16 Still, it can be, you know, difficult to be honest about our own claims and our own history. And as we move from this really hot origin story area of history that we've been looking at for the last week or so, or between 750 and 700 BC, and we move into the ensuing centuries of tension, which we'll probably only spend one day on.

8:37 Yeah, I mean, the grievances they just get baked in. Like now, now it's a blood feud. Now it's all stuff, it's about stuff from you know way in the distant past that you can't really change anything about. It is about grievances and slights that happen along the way to keep the feud hot. Like I said, we'll talk about a few of those moving along.

8:55 But by the time you get to the time of Jesus and him meeting this woman at the well, this stuff's pretty baked in. And it's really hard to imagine it ever going away or getting better. And uh yet Jesus shows up and he is talking about what effectively is a solution to this impossible situation. His kingdom, his new family of faith by faith boundaries and not genetic boundaries that he is initiating, it solves the Samaritan Jewish thing for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear.

9:31 For those who would follow him, it answers the thing. And I'll just tell you in advance, that's the effect it's gonna have on the Samaritan woman. She knows the playbook, she knows the whole history, she knows all the stuff, she knows the grievances, but when the conversation is over, she's a follower of Christ because he presents the only way out of this impossible blood feud that had so much mileage to it.

9:57 And honestly, like you and I, now that we understand it a little better and we get the tensions of it, don't you feel the impossibility of it more? Well, I think that's pretty cool because that's going to help us feel the miraculous, world-changing work of Christ that much more as we jump back over to John chapter four.

10:14 Cool. Thank you for doing this, jaunt with me. We may do one more of jaunt. I may just go right back to John 4 next. I haven't decided yet. Either way, we'll have fun. I appreciate you. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.