40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Isaiah 48:1-16 (Episode 489)

Episode Date: December 12, 2025

Being refined by God isn't usually pleasant. The best God is the promise-keeping God. And what does it mean that God will not share His glory? 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: Coming Home for Christmas: 1517 Advent Devotional Face to Face: A Novel of the Reformation by Amy Mantravadi Untamed Prayers: 365 Daily Devotions on Christ in the Book of Psalms by Chad Bird Remembering Your Baptism: A 40-Day Devotional by Kathryn Morales Sinner Saint by Luke Kjolhaug 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. check out all the other podcasts that are living over there and while you're over there make sure you check out everything else that 1570 is doing it's a lot of stuff events articles academies books check out all that stuff and of course hey the year is winding down especially by the time this releases and you know we got year end goals you know because we're trying to keep this thing going you know not just next year but the year after that and year after that and you know it's

one year at a time over here at 1517 so if you want to help us reach some goals so we can keep doing all this stuff free, go over to that donate link and become a contributor. Help us reach some of those year-end goals. It will go a long way to helping us continue what we're doing, and we appreciate it very much. Thank you to those of you who have already done that. Chad, we are in Isaiah chapter 48. We just got done with the humiliation of Babylon. God's saying, hey, there's going to be some humbling. The great humbling is upon you. You know all those toy weapons you have? Well, you might as well hang on to them because uh that's really all you got right so your incantations your your sorceries your whatever it is that you think you've got uh hang on to them tight

uh because uh as worthless as they are uh it really is all you're left with uh which is all there is uh apart from god that's what you that's what you got a bunch of a bunch of worthless stuff yep yep we had a lot of condemnation of that kind of things those kind of things happening in 47, which is, I mean, certainly directed against any Israelites who participated in that, a lot of it explicitly against the Babylonians. Now in 48, which we're picking up now, there's much more of a narrow focus upon Israel. In particular, what we're going to hear about is God taking them to task for their stubbornness, for having the word of God, but not listing the word of God.

I think we've encountered that a few times before, and how God basically laid all this out for his people, and they didn't listen over and over and over. But that's not going to keep God from doing what he has always done for his people, which is to keep his wrath held back, to not pour his wrath upon them. And actually, for the sake of his name, that's for the sake of who he is, to actually accomplish this deliverance for his people. So this chapter is kind of a combination of law and gospel, no surprise there. Law directed mainly against the recalcitrance of Israel, and then the gospel mainly proclaiming what God is going to do, not because his people are so righteous but in spite of the fact that his people are unrighteous and there's an interesting thing that happens at the very end which i think we'll get to that's the goal anyway the the chapter kind of ends in a strange way it says there is no peace

says the lord for the wicked now in the context that follows immediately after god promising this great exodus event where the israelites are actually going to come home from babylon back to the promised land. And that kind of sour ending is a setup for chapter 49, which is going to be another of the servant songs in which we're going to hear about God's greater plans for Israel, which is going to follow the return from Babylonian exile. So that's kind of the big picture of what we got coming up and where we're going. Well, you know, if you got a header, which you do on this, that talks about Israel being refined, you know that it's going to be kind of a good news, bad news kind of thing, because refined is good, but not pleasant,

usually, right? It involves, yeah, it involves fire. So, yeah, the burning away of things. So, yeah, that's never, never going to be pleasant. You know, all the times that God has refined me, enjoyable. I don't know if they have been for you, Dan, but it's not like I thought, man, that was a lot of fun. I wish I could repeat that. The outcome is always good when God's involved.

But it's sort of, you know, yes, indeed, God is going to work all these things out for good. The working part sometimes is not the most enjoyable part of that. Yeah, I love the

good. I love it when it's over, but not so much while it's happening. So we're going to start out here with the various ways that God's people are described. And we're going to hear right in the middle of these first two verses, the fact that even though they're described this way, it doesn't mean that they're actually living up to their name. Hear this, O house of Jacob, who are called by the name of israel and who came from the waters of judah which is kind of a unusual description who swear by the name of the lord and confess the god of israel right so a lot of a lot of good stuff here right you're called this you came from this you swear and confess by this but here's the negative part but not in truth or right for they call themselves after the holy city and they

stay themselves on the God of Israel. The Lord of hosts is his name. I don't know about the translation of that last description, stay themselves on the God of Israel. When I hear that, I hear that as like, man, you are founded on God is kind of the idea. I hear that real positively. And I suppose it could mean that the verb in Hebrew is samach, which is the verb that means for like it's a verb used for like the laying on of hands that you do on a person or a like a sacrificial animal it's like the idea is like you're leaning on it and so this is i would translate this something like they prop themselves up on the god of israel maybe that's a way we can we can translate it but either way this is a whole list of the various ways that god's people

are described it's kind of a narrowing down to you start with a house of jacob the name of israel the waters of judah and then finally get to they call themselves after the holy city so you kind of have this big picture here's jacob but then more specifically the people called israel and then you get to the tribe of judah and then finally it narrows down to the people in the city of jerusalem all talking about the same people but various ways that they're that they're described so they're they're called by this they confess this they've got all this good stuff going on but and that's the big law statement here but not in truth or right so you know you can you can call yourselves after the name of the god of jacob you can call yourselves the israelites the people

of judah the people of jerusalem all that kind of stuff but that doesn't necessarily mean it's true not true in the sense of are you well are you actually looking and believing like you're israel or are you acting in accordance with what is right well evidently they're not because that's exactly what he says here not in truth or in or in right fact it's just just the opposite because even though even though they call themselves after the god of israel what do they do perpetually they called upon the god of israel and baal or the god of israel and asherah or the god of israel and Molech so they were always doing the

Yahweh and-ism and because of that they didn't call upon him in truth nor in that which was right yeah maybe this is what it means to sort of kind of lean in yourself against the God of Israel and stuff but you're not

like standing on him right like he's around he's like but Israel does this thing where like God is sort of like this like he's always there you know like i mean he's like god is the the yahweh is the backup plan right it's like hey if we ever really need to repent hardcore if we could always return back to that but and it is like a really weird insanity that that that it happens that way

and it's just uh sort of like i think it's the the allure of of being like other nations and having actual gods and idols and all this stuff. So you want to do this. You have all these outward things and they kind of keep God like available to them in the closet. And so they could maybe like go in there and, you know, get him anytime you want. And so they might not be doing this in truth, but the only reason you're still standing is you're sort of leaning up against me, but you're not like fully devoted to me or anything. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good way to describe it. I think it's helpful to keep in mind always, I know we know this, but sometimes it just needs to be said that Israel was very unique, almost seems like too weak of a word.

They stood out in the ancient world. They didn't have any kind of visual sign for their deity that wasn't, you know, an image for Yahweh. And they didn't have the kind of sexy worship, I don't know how else to describe it, that the people of, you know, the Philistines and the Canaanites had. And I use that particular phraseology on purpose, sexy worship, because a lot of their worship was very earthy. It involved cult prostitutes, male and female. You had a lot of stuff going on that appealed to the flesh when you were around Philistine worship or Canaanite worship just in general. They had their gods, they had their goddesses, and they didn't just have one to choose from, too. There's, there's a certain element of polytheism, which is very attractive because it's, you know, we like to, we like options, right?

Especially today. I mean, we love options. Open up Amazon, you know, what, what kind of water bottle do you want? Well, here's 50,000 choices. What kind of shoes do you want? Well, here's a million choices. That's probably too small of a number. We love our choices.

We love our options. Well, when you have a polytheistic worldview, theology, you have options. You having trouble having kids? Well, then here's a fertility goddess that you can call upon. Are you a farmer and it looks like, you know, you're not going to get rain? Well, here's a weather god you can call upon. You know, you're having trouble with some element of your body? Well, then here's a god of healing that you can call upon.

So you can be very specific in your polytheistic kind of worship and you can call upon this one particular god. And with Israel, it's like you got one god and he covers all of it. And he doesn't work the way these other gods work, too. He can't be manipulated. Well, if I just give him this sacrifice, then he's got to give me this whatever I'm looking for. He can't be manipulated in that way, too. So there's a lot in these other systems, as it is today, too, that appeals to kind of our base, more base desires. And God doesn't promise that or doesn't give that to the people of Israel. So they're always, their flesh is always leaning toward looking for these other gods and goddesses, looking at their other options, and then using the one true God as kind of your 911 backup call if they need them. Yeah, I mean, these gods weren't really, like, interested in, like, holiness or anything.

So, like, Israel's, like, is feeling ripped off. Like, they don't have a god who, like, really enjoys, like, drunken orgies. It's not, like, really his thing. And so, but these other nations, they've got gods that are like, hey, I love a wild party. Like, I love that. In fact, that's, and you're like, man, that seems, like, way better than just, like, I got to bring in these, like, freaking animals. and then they got to get slaughtered and like this like man we're getting ripped off on the god thing here yeah yeah this was i mean this was true certainly for ancient israel it was true for

the early church too you know why does paul talk about you know don't be indulging in orgies and don't they do all these things that the pagans do well because that's what they did i mean with in the greco-roman world you had you had your gods but it wasn't like they were super ethical deities right yeah they just wanted their they wanted their sacrifice they wanted that whatever you want to give to them see them in the worship and then they're not going to like govern the intricacies of your daily life and say oh no you can't you can't be involved in that kind of sexual act or you can't do this you can't do that they didn't care they did i mean look at their mythologies the gods were doing that i mean how many times did did zeus cheat on hera

I mean, he's having flings all over the place with other female deities as well as with human women. So, yeah, I mean, for all these reasons, Israel and then, of course, early church too, they were extremely different from their culture, both just ethically as well as theologically and in the worship also. Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, what it is is that – and some people might say that the difference is that these gods didn't care about holiness and Yahweh does and they aren't holy and he is. And that's true. Or that Yahweh cares about righteousness and these gods don't. But I think at the end of the day, too, is that I don't think you—Israel has a God whose primary attribute is love, and love at its core is, like, all about sacrifice. And so if this God, to whatever degree, wants you to emulate him, he's going to want you to, like, live a life of sacrifice for other people. And this is just not at all what any of the other gods were about.

So I would actually say that, I mean, that's like the main difference is that this was—they didn't have a God who they thought loved them and created them, you know, in His image and therefore would require things from them for their own good. It wasn't like that at all. These gods were all like self-interested and all this kind of stuff. So there is a big difference between a God who's at his – in his very essence is the desires to give, be out of divine love. This is just not like any other God. Yeah, for sure. And it's weird that you can't see that as like you won the God lottery here. Like that's so much better.

But it's not carnal. so you feel like you're getting ripped off yeah yeah none of those gods would promise to come and die for you no they don't even love you they certainly aren't going to die because they love you so much they're willing to to save you in that way yeah and i think that one of the things that you can listen i'm not saying that that you don't have biblical backing for talking about god's glory and that sort of thing even like the header of this like israel refined for God's glory. If you make God overly obsessed with His own glory, though, you do start to make Him more like some of these other gods than He is. I think you can go too far

with that, where the motivating factor behind everything God does is to glorify Himself. if you remove the love of god which you don't deserve and like and that you've done nothing to earn if you remove that from the equation now you have just sort of fashioned him in the image of all these other gods who are really just all about their own glory as well yeah i saw a tweet this week uh from someone that said this is not word for word i'm not quoting it but basically it said that christ did not die for you primarily because he loved you but for his own glory something like that yeah my response to that would be um well what is the what is the glory of god what does the glory of god look like we'll go to the gospel of john where is the glory

of god made manifest in the gospel of john in the crucified christ and why was christ crucified well the most famous bible verse tells you that right yeah so love the world that he gave Yeah. So his glory is made manifest in his self-giving out of love for you. So this whole tension between did God do it for his glory, for his love? Well, I would say that's a non-existent tension because his glory is made manifest in his outpouring of love for you. Listen, John 3.16 is very helpful It's the most well-known verse in the Bible for a reason And it tells you that the motivating force Behind the incarnation and the crucifixion of Christ Is the love of God

It's not hiding the ball there It's unambiguous For God so loved the world That he loved the world in this kind of way that he gave okay so like what is it what is it that made god a compelled god to give his son it was it was the love of god now it's right there in black and white yeah what this results in then is you saying what a glorious god yeah yes that's what that's how it works yeah all right so uh i guess we've got to keep moving here yeah we're not gonna meet your goal yeah i know we're my my lofty goal might

not happen all right three three through five says this the former things is still god talking the former things i declared of old they went out from my mouth and i announced them then suddenly i did them and they came to pass because i know this is god just being just brutally honest Because I know that you are obstinate, and your neck is an iron sinew, and your forehead brass. I declare them to you. How about that for a good insult? I declare them to you from of old. Before they came to pass, I announce them to you, lest you should say.

So this is why God told you about these things beforehand. Lest you should say, my idol did them. my carved image and my metal image commanded them. So God's like, listen, I know what you're like. I've been around you a long time. I've looked at that forehead of brass and I've done a CT scan of that neck of yours. It's nothing but an iron sinew. It's just such a graphic image. I know what you're like, right? And because of that, I told you all this stuff way, way before it happened so that you would know that it wasn't your idol that did these things it wasn't your carved image your metal image that commanded them it was me and me alone so god's telling them and

if you want to take this about just kind of general truths that's fine or you want to take it more specifically about his prediction of cyrus that's good too but god is telling them beforehand so they can't go back and uh you know rewrite the narrative as it were and say oh yeah yeah my my idol did this no god announced this beforehand yeah this is the uh long before you commissioned that blacksmith to make that idol i said these words to you yes and we've we've heard of course things like this before this is this is god's uh own way of saying that he is the one true God. Nobody else is doing this. You don't have Baal come up saying, hey, guess what's going to happen in 200 more years? Not only because he doesn't exist, but because he doesn't do those

sorts of things. He can't do those sorts of things, but I can, God says. I declare them from of old, and then I cause them to happen. So verse six, you have heard, now see all this, and will you not declare it? From this time forth, I announce to you new things, hidden things, that you have not known. They are created now, not long ago. Before today, you have never heard of them, lest you should say, before I knew them. You have never heard, you have never known. From of old, your ear has not been opened, for I knew that you would deal treacherously. And that from, okay listen to this phrase that from before birth you were called a rebel if you were wondering about original sin uh the isaiah's got it figured out for you right here

before birth you were rebellious yeah yeah i was thinking that same thing i had that i have those words highlighted uh just because it is it's a perfect corollary to psalm 51 right from uh from my mother's womb i have been this is who this is who i've been all that all that uh womb rebellion that's going on yeah every time i i hear phrases like this i actually think of jacob and esau already fighting in the womb yeah like here you have these two unborn boys who are gonna grow up and fight each other and be at each other and jacob deceiving esau guess where that all started it's when they were already at each other in the womb that's that's when it started yeah these guys are zygotes that hate each other yeah yeah how about how about that uh we'll talk

more about this when we get to it but kind of tuck it in your in the back of your mind that that phrase from before birth is going to be then echoed repeated in the next chapter when we hear about the servant of the lord who find my verse here we hear about the lord called me this is isaiah 49 verse 1 the lord called me from where from the womb there you go and from the body my mother he he named me so it's one of the reasons uh that uh you have this kind of language used because all right you were rebellious and treacherous already in the womb and therefore You didn't need just the Son of God to come down and show up on earth as a three-year-old or whatever. No, he's got to be there from the very moment that we're there.

So he's got to come in conception. He's got to spend 40 weeks in the womb because already at conception and already during the 40 weeks in the womb, we needed saving. And so he's going to have to pass through every stage that we pass through in order that he might save us in our entirety. So anyway, this particular section, 6-8, is kind of rephrasing what God was saying earlier with regard to the iron-sinewed neck and the brass forehead. that I know the way you are, and so I'm going to let you know this, and I'm going to make this happen. You didn't know about it. You're not going to be able to say, I knew this. No, these things that I'm about to unfold before you are my own doing and not your own. Okay, verse 9. God has a lot of reason to be angry, not just in what he's saying here,

But in a lot of the things we've heard about in the previous chapters too With regard to Israel And so what does he do? Well verse 9 tells us For my name's sake I defer my anger For the sake of my praise I restrain it for you That I may not cut you off And then here we have this refining language

That we talked about a minute ago Behold I have refined you but not as silver and i have tried you in the furnace of affliction for my own sake for my own sake i do it for how should my name be profaned my glory i will not give to another so what what's this talking about well basically he's saying that wasn't it wasn't because i looked upon israel and i saw just such righteousness and such holiness that i decided i was going to defer my anger and i was going to restrain it not cut you off uh was quite the opposite god could not look to israel and find in israel a reason for the deferring of his anger and so he does it for his own namesake

for his own praise and because of that he has not destroyed them he has not uh wiped them out and i love this line too here verse 10 i've refined you but not as silver the way i take that is i listen why do you refine silver to remove the dross yeah so what would happen if i tried to refine you as i refined silver well you would vanish because yeah since you're a hundred percent dross yes because that's all you are you're just dross you'd like throwing a piece of wood in there well guess what's going to happen to it it's going to be eaten up it's going to be just turned to ashes i love too that he says that you know he says i've tried you in the furnace of affliction and that you can correct me if i'm wrong but like this uh

this word tried is uh you could translate that like chosen you um which i like better because there's nothing like being chosen in the furnace of affliction so like they said like both of these things can be true at once right where you could be chosen and be in the furnace of affliction in fact the fact that you're in the furnace of affliction is evidence that i have chosen you because otherwise I would have just burned you up like there'd be no affliction it just be over with right but instead I'm going to refine you in this way people don't like to think about maybe election that way but maybe sometimes when you're like really going through it you're like well this is kind of what the election of God is like I remember Stephen Paulson one of the

I think this is the very first year we still stand when he was talking about election and then didn't really talk about election his entire talk which you know he'll do stuff like that and uh and at the very end he brought it all around because he just talked about joseph the whole time and he said you know when joseph was sitting in the bottom of the pit he probably didn't feel very chosen but that's how it is sometimes it's very true when you're in the furnace of affliction you might not feel very chosen but that's how it is sometimes yep that was actually that's actually a great agree 100 with everything that you said and also it's a great example of how sometimes when translators are working with the text if they if they don't understand something

theologically yeah they will look for a linguistic alternative so what's happened here is the the word in hebrew that we have in our in our manuscripts in almost all our manuscripts is chosen right but there is a uh one of the dead sea scrolls which has a slightly different i mean it's only one letter different and it's tried or tested right and so that's why like in the esv they put tried you in the furnace of affliction instead of chosen you the furnace of affliction even though the majority of the textual evidence points to chosen i think what's happened here is the transit is like no we don't it doesn't really seem to make sense to be chosen in the furnace of affliction that's what's going to trust you in this you're like no dude no no no it's actually

much more theologically accurate and textually based to translate this as chosen because that's the way it works uh but yeah i just it's a great example of how theology and uh textual choices in translation kind of come together there so yeah i mean esv does have a footnote which is which is good yeah i mean i i i think that like what if you might be like oh man it does sound like god's doing this all for his glory well um again uh like yeah there is no there is he has to do it for himself because if he's doing it because of um if he if god's looking for something some good reason to do this well he's the only good reason there is dude you are are not a good reason to do this uh there's no good in you okay uh so when he says that for my own sake i do it

uh for how should my name be profaned my glory i will not give to another what he's doing is saying one i've made promises and so my name will be profaned if i show myself to be a liar even though you are a bunch of my name profaners right so god is like god has placed himself in this predicament where it's like i have made promises uh and so if i break those promises if i don't keep those promises uh then i'm a liar uh and uh then my name will be profaned so i guess i'm gonna to have to deliver save refine these people who do nothing all day but profane my name that's how this is going to go and so i'm going to do this for the sake of not being called a liar and then he says my glory i will not give to another this is at the end of the day what you're

doing is one he's saying like listen i'm definitely not going to let you attribute this to some wood god that you carved like i'm not sharing my glory with that carved image over there But what is the glory? The glory is his salvation. He does refuse to let you believe either of these things, that some other God has saved you or that you have saved yourself. He's not going to do that. And so—and the reason ultimately he's not going to do this, of course, is because your ultimate salvation lies in Christ, and he is not going to let anything or anyone rob his son of the work, the complete, total, and finished work of salvation. Like, the glory of God is salvation for the sake of Christ, and you don't get to bring anything to that. Certainly not another God, but you don't get to bring anything else either. You don't get to bring any of your good works. You don't get to bring any of your rituals.

You don't get to bring any good things, even things that maybe are good. You can't bring any of that. Like, he will not share the glory or the credit for his work, the work of his son, with anything else or anyone else. Yeah. That's why we talk about Christ alone, right? Yeah. Not Christ plus whatever, whatever it might be. Yeah. Amen. Yeah. And he does this, of course, as we said, like the motivating factor behind all this is that, you know, he loves you, right? I mean, this is the sort of going back to why you've got the better God, too, is that these other gods don't care if people call them liars and that sort of thing either.

They're not promise-keeping gods. They're not bound themselves by their word. They're not like that. This is a God who now is saying, dude, all these other gods aren't gods, but I am the only God, and it's the best kind of God you could have. When he makes a promise, he delivers on it, no matter what you do. Yeah. In fact, most of the other gods are so busy quarreling and fighting or sleeping with each other that they don't pay much attention to what humanity is doing. That's why humanity has to try and do things to get their attention.

Okay, so 12 and 13, God continues to talk. He says, listen to me, O Jacob and Israel, whom I called. I am he. I'm the first and I'm the last. My hand laid the foundation of the earth and my right hand spread out the heavens. When I call to them, they stand forth together. So we had two occurrences of the Hebrew verb kara, which means to call. So Israel and Jacob are called by the God who's the first and the last.

And then God says, basically, I made the heavens and the earth. And when I call to them, they stand forth together. Now, the pairing of those two words is important because God is basically saying, I'm the one who made the heavens and the earth. They stand this day because I make them stand. I'm the one who called them, and they exist because of me. Now, as sure and certain as is my creative work, so also is sure and certain my redeeming and my calling of you, that kind of work as well. And since we've been talking about other views of gods and whatnot, I'll just throw this in there too.

This is something I don't think a lot of people pause to think about when they think of God creating the heavens and the earth. But in most theological systems of the ancient world, all the way into the first century, the creator gods are typically not the ones you hear about anymore. What you're hearing about are the second, third, or even fourth generation gods who didn't make the heavens and the earth. They're the ones who killed off the creators or they killed off the killers of the creator gods. So they're like second, third generation gods. So you have the first God, and then you have his children, and then his grandchildren, or whatever it might be. And so the gods that you hear about, like Baal and Asherah, or Marduk in Babylon, or even Zeus, as far as the Greek pantheon goes, these are not like the creator gods. They're two or three generations removed from the creator gods.

They're just the ones in charge now. And that's another thing that sets apart the one true God. he not only is the one true god the only god the the chief but he's also the one who made everything so he's never been displaced of course there's no one to displace him and his creative power and the fact that he's unchallenged and unchallengeable as a creator also then leads us to to realize and to trust in the fact that he is going to also be the one who is faithful to continue his redeeming work for his people, just like he continues to uphold creation.

Yeah, these other gods aren't eternal in the same way that Yahweh is. Yeah. Yeah, they're made. They come into existence, and they fight, or maybe they kill off their parents, or in some cases they castrate their parents, their father. I mean, there's a lot of horrific things that happens in these other theological systems

that are completely divorced from anything resembling genesis chapter chapter one so continuing in verse 14 i'll do 14 through uh through 16 assemble all of you and listen who among you has declared these things now he's going to focus upon cyrus once more the lord loves him quite a quite a thing to say about about cyrus but that's what he says the lord loves him he talking about cyrus he shall perform his work his purpose in bat on babylon and his arm shall be against the chaldeans i even i have spoken and called him i have brought him and he will prosper in his way so draw near to me and hear this from the beginning i have not spoken in secret from the time it came to be i have been there and then the final line is this and now the

lord god has sent me and his spirit now that last line uh is different than the preceding lines and i think this is one of these cases where the the one who speaks who steps forth is actually the messianic servant because it says now the lord god right that's we're talking about the father has sent me the messianic servant and his spirit now the one associated with the spirit throughout the book of isaiah is the is the messiah the son of david the servant so in the midst of this description of cyrus then the servant steps forward and says oh yes don't forget that god sent me the one who bears his spirit i think the reason that's important in this whole cyrus section is because cyrus can only do so much i mean he can defeat the babylonians he can come against

the Chaldeans. He can let the Israelites go back home and rebuild the temple and all that kind of stuff. But that's not going to fulfill all these promises. That's a partial fulfillment at best. Something more is needed. Something better is needed. And so the servant is going to be there to actually bring this to pass. And then he's going to continue to speak when we get to chapter 49. But at this point, this is God saying once more, everybody come together. I want you to know So here's what I'm going to do next. This one that I have loved and chosen and called Cyrus, he's going to take out the Babylonians, the Chaldeans, and he's going to prosper in his way because this is my will to accomplish the liberation of my people from the Babylonian captivity so they can go home and go back to the land and rebuild my house. yeah yeah it's good it's uh it's good stuff and yeah none of this is a surprise to god right he's like i didn't just like uh come up with that this afternoon right where it's like well let's see how

am i going to do this he's like listen i've been around uh it's been the plan from the beginning um yeah i mean you're again you're i think that too i mean i know we said this but you do have to remember that the the initial readers of this don't know who he's talking about as far as like cyrus you hear cyrus you know exactly what he's talking about like they're they're don't this is all um probably seems fairly outlandish to them that you would have such a figure yeah that's that's a good thing to keep in mind because it's not like i ever read about him in the newspaper he hadn't even been born yet so this is this is prior to the babylonian captivity so you hear hearing about the captivity. They're hearing

about the one who's going to end the captivity. They're even given his name. And so, yeah, when they're hearing this from Isaiah, it all seems as you say, pretty outlandish. But that's the whole point. God is telling them, listen, I'm telling you all this before. Yeah. So that when it does come to pass, you'll be

able to say, listen, Isaiah talked about this way back. And now God is actually bringing it to its fulfillment. Awesome. We're out of time. I didn't finish the chapter. We didn't finish the chapter, but... We didn't get...

I had too much to say this episode, I guess. Oh, it's fine. We're almost there. We'll do the next five verses next episode. We'll get there. There you go. Well, you have to come back. You know Chad's got something good.

He had a goal. He didn't reach it. So all the more reason to tune in next episode. I'll see you then, Chad. See you then.