40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Isaiah 12:1-13:16 (Episode 456)

Episode Date: March 10, 2025

There is a day coming when God's anger will be turned away, and water will be drawn from the well of salvation. But God sees the arrogance of the Godless, and Babylon's judgement will be great. Have a listen. Show Notes: Support 1517 Podcast Network 1517 Podcasts 1517 on Youtube 1517 Podcast Network on Apple Podcasts 1517 Events Schedule 1517 Academy - Free Theological Education What's New from 1517: Pre-order: Ditching the Checklist by Mark Mattes Broken Bonds: A Novel of the Reformation, Book 1 of 2 by Amy Mantravadi  Bible in One Year with Chad Bird Junk Drawer Jesus By Matt Popovits Take 20% Off Our Lenten Devotionals until March 5th: The Sinner/Saint Lenten Devotional Finding Christ in the Straw: A Forty-Day Devotion on the Epistle of James  More from the hosts: Daniel Emery Price Chad Bird

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 podcast, network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast and check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. While you're over there, make sure you check out everything else that 1517 is doing. Go to the events page. See what events are coming up. I think at the time of recording this anyway, there's, I mean, ever so few tickets to the regional event. You go check and see if they're there.

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It makes everything that we do here and everywhere else on 1517 stay free for everyone to consume. And if you're one of the people that do that already, thank you very much. We very much appreciate it. Chad, we are in Isaiah chapter 12. It's talking about here's some of the stuff that's going to happen, And then it does this whole Exodus move where – and we kind of ended there where – and this is a very common thing. I mean if you've noticed by now, and of course if you read the Psalms, you'll know that this is something that gets brought up over and over and over again. If you're going to talk about, well, judgment's coming and it's going to be bad, what is the sort of lamppost that you could look back to to know that God is ultimately for you, though?

And it's always the Exodus. I mean, this is the evidence that you have that no matter how long it seems to have been dark, that day is going to break eventually because God has made certain promises, and Exodus is the primary evidence of this, right? And so this is no different here as we move into Isaiah 12. Yeah, I mean, remember the Exodus sums up so many of the Psalms. It sums up a lot of the prophecies, too. It's like, yeah, things are terrible. And someone says, yeah, but remember what God did in the Exodus. And it's not just a remembrance of the past, but it's also a promise of the future

because we have this new Exodus, cosmopolitan Exodus that's going to happen that Isaiah talked about all through chapter 11. And quite fittingly, therefore, as we step into Exodus 12, we're going to have an Exodus kind of song that's going to be sung. So if you go back to the book of Exodus itself, you have Israel coming out of Egypt in Exodus 12 and 13. You get to Exodus 14, you have the crossing of the sea. And then immediately after the crossing of the sea,

you have the song at the sea, which retells in a poetic fashion exactly what happened in the prose narrative of Exodus 14. So you have the Exodus crossing the sea, and then you have a song based on that. And so Isaiah, patterning this after the book of Exodus, he has Isaiah 11, which is all about this Exodus which is to come, followed, therefore, by Exodus 12, which is the parallel to the song at the sea.

So we have a real short song. It's only six verses. As we were discussing before we hit record, and it's very much like one of the Psalms. It has that same kind of language. In fact, one of the lines at the end of verse 2 is exactly the same as one of the lines in Psalm 118. The Lord is my strength and my song. He's become my salvation. And that line is also from Exodus chapter 15, the song of the sea. In fact, a couple of the words that are used in there are kind of older Hebrew words that are used pretty rarely, but that are resurfacing here in this song that's

written centuries after the original song was written. So I'll just read the whole thing. Like I said, it's only short. It's only six verses, real short. You will say in that day, this is kind of the introduction. So here's what you're going to be singing. I will give thanks to you, O Lord, for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away that you might comfort me. So kind of have a repeat of that same sort of introductory phrase you will say in that day. In other words, you're going to sing this in that day. proclaim that his name is exalted sing praises to the lord for he has done gloriously let this be made known in all the earth shout and sing for joy oh inhabitant of zion for great in your midst

is the holy one of israel so i don't think we need to to uh to focus on this too much but if you if you look in your translations they're probably all going to note that we go back and forth between a singular you and a plural y'all. I don't know if there's any great significance to that, but I know the ESV notes that throughout this as well. So you, y'all, but in the end, I mean, we're all talking about the people of God. We're talking about those that God has made his own. And we can talk about the details here, but one takeaway that strikes me just rereading it right now is how you have this common Old Testament focus upon both the universal and the particular so you have all the nations that are in view here all the earth that's in view here

so it's it's a it's a big perspective and yet at the same time you have a very particular perspective because you get to the end and it's shout and sing for joy not oh citizen of the earth but oh inhabitant of zion for great in your midst the holy one of israel so that That is thoroughly biblical, where you'll have a very wide perspective. All the nations, all the world, every single element of humanity is going to be affected by this. And at the same time, the focus is on those whom God brings near to himself to dwell in Zion, where he has placed his presence. You know, one of the things that's interesting about songs like this is that you see like sort of the real mission that the church has. So if you're talking about Israel and then you were to say, well, how do you contextualize this a little bit?

But for us, okay, and this is all prophetic stuff, so it's not as though you're stretching this too much to say what is it that we as the people of God assembled are really supposed to be about. And what you'll find consistently is that, look, you're supposed to help your neighbors and all this kind of stuff. That's all great. But the primary work that you have is to make the deeds of God known, and this is looking forward to a very particular deed. So the Exodus is the cross of the Old Testament in the sense of like sort of the center of all things, and it's the thing that they refer back to over and over again. If you're going to recount the glorious and awesome deeds of the Lord or if you're going to recount his salvation, that's what you're going to look to. And you see here, like, well, what are you going to do? If you're trying to make his deeds among the people, like, known to all the nations, if you're supposed to proclaim all these things, if you're to fast forward to the deed that outshined the exodus, right?

So that's what the cross is. If you were a Jewish person, that's like the best deed. Well, Paul will explicitly say that the cross of Christ and his resurrection just sort of eclipses everything. I mean everything – it's not like, oh, it barely nudged out the exodus. It was a close race, but some people prefer the exodus. Some people prefer the cross. It's a toss-up. No, like, it's a distant second to the mighty deeds that God has done.

And so this is the exact sort of thing that the Church and the people of God would proclaim. I mean, the whole reason you don't come to faith and then just get sucked up into glory is so that you can proclaim to the earth that God has done this thing. This is what He has left the Church to do. Yeah, yeah. I was thinking, I don't have it in front of me here, but I was thinking of Jeremiah, where he says uh there's coming a day when it will no longer be said as the lord lives he brought up his people from the land of egypt you know i don't even talk about that anymore but as the lord lives

he brought up his people from and then he goes on to list all these nations so jeremiah is basically saying yeah there's coming an event which is is going to so outshine and outdo the original exodus that it'd be like oh yeah that's just a footnote in salvation history the main thing is what he's what he's doing and when you began that you said the uh uh the uh i forget how exactly you said it but like the the cross is the exodus and the new testament or something like that which of course is exactly why the cross happened during the celebration of the exodus right yeah during passover week it was wasn't some random week you know god threw his uh his dart at the dartboard it fell on passover like i guess that's when it's all gonna happen no this was this was all

orchestrated by God's foreknowledge and His plan to happen when it did so that you could see this great connection between what He did of old and what He does in Christ. Yeah, and in that sense, it's a fulfillment,

of course, because the Exodus is just this foreshadow of what is the real thing, right? So there is a sense. And look, the exodus is – I mean we spent a lot of time talking about the exodus. The exodus is cool.

Now, Chad and I aren't celebrating the Passover ever. That's not something we're doing. Why is that? Well, because that would be like – and I've said this before I think. But that would be like me and my wife, instead of celebrating our anniversary, celebrating the rehearsal dinner every year or something. You know, like, hey, let's celebrate what we practiced for the real thing. And you think, like, is that an extreme example? It's actually not an extreme enough example of how different it is that this is the case.

Like, no, Chad and I will be in church on Easter. You better believe that. But, yeah, we're not celebrating the Passover because we know that everything that the Passover was pointing to has happened. And it's – and as great as – and this isn't to diminish anything done in the Old Testament ever. It's just to say that what God has done in Christ is so much greater than the greatest thing that it would be ludicrous to go back to it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I love that. And I'll often say that what we have in the Old Testament are the black and white sketches that Christ fills out in full color.

I mean, there's, of course, a number of different ways. the Bible talks about shadow and reality and type and anti-type, but the main point is always the same. It's the main it's what Hebrews says over and over. You know, something better was needed. Yeah. Was it great that we had

an exodus? Yeah, that something better was needed. Was it great that we had the priesthood of the Old Testament, the tabernacle, the sacrifices, and everything else? Yeah, it was great, but something better was needed. And of course, always the something better is Christ.

So give thanks to God for what he did in days of old, but also realize that that has been completely eclipsed by what God has done in Christ. And so Isaiah 12 is singing about, I mean, you could say this is a New Testament psalm, right? This isn't about what God is going to do in a century or so after Isaiah. This is talking about what he's going to do in the Messiah. Yeah. So in that day that he talks about a couple different times in verse one and verse three is really it's the day of salvation. It's what he's what he's done. So when he says, for instance, I will give thanks to you, O Lord, for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away that you might comfort me.

Well, what you're seeing in these poetic words is a picture of the cross of Christ. I mean, we're his his hangers turned away. He comforts us. Why? Because as it says in the very next verse, because God is my salvation. God in Jesus Christ is our salvation, the one who rescues us, redeems us. And so we trust in him, as he goes on to say, and are therefore not afraid because he's our, not just our salvation, he's our strength. He's our song, everything. I mean, we all talk about Christ alone.

Well, yeah, our salvation is in Christ alone. He's our strength alone. He's our song alone. I think somewhere Luther says, I have nothing to sing about but Christ. It's just like, once you have that as the content of your song, what else are you going to sing about, right? That's everything.

So I love verse 3 too, this image of drawing water from the wells of salvation. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that, of course, fits with all the water stories we have throughout the Old Testament. That's a little baptismal to me. I was at church, I think it was two Sundays ago, and I've got to tell you, there was this little tiny baby, Chad. This couple had this little tiny baby, and they marched that baby up there. And I'm pretty sure I saw someone draw some water from the wells of salvation and apply it three times to the top of this baby's head.

Yes, yes, you certainly did. I mean, this is – it's all over the New Testament. I mean, the story that immediately jumps to my head is John 4. I mean, talk about living water from a well. Yeah, yeah. But it's not just there. I mean, John is wet, pun intended, with baptismal language, all the water stories, beginning already in chapters 1 and 2, but then continually really to the end. And so, yeah, Isaiah is echoing what has come before because there's plenty of water stories before Isaiah 12, but there's also plenty of water stories that are yet to come.

I always say that whether – and you might think this is just isolated in the New Testament. I don't know if we said this before on the Old Testament podcast. It's a running joke on 30 Minutes in the New Testament. and Eric brings it up every time that I say something about this because I was once accused of having a very wet hermeneutic. Oh, yes. Someone said this to me, I think as an insult. They said, Dan's hermeneutic is soaking wet.

Every time he sees water, he makes a big deal out of it. So I liked that a lot, which I was like, fair enough. Sometimes insults are the best compliments, right? Yeah, I mean, I was like, yeah, this hermeneutic, Guilty as charged. It's just dripping. It's sopping wet. But let me just say, not just for the New Testament.

I've got a—Chad as well. Chad has joined me in this saturated hermeneutic of the Old Testament, too. I see texts like this, and I'm not, you know, ooh, I wonder what that could be. I feel like I know what that is. Oh, yeah. So, like, when I talk about baptism, I take a cue from the New Testament. So we have explicit text in the New Testament that relate baptism to the crossing of the Red Sea, that relate baptism to the flood. So you just go back to the water stories of the Old Testament.

You're like, okay, what's God doing with water to bless his people, save his people, rescue his people, cleanse his people? But you've got story after story after story, including the idea of drawing water from the wells of salvation, crossing the Red Sea, the flood, getting water from the rock, on and on. Well, all of these form basically this wet mosaic, if you will, of this is what, okay, when God gets his hands on water, he's going to do something for his people. Well, this all then flows into baptism. You see this from the very beginning, right? I mean, God creates everything that is out of water. I mean, this is – you can't get past the opening pages before you realize, like, I think this guy makes new things out of water. You're like, yeah, that's what he does.

I saw this hilarious thing. By the way, this is a total aside, but since we're talking about this, it was just this report, like some scientific journal thing. And it said something like – I think the headline was, scientists now believe that at one point the world was completely covered in water. I've read that somewhere. And I was like, I already knew that. I'm not really into science that much, but I already knew that. And they're not talking about the flood. They don't mean like there was a flood.

They mean like at one point there was nothing but water. And you were like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's this verse in the Bible. that's great alright we got anything else on on chapter 12 I think we can run headlong

into the judgment of Babylon I've been trying to put it off here only because it's been such great stuff we've been covering the last couple episodes not that what's coming up isn't great it's just a very different focus we've got we've got some

different material coming up I'm actually dealing with an appropriate chapter break here for a change. This is definitely an appropriate chapter break. Yeah, so once you get past Isaiah 1-12, you're entering into new territory. We're crossing a genre border, a literary border into a different section of Isaiah, which is going to take us for, I don't know, it's going to take us a little bit to get through. because it's chapters 13 through 27. So we've got quite a few episodes to come on this.

And I don't think we're going to be going as slow through this as we are through some of the first 12 chapters. But just to kind of give you a basic idea as to what's coming up, you're going to have, first of all, in the next few chapters, 13 and following, really 13 through 23, you've got a bunch of oracles. And if you do a word search, for instance, you'll see that the word oracle is going to come up repeatedly in these next few chapters. And oracles, these oracles are going to be against several nations.

We're going to start out with Babylon. A lot to say about Babylon, no surprise there. And then Assyria, you got Egypt, Philistia, Moab, Aram, Edom, Arabia, and Tyre. So Isaiah is going to have something to say to each of these guys. you really have kind of three different sections coming up, which I won't bore you with the details of the chapters and verses there, but that's what's on the horizon. We've got quite a bit coming up here where God is going to be speaking through Isaiah to these nations which are around Israel. Now, how this worked on kind of like a boots on the crown sort of way, I don't think

we are to picture Isaiah, you know, packing his bags, get his backpack, and his scroll, and then he's journeying, you know, weeks and months to Babylon, and then he sets up a podium in Babylon and preaches there, all right? And then he leaves there, and he goes to Assyria, and he preaches there, and then he leaves there and goes to Philistia. These are oracles that concern Babylon, Assyria, Elam, Philistia so on and so forth but these are oracles that are preached to Isaiah's own people

so Isaiah is gathering his people around at various times and places this isn't like a sermon series that Isaiah preached, these would have been preached at different times in Isaiah's ministry they're just collected here for literary purposes

in these chapters that are coming up but Isaiah is using these oracles against the nations basically in a two-fold sort of way. It's kind of a law gospel approach. So on the one hand, each of these are oracles of judgment. And in that way, they're law. God is saying, okay, this is what I'm going to do

primarily because of the arrogance and the pride of these nations. I'm going to destroy them. I'm going to use other nations to wipe them out. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. So there's a lot of law that's being preached there. And so part of what's being proclaimed is, hey, people of Judea, don't put your trust in Babylon, or don't put your trust in whoever it might be, because all these nations God is going to bring down eventually. So that's kind of the message of law, threat, punishment. But then you have the same time woven into that, or if you prefer a different image, set alongside that, the promise that God is going to redeem his people.

There is going to be this remnant that we've heard about in these opening chapters of Isaiah. God is going to save them. He's going to plant them again in the land. He's going to raise them up so that they are enjoying a kind of a headship over other nations. So you've got that promise of good things to come for Israel that is preached alongside these other messages of judgment and destruction. So that's going to be what we're going to cover over the next few chapters, starting out here with Babylon. It does seem that if you're in the middle of a judgment, and you've been told, hey, put your hope in the Lord, you're supposed to trust in the Lord, but it's going to be rough, you might start looking for alternate saviors. Oh, yeah.

Maybe some human kind of saviors. For sure. So, hey, what other nation can help us here? What other – is there something else that could happen? Maybe we should put all our trust in whoever it is. It could be anything or anyone. Yeah. Very human thing, but that God is warning you against doing, that all of this is like misplaced hope.

I mean, even some of the best of kings did this. We haven't covered it yet. Well, we actually did cover it in 2 Kings, if you were with us back then. But we're going to cover it again in later chapters of Isaiah 36 through 39, where we have a historic—basically, it's a historic section from Kings that is inserted into Isaiah. Hezekiah is the king. He's threatened by the Assyrians. And at the very end of that, there's an envoy from Babylon that visits. And Hezekiah is, like, showing them all his stuff.

Yeah. Isaiah's like, what did they see? And Hezekiah is just like, without any hesitation, he's like, oh man, I showed him everything. You know, all my treasures, all this, all this. And Isaiah, you can just kind of see him shaking his head. Yeah, you know what's going to happen after you're gone? The Babylonians are going to rise to power and they're going to come and they're going to take all your stuff away from you or from your grandsons and great-grandsons. So in that case, you have Hezekiah, who's probably at that point being courted by the Babylonians.

because at this point in history, the Babylonians are a rising power. They're trying to get a coalition together so they can defeat the Assyrians. Well, here you have Hezekiah, whom we all know is one of the best kings of the southern kingdom. And even he is kind of duped into thinking, oh, maybe I can get in this Babylonian league and together we'll be able to defeat the Assyrians. So all that to say, yeah, I mean, people were definitely, Even the best of the Israelites, Judeans, were drawn to put their trust in these national saviors like Babylon or Egypt, whoever it might have been. Well, and there's a fine line there, too, and it is quite fine, where does God use, you know, if you're talking about ancient Israel, does he use other nations to deliver you sometimes?

Yep. does uh does god even now if you're going through things does he does he use people to help you yep uh and this is where things become tricky where so of course god uses people to help or even uh to save people uh and then and then it becomes this uh this very difficult task of recognizing that it was God who used those people to bring about your deliverance or your aid or whatever it is, and that just because there was a vehicle used, that you do not put your trust in the vehicle, but the one who used it. And this is not an easy thing to do.

No, it is not. I mean, this is an ongoing temptation with the people of God. I mean, I think about how popular Hellenization was for the Jews leading up to the time of Jesus. I mean, the Greeks brought a lot of great things to the world. You know, a lot of advances, a lot of philosophical, scientific, historical advances. I mean, their culture did a lot of great things for the world. But there was always this temptation for segments of Judaism to embrace a Hellenized worldview so much so that that became basically their religious outlook. I mean, nothing's changed there.

All kinds of things in the modern world have brought wonderful things to the church. Technology, for instance. But a lot of other things, too. But there's this constant temptation to so embrace that ideology or worldview or whatever it might be that it becomes dominant in our way of thinking. And we put our trust in that rather than in God using these things for our good. Yeah. Yep. All right.

Well, let's get started here with Babylon, the oracle concerning Babylon, which Isaiah, the son of Amos, saw. and uh what he's going to start out here with is with a uh kind of a lot of military stuff going on here a military image of basically the gates being open of babylon and the the enemies of babylon being summoned to to come on in and to do their worst to babylon on a bare hill raise a signal cry aloud to them wave the hand for them to enter the gates of the nobles so this gate of babylon i myself this is god speaking i myself have commanded my consecrated ones and have summoned my mighty men to execute my anger my proudly exalting ones so god is talking here not about like holy people so when you hear consecrated ones don't think of

he's got his band of saints or something these are people he set aside to do his will do his bidding in entering the gates of Babylon to do their worst. Read a couple more verses here and I'll stop. So four and five go on. The sound of a tumult is on the mountains as of a great multitude. The sound of an uproar of kingdoms, of nations gathering together. The Lord of hosts is mustering a host for battle. They come from a distant land, from the end of the heavens. The Lord and the weapons of his indignation to destroy the whole land. So this is kind of setting everything up here. We're going to hear more about it as we go through here.

But Babylon's days are numbered, more or less, is what the overall message is going to be. You've got all kinds of military images that are woven in here, the weapons of his indignation, and he's got a host for battle. They're entering into the gates. You have this sound of a tumult on the mountains, this great multitude of people who are gathering together. So this is going to be the end for Babylon. Now, I don't think I didn't mention this, so let me just add here.

It is a little bit, at least on the surface, a little bit unexpected for Isaiah to start out by talking about Babylon. only because the dominant threat, the superpower of Isaiah's day, wasn't Babylon. It was Assyria. It was the Assyrians who were breathing down the neck of everyone in the northern kingdom. They were the ones who come in and they wipe out the northern kingdom in 722. They're the ones who surround Jerusalem during Hezekiah's reign. So if you think about the big threat to Israel during Isaiah's ministry, it's not Babylon. It's the Assyrians. Now, the Babylonians are rising in power, like I said a

few minutes ago, but they're not the dominant threat yet. But Isaiah starts out by talking about Babylon, I think for two reasons. Number one, they will become the dominant threat in the century after Isaiah. I mean, they're going to be the ones who destroy Jerusalem eventually, of course. But also, there is in the bigger biblical picture, from literally Genesis to Revelation. This concentration upon Babel or Babylon, and those are the same word in Hebrew. You've got the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11. You've got Babylon as a nation. You've got the Whore of Babylon in Revelation. All of this is a huge biblical theme where Babylon becomes more than just a city and a nation. It's an archetype of a world power full of arrogance and

conceit that thinks it's unconquerable that trust in itself and its own almost kind of quasi-divine status it's it's given to itself and that becomes the force that then god takes to its knees and destroys because it it's kind of the uh the representative of sinful humanity as opposed to god yeah so uh anyway so kind of going on from there this is uh verse five wail for the day of the lord is near a destruction from the almighty it will come therefore all hands will be feeble and every human heart will melt they will be dismayed pains pangs and agony will seize them they will be in anguish like a woman in labor they will look aghast at one another their faces will be aflame behold the day of the lord comes cruel with wrath and fierce anger to make the

land a desolation and to destroy its sinners from it for the so get this this is verse 10 coming up listen to all of this has been like mainly military imagery but notice what the shift that's about to occur here and you'll hear new testament overtones here also for the stars of the heavens and their constellations will not give their light. The sun will be dark at its rising and the moon will not shed its light. I will punish the world for its evil and the wicked for their iniquity. I'll put an end to the pomp of the arrogant and lay low the pompous pride of the ruthless. Let me stop there for just a minute. So this is so instructive, I think, for how you read the Bible. we just kind of stop there and think about the many places in the scriptures where things like

this happen where you okay you think you're talking about just a particular destruction of a particular city then all of a sudden you realize well we are but we're also talking about something bigger right yeah yeah this this particular city is being destroyed because of its pomp and arrogance but i mean what the stars aren't going to give their light and the and the moon's gonna be dark when it rises and the and the moon's not going to give us light i mean this so even the heavens are being brought into this image and that's because when god decrees the destruction of a rebellious city very frequently what is happening is he he uses that as a as a picture of the ultimate cosmopolitan judgment day of the lord which is

to come well and babylon is just sort of you have to like have two things kind of being true at the same time where babylon is a specific place and a specific people that is going to do specific things to israel and all that's true but then becomes and isaiah of course speaking prophetically It becomes just a stand-in for the wicked, unbelieving world, the sort of – and not just sort of the inhabitants of it, but the people controlling it, the powers behind it, right? This is what it becomes, certainly in the New Testament. And so it's almost impossible for Isaiah to talk about the destruction or something of Babylon without then also talking about sort of the fate of the wicked in totality. And so he does both these things at the same time where it's – yes, it's talking about a specific thing, but it's also – this becomes this sort of archetype or stand-in for all of those things. And it is true, which I know we've pointed this out lots of times, but if you look at what it is that always comes up as this is going to happen, God looks at sort of the unbelieving powers of the world, and all he sees is arrogance and pride and haughtiness.

This is what draws his attention, right? Is that look at the hubris of this power structure that's going to have to be laid to waste. The thing about godlessness is that you'd be like, well, does God like godlessness? No, he doesn't. But, like, what also always comes up and is always, like, sort of joined at the hip with it is, like, one of the things that really gets God going is, like, how much pride it takes to be godless. The amount of arrogance to think that you could just not submit or believe in God is, like, astounding. Yeah. Yeah, so don't ever hear the word godless to mean that there's not a God present.

Although we have a godless situation. No, it just means that the true God has been substituted. And usually the substitute is in one way or another pride. That's just the human condition. Yeah, godless is... You hear godless? I think most people hear like sort of... They think about the godless people.

And they immediately think to like some sort of like immorality. Like it's just like some kind of a moral verdict. Like they're godless. You can tell they're godless because of how they act or whatever. Well, God can tell they're godless because of their pride and their arrogance. Being godless is not mostly about anything moral in so much as what you do or don't do. It's about believing that you are God or that you can make your own gods and that sort of thing. And this is because, I mean, the people of God are wicked all the time.

What makes them different? Well, it's theological, not moral. Not moral, yeah. When you hear the word godless, think prideful. Yes, yes. Because those two will go hand in glove. All right, we got three or four minutes, so we're at verse—I just read verse 11. I will—he's going to go on here with more of the language of destruction.

I will make people more rare than fine gold and mankind than the gold of Ophir. So Ophir, we don't even know where that is, but it's associated with gold throughout the Old Testament. Think of Ophir gold, think in our terms of like French wine and Persian rugs and Italian leather and Swiss watches. So we associate place names with certain products. so you associate gold with Ophir so God is going to make people more rare than that Hebrew has like four different words for gold

we just have one but find gold, go from Ophir and then he goes on therefore I will make the heavens tremble and the earth will be shaken out of its place at the wrath of the Lord of hosts in the day of his fierce anger this is more this

kind of the cosmopolitan imagery here with the heavens being involved and he continues This is verse 14. And like a hunted gazelle or like sheep with none to gather them, each will turn to his own people and each will flee to his own land. Whoever is found will be thrust through. Whoever is caught will fall by the sword.

Their infants will be dashed in pieces before their eyes. Their houses will be plundered and their wives ravished. I mean, that's, of course, a terrible, terrible image of rape and the killing of infants. But that also finds its way into so many prophetic oracles because, I mean, that's the things that happen during these terrible destructions. It was always the innocent who suffered the most during these terrible wars. But this is one Isaiah's way of just trying to describe the complete devastation which is going to happen to Babylon in the days to come. And not just Babylon then, but as you said earlier, Babylon's a stand-in for the entire sinful world and the judgment which is to come. You know, one of the things, too, because you're going to have people in your life probably bring up texts like this.

And what's important to know is that, yes, so Isaiah is talking about the wrath of God is coming. And sometimes the wrath of God just looks like him no longer restraining evil. Yes. In some ways, God doesn't have to do anything, really. He just removes his hand and lets sinners do what they do. Yeah, and so if he just pulls back, things fall into complete chaos. And so, yes, this is about the wrath of God, but just note, like, you know, if you have like verse 16 here where it's talking about infants and the house is being plundered and the wives ravished, it is not saying that God does this. That's not what it's saying.

It's saying that this is what happens when God takes his hands off of everything. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, this is sinners doing the worst to sinners, which, of course, we see happening throughout history. But this is kind of a picture of what is to come to Babylon. And I hate to stop on a point like that, but I don't think we have any gospel coming up for the rest of the chapter. We'll have to stop there for now. We'll finish out chapter 13 next time and get into some really fascinating stuff with Isaiah 14. Get some Lucifer images there and some other interesting material.

Yeah, tough way to end, but just know the ultimate time where God took his hands off is in that sort of fulfillment of the Exodus where God takes his hands off himself and allows sinners to do what sinners do, which you see the ultimate example of what will happen where we will say, let's kill God, and he does that and permits that judgment so that you can have this ultimate salvation. So it's all part of the plan to save the world. Yeah, good news.

All right, well, we'll leave it there. We'll see you again next episode for more judgment. See you then. See you then. We'll see you next time.