40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Isaiah 52:3-15 (Episode 494)

Episode Date: January 20, 2026

God was never paid for His people, so they still belong to Him. The good news must be preached and published. And Isaiah is no theologian of glory; the cross must be proclaimed. 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: 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 everything else that 1517 is doing over there. All the articles and the academies, the events, the Bible in one year. Even if you're like a month behind by the time this releases, I mean, they're less than 10% of the way through it. So jump on board. You still got time.

Don't let the devil tell you that you can't read the Bible this year with Chad Burke because you waited too long. It's just not true. You can do it. chad we are in uh isaiah 52 we got through the the first two verses which is uh you know god's just setting the alarm clock it's going off he's telling him hey it's time to wake up because i got some salvation coming your way so you need you to wake up you need to put on your strength got to get those beautiful garments on and uh and you gotta shake yourself off man get the dust off and arise, because they've got to loosen some bonds around your neck. And all of this is in

service to what he's about to say, which is, I'm coming. Yeah, all this is leading into Isaiah 53, which really begins at the end of Isaiah 52, that servant song. But yeah, you've got to kind of bear that in mind as we're working our way through these next few verses, because this is going to be high point of Isaiah. Of course, everybody knows Isaiah 53 is a hugely important chapter. But it's also important to keep in mind what leads up to it, because as we're going to hear in just a minute, the whole context that leads up to Isaiah 53 is about this coming exodus. And so that's going to color our understanding of what Isaiah 53 is all about as well, this redemptive exodus that happens in the suffering of the servant as he bears our sins

and iniquities. So yeah, we're in 52.3. We're going to hear about the redemption of God's people. They were sold. They're going to be redeemed. They spent some time in Egypt. They spent some time in Assyria. And now God's got something even better planned for them. So let me read Isaiah 52, three through six. Thus says the Lord, you were sold for nothing and you shall be redeemed without money. For thus says the Lord God, my people went down at the first into Egypt to sojourn there and the Assyrian oppressed them for nothing. Now, therefore, what have I here declares the Lord, seeing that my people are taken away for nothing. The rulers wail declares the Lord. And continually all the day, my name is despised. Therefore, my people shall know my name.

Therefore, in that day, they shall know that it is I who speak. Here I am. So God is basically saying, hey, you spent some time in exile. Everybody knows about the people at the first going down into Egypt to sojourn there. That's actually, I just was looking at that recently. The book I'm writing now is about Joseph and Jacob and how when they first went down there, they went down there to sojourn, almost like, yeah, we're just going to be here for a little bit. You know, we're going to camp out here in Egypt for a while till the famine's over. Of course, that did not end up into a temporary stay. They were there for hundreds of years, but they first went down there to sojourn. So we have the Egyptian bondage, and then we also have, like in the same breath, the Assyrian exile as well.

So these two are, they're not conflated, but they're put together to make us realize, hey, this exile of God's people has been happening a lot. Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, all these things. So he starts out by saying you were sold for nothing. You shall be redeemed without money. I think what's going on there is, so we do have multiple times in like the book of Judges and other places where because of the rebellion of God's people, he quote unquote sells them. Basically, he's given them over into the hands of foreign powers as a way of bringing them to their senses. But it's not as if there's some kind of exchange. That's why he says you should be redeemed without money.

So it's not like God says, you know, I sold you for all this gold. And now, you know, I got to buy you back with all this gold. No, that's not the way it works. You were sold for nothing in the sense of I didn't get anything out of this. And also, you're going to be redeemed without money. So I sold you. I'm going to redeem you. I'm taking care of all of this.

And then he goes on to the Egypt and the Assyrian examples. And then he shifts in verse five to saying, what am I looking at? What do I have here? seeing that my people are taken away for nothing. So now he's got this bigger exile in view, the Babylonian exile. And he says, the rulers wail, his name is despised, but he's going to do something that causes his people to know his name. And in that day, they shall know that it is I who speak, here I am. This is his way of announcing, I've got something coming. It's something big. In fact, it's something that is bigger than I, way bigger than what I did with

Egypt, way bigger than what I did with Assyria or Babylon. And that, of course, is what he's going to get to when he begins to introduce the servant language toward the end of chapter 52. Yeah. Someone might read this and think that just the way we use the word nothing. But yeah, they were taken away and they didn't even do anything wrong. They were taken away for nothing. They've been out all this oppression for no reason. that's not what it's saying it's not that you didn't do anything to be taken away

I mean you did plenty it's that God views these people as his possession that he owns them they belong to him and therefore which some people

have a problem with this they don't like the idea of being owned by God but turns out being And possessed by God, belonging to God is the only way to actually be free. This is the great, you know, irony of the whole thing. But what he's saying is that it's not like the Egyptians or the Babylonians or the Assyrians bought you from me. That's not – you were taken away for nothing. They just took you away because I removed my hand and let it happen, right?

But I didn't get anything out of it. I wasn't paid off. I didn't sell what belongs to me. And this is why you see God get all ticked off when he takes his hand off and then some people come and oppress his people. Well, those are still his people. They still belong to him. So now you have these other people oppressing people that belong to him, right? And this is how God looks at Israel, that they still belong to me, whether or not I'm allowing something to happen or not.

I've never thought as the Egyptians might think or the Babylonians might think that you belong to them. But I don't recall ever making some kind of deal and getting paid off for this. As far as I'm concerned, that still belongs to me. Yeah, there was no transaction that took place. In fact, God will even say in Ezekiel that he goes into exile with them, which is another great irony. God says, all right, I'm going to hand you over. You're going to go into Babylon because you rebelled against me. And guess what?

I'm going to go with you. I'm going to be for you a little sanctuary while you're there in Babylon. And then when the time's right, I'll bring you back. And, of course, this is why he's saying also, and when I deliver you, that's not going to be with money either. Yes. Right. Yeah, I'm not going to pay the Babylonians or the Assyrians or the Egyptians to get you out of there because I never sold you for anything. So sold for nothing and redeemed without money.

Yeah, this is the salvation of the Lord is God. And of course, we're talking about ultimate salvation here. But it is him just like taking back that which belongs to him. Yeah, yeah. There never was a time when he handed his people over and said, all right, now you belong to the Egyptians, or now you belong to the Babylonians. Yeah, they remain his. He is his treasured possession, as they're called in Exodus. Yeah. All right, so, man, that sounds like it's pretty good news, right? Sounds like there's a coming victory, a coming salvation. God's going to take his people back. So what do you do with good news in the Bible? What do you do with good news still today?

Well, you make sure it gets out there, right? You got to preach it. This would be a good thing to put in the mouth of a preacher, it seems like. Yeah, it sure would be. So that's what leads us into verse 7. How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, your God reigns. Man, that's a loaded verse. There's a lot of great stuff there.

If that seems familiar to you, well, it's actually found in three different places. This kind of language is found in three different places. So Isaiah, of course, which is where we're at, Nahum also uses this language. In chapter one, he says, behold, upon the mountains, the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace. So that's about 100 years later. So Isaiah is then quoted by Nahum. But then also when you get to Paul's letter to the Romans, right, this is where we have this great section. And how should they call them in whom they have not believed?

And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher? And then he says in verse 15, and how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, how beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who preaches this good news. So we got this good news is going to be announced. It's announced by these beautiful feet. We're bringing the good news. The Hebrew that's used there for good news, the Greek equivalent use euangelion from which we get our word like evangelism. The Hebrew is to bring good news is

to basar, which is most of the time used in connection with a military victory of some sort. So, you know, you get two armies out in the field, one's victorious, they send messengers back to basar, to announce this good news of victory. And of course, this applies here also, because what is our salvation? Well, it's God's victory for us, right? So this is a victory that he accomplishes, and he wants to make sure that his people hear about it. And that's why you have this announcement of good news. That's why Isaiah is preaching good news. That's why the good news, when it's proclaimed today, is still this announcement of the victory that we have we have in christ and the the quote at the very end of verse seven is this one who says to

zion your god reigns and i was just thinking that that's a pretty good summary of all of the the announcement of the kingdom that jesus does in the gospels you know the kingdom of god has arrived is basically another way of saying guess what folks your god reigns and i am that god i'm the one who reigns over you, because it's my kingdom. And that's what he comes to, not just to announce, but of course, to establish by his suffering and resurrection is this kingdom of God that in which God reigns over his people for which he was victorious. Yeah. And this reign is like a current thing too, right? Not like your God is going to reign, like maybe like, hey, things aren't going well, but he's going to win and then he's going to reign.

But rather, like, your God reigns because he always has. He never stops. Right. Yeah, so when we pray in the Lord's Prayer, your kingdom come, we're praying for basically the reality of the kingdom, which already exists, to continue to come to us and the benefits of that kingdom, the fact that God reigns over us in Jesus Christ. So this is the publishing, the preaching of the good news. God's reigning, God's kingdom has been established by the actions of the Messiah. Now, as you're reading through Isaiah, he's kind of teasing us all through these chapters. He's got like 52 chapters of teasing us.

It's exactly, how is this kingdom going to be established? And what's the salvation going to look like? I mean, how's it actually going to finally be won for us? So he's been leading us all the way to what he's about to announce at the end of 52 and then 53. So verse 8, I'm going to read 8 through 10 now. The voice of your watchman, they lift up their voice. Together they sing for joy. For eye to eye, they see the return of the Lord to Zion.

These watchmen, they see, they're going to cry out because they see God coming. He's returning to Zion. break forth into singing you waste places of jerusalem for the lord has comforted his people he has redeemed jerusalem verse 10 says that he's uh bared his holy arm i love the image here of like uh god rolling up his sleeves yeah it's like i'm gonna roll up those sleeves i'm gonna bear my holy arm not just in front of zion but he says before he's bared his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God. Now that kind of language clues you in that this isn't simply God rolling up his sleeves

and going to Babylon and setting his people free by establishing Cyrus the Persian as king. This is a universal kind of redemption. It's a worldwide salvation. It's going to happen in front of all the nations of the world. All the ends of the earth are going to see the salvation of our God. So this isn't some sort of localized divine return from Babylon. This is a worldwide redemption that God is about to accomplish in which he redeems Jerusalem. Make sure everybody sees the salvation that is coming with the result that God himself is going to come to Zion and is going to bring his people with him. Yeah, that reminds me of God rolling up his sleeves reminds me of uh a song that everyone knows but but also like most people don't know which is uh and

probably you're like oh i don't know that's not my favorite song uh but because it's kind of like cringy now but anyone and uh maybe not everyone i don't know how how many young people in our audience but if you're chad and i's age you know you know the song awesome god like you know that song that was a song that you would know right it's playing in my head right now even when you mentioned the you mentioned the title all of a sudden in my head i can i can feel the beat and yes yes but that song wasn't written as like a like a worship song that's not what that that's not what that was that what would the thing you sing in church if or used to sing in church maybe some people still do that's just the chorus of a song that was not written as a worship song and

The first line of the actual song, Awesome God, which when I say it, you'll realize why it's not, why you didn't sing it in church. The first line of the actual song, Awesome God, by Rich Mullins, is when he rolls up his sleeves, he ain't just putting on the ritz. Our God is an awesome God. That's what it is. Yeah, that's great. I'd forgotten that opening line. But yeah, now that you say it, I hear that also. Yeah.

Yeah, there's thunder in his footsteps and lightning in his fists, right? Our God is an awesome God. That's how that goes. And this is all, you know, Old Testament kind of imagery here that he's pulling from. And you could sing that in church. I mean, that's their title. I mean, God, and what it's saying is when God rolls up his sleeves, he's about to go to work. And the work he's about to go engage in is the work of salvation.

It's like it is this awesome work. This is what it is. Yeah, yeah. That's a great song to tie into this, which I hadn't thought about before. But yeah, that's it. He's rolling up his sleeves. He's going to work. And his work is going to be seen by everybody.

All the ends of the earth are going to see this saving work. And that's why, I mean, it's got to be announced worldwide too, right? You're not just saying to a particular group of people in the earthly Jerusalem, hey, guys, guess what? Your God reigns. No, this has got to be announced to everybody because what Christ has accomplished is a worldwide redemption. Yeah, well, that's why you might be like, hey, does this say you've got to publish this? Is there no publishing going on at the time of Isaiah? What are you talking about?

Well, all that means is like there's two things that God is saying you got to do with this news, with this gospel, with this work of salvation. You need to speak it and you need to write it down. That's all you mean by publish it. So you're like, hey, someone grab a pen, someone get a bullhorn. This is how we're going to do it. We're going to speak it, we're going to preach it, and we're going to document it. We're going to write it down. Yeah.

Yeah, I just look at the Hebrew there. And it's a, so we all know the word, the verb Shema, which means to hear, right? Well, in Hebrew, there's what's called a hyphil, which is a causative form. So usually when it's attached to a verb, when a verb appears in the hyphil, it just means to cause that to happen. So who causes to be heard peace, who causes to be heard salvation. Yeah, to publish it, to preach it, to make sure that people hear it. That's what this is. That's what this is all about.

So, yeah, this isn't biblical justification for publishing houses. No. Which are great, too. Which are great, too. But, you know, the fact that we're reading this right now means that someone took that seriously and said, well, I mean, I don't know. Maybe I need to write this down for future generations. It seems like everybody, maybe even those not born yet, need to know about this. Yeah.

As authors, right? We like this idea of publishing salvation. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so we're almost toward the beginning of the final servant song, but we have a couple more verses here. This is 11 and 12. And this is about getting out of exile and, you know, making sure that when you do get out of exile, that you don't go back, basically. So, depart, depart, go out from there, touch no unclean thing, go out from the midst of her, purify yourselves, you who bear the vessels of the Lord, for you shall not go out in haste. I want to come back to that phrase, it's kind of important in Hebrew. You shall not go out in haste, and you shall not go in flight, for the Lord will go before

you and the God of Israel will be your rear guard. So, uh, get to the Hebrew right away. The word that's used here in haste is hippozone. And the reason I think it's, it's kind of cool is that when you go, uh, when you go back to, I can't remember if it's Exodus, uh, 12 or 13. I've got it here. Exodus 12, 11. This is the context of the original Exodus. Like when they're departing from Egypt, right? They're getting out of there. Well, how do they get out of there? Well, remember this is the, you had the nine plagues, you got the 10th plague connected with Passover, the killing of the firstborn. Pharaoh says, get out. And the Israelites don't say, okay, but give us some time. I mean, we need to get everything ready. We're going to do this in kind of an orderly fashion.

We got to make sure our bread is leavened. We got to pack up. No, Exodus 12, 11 says, in this manner, you shall eat it. Talking about the Passover with your belt fastened, with your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand, and you shall eat it in chippazon, in haste. So that's the same Hebrew word that occurs in Isaiah 52, verse 12. I think the reason that is significant is because this is his little way of saying, hey this isn't going to be like the first exodus because in the first exodus i mean you really did

need to get out of there because this was not a safe place right and pharaoh could change his mind at any minute which of course we realize he did so you gotta hurry up because you're still in danger and he says here you shall not go out in haste and you shall not go out in flight why because the enemy has been completely destroyed, completely conquered. So this is a much superior departure that's coming up because it's a much superior redemption, Passover, that's been accomplished.

Yeah, it's the difference between, when I read this, I read this as, hey, we're leaving, but we're not running away. Yes, that's perfect. that's the and there is a difference yes yeah and that sums it up yeah i mean the first text is they they had to get out of they had to run away yeah there's no running you're literally i'm sure pharaoh viewed them as runaways right i mean like like you are literally like leaving your uh your earthly master and uh yeah and he's gonna say i mean i mean literally what is the cry of moses over and

over he's saying i need you to let these people go right right so uh it's none of that it's not it's not hey uh get all your stuff together and then we're gonna try to sneak out of here because we're trying to escape it's it's it's much more um salvation has been one we're we're we're leaving this place but don't get that confused but that we are somehow like in jeopardy or anything like that we're not we're not running away we're just leaving yeah yeah so i was thinking too you know this is quoted by Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians, chapter 6. So he uses this to talk about the, do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. And for what partnership has righteousness with the lawlessness or light with darkness or Christ with Belial? And then he goes

on to quote this. Well, he quotes something else first, but then he says, therefore, go out from their midst and be separate from them and touch no unclean unclean thing so the way that paul uses this i think is instructive for us because he uh he's not denying in fact he's affirming that this is about the work of christ right he's accomplished his exodus and because he's brought you out then why would you go back into the spiritual captivity of egypt right why would you why would you go back there because light has no fellowship of darkness christ has no fellowship with with baliel there's been a separation it's been an exodus so don't be like the israelites who are saying hey let's just go back to egypt because we're tired of the desert and the manna

and all these these kinds of things which also is instructed because this is that verse about unequally yoked with unbelievers is often used out of context to forbid marriages between believers and unbelievers. I mean, when I hear that verse quoted, it's almost always applied to that. And Paul isn't talking about marriage here at all. He's talking about the fact that believers have nothing to do with the works of the devil and with the darkness of Egypt and with captivity to sin. This is talking about something different than that. It's much more about being yoked to different gods right yeah which is the whole context of the corinthian church right yeah yeah yeah like that's yeah you get like look i'm not saying you should go out like yeah i'm not saying go marry some

unbelievers uh there's i don't think there's wisdom in that uh but uh in paul's day there were no unbelievers like as far as like they were like you know everybody believed in some god all these atheists running around you know so you weren't just like marrying and not you know and i would even say now that like you know maybe maybe the atheist is a myth but uh everyone kind of believes in something there may be their own god or whatever but they you're talking about a time where there's a legitimate you had a god uh and so there was no way to marry a non-christian and not be also like hitching up with this person who also has a god that's different than yours yeah because you got i mean you got temples on every street corner basically so everybody

all the the all the people that the christians lived around were unless they were jews they were all polytheists right and religion was was it like a separate category for religion in the first century world it's like yeah i'm gonna do my little secular thing over here but i'm also religious on the side it's like everything was religious everything even even the emperor cult was was there so even your politics were were deeply entrenched in in religion so yeah to marry an unbeliever was to to put yourself into a whole web of religious connections which would have led to all kinds of all kinds of issues but in that context where paul quotes that in second corinthians yeah his main concern is is for the church there hey don't don't be putting yourself

into these idolatrous situations because you've been pulled out of there by god yeah and just one more thing that the way verse 12 closes is is a beautiful beautiful description of how god is going before us and he's also our rear guard yeah he's like he's leading but he's also protecting us from the rear i mean the rear so the rear of a group of people is often where the enemy would attack. You know, it's where the women and children were, the elderly were. And so if you really wanted to do a dirty deed to a group of people that were traveling, you attacked them from the rear. And God says, well, that's not gonna be an issue because I'm your rear guard too. I got you in the front. I got you in the back as well. Yeah. That's the, uh, hey man, he's the first and

the last, right? Uh, he's in the front and in the back. So that's how, that's how it works with this guy like oh you don't i know you don't want to be the first one you don't want to be out in front you don't know what's up there so i'll be up there but you don't want to be the last one either like you know in case someone comes up you don't want to be the get shot in the back i'll be back there too and uh yeah it's pretty good reminds me of the famous uh breastplate of saint patrick which is long but part of it is uh christ before me christ behind me christ to my left, Christ to my right, Christ above me, Christ below me. So it's this idea of surrounded by Christ and therefore, of course, protected by him and safe because of his presence all around us.

Yeah. All right. Well, here we are. We've only got 10 minutes left, but we can work our way through part of this climactic servant song, which is ESV heading has, he was pierced for our transgressions, which is a pretty good way to summarize this. Again, this is one of these sections where the folks who added the chapter divisions kind of mess things up because chapter 53 really should begin at 52, 13, but here we are. We're stuck with our chapter and verse divisions. Let me read 13 through 15. Behold, my servant shall act wisely. He shall be high and lifted up. and shall be exalted. As many were astonished at you, his appearance was so marred beyond human semblance and his form beyond that of the children of mankind. So shall he sprinkle many

nations. Kings shall shut their mouths because of him. For that which has not been told them, they see, and that which they have not heard, they understand. So he starts out here in verse 13 with kind of working his way backward in a sense, because we're going to hear about how the servant was low, was suffering, was bearing the sins. But he starts out by talking about how this wise servant is going to be high and lifted up and exalted. So in a sense, he's telling you where this story is going to end before he actually gets to the rest of the story itself. So high and lifted up and exalted. I mean, when you know what happens to the servant, and you hear that he's also high and lifted up and exalted,

then you know that this is going to be like his resurrection, his ascension, his enthronement at the right hand, which is one way you could take those three verbs. So he's letting you know before the suffering begins that it's not going to end simply in suffering. It's going to be in this with the servant being high and lifted up and exalted. But then he shifts already in verse 14 to telling us what's going to happen to him.

many. In Hebrew, the word for many is kind of a key motif throughout the servant song. So many are astonished. We're going to hear at the very end how he bore the sin of many, and he is going to divide him a portion with the many. So this word is going to occur several times in the song, but he begins by saying that there's a lot of astonishment. Why? Well, because he's just, his appearance was marred like so bad. He was kind of beyond human semblance and his form was all messed up beyond that of the children of mankind. Now we don't know why yet because he hasn't got to that, but the servant is going to be afflicted greatly if he's marred beyond human semblance and his form beyond the children of mankind. So we're going to, he's going

to he's going to expand on that as he as he goes along but and he's opening two verses 13 to 14 he's already kind of told you the two themes you got him being high and lifted up but you also having him being marred and his four he's deformed beyond that of the children of mankind so he's telling you kind of the end in the beginning uh at the at the start the humiliation and the exaltation of christ are so knit together um that you it's almost impossible to talk about one without referencing the other right and this is this is what where isaiah finds himself because even even when you say that that um hey my servant like he's gonna you know uh he's gonna be high and lifted up and he's going to be exalted yeah like you could you could be like yeah okay so

you have like the you know that sounds like easter morning uh that sounds like uh you know defeating death and that sounds like uh later on ascending to the right hand of the father and it certainly is that um but also him being high and lifted up sounds like the crucifixion uh and And even the God being exalted, while the crucifixion is certainly part of the humiliation of Christ, this is his victory over sin. This is where, like, this is him engaged in battle. uh and um and you know paul will speak explicitly about like the cross being the the glory of god right the cross is the thing that what do you that we stick all over our churches like the cross is the thing that we revel in and uh because this is the instrument by which sin death and hell

we're all defeated uh and so yeah you don't you just can't have one without the other so like is is he high and lifted up because he's on the cross or is he high and lifted up because he's ascending into heaven? Well, the answer is yes. This is, this is what is, and what this looks like is going to astonish you because he's going to be beat to a pulp. He's going to be naked. He's going to hardly look like a person. And this is where God is going to accomplish all of this salvation that he

just spoke of like this like god having a long arm of salvation that doesn't look like what you think it looks like you know uh that's that's not what you were expecting you were you weren't god you weren't expecting god to say hey i've rolled up my sleeve now my long long sleeve this is a forever long sleeve man because i got these long arms i got this long sleeve that i gotta roll up and i'm gonna do this work and then this work is him beaten to a pulp on a cross lifted up above the people uh yeah that's what it is yeah yeah that's that's perfect which is you know you what you said is what i was trying to get at at the beginning of the episode too that all this worldwide exodus redemption that we've been talking about leads into what we just read and

therefore when we're hearing about him being high and lifted up and his appearance is marred well that's how this redemption and exodus is going to be accomplished by the suffering of this servant i was thinking too when you were talking how in two verses isaiah has summed up everything right he's coming down his suffering is going back up again just like paul in just two verses when he was writing to the philippians said the same thing right although being in in the form of god he He came down and suffered even to the point of death, death on the cross, and God highly exalted him. So what Isaiah did, Paul did as well. They're pulling it all together in just a few words.

Yeah, and you have to bring up the cross here. What it turns out, Chad, is that Isaiah wants to talk about salvation. And he wants to talk about, you know, the worker of this salvation being high and lifted up. He wants to talk about him being exalted, but he's not a theologian of glory, so he can't do it, like divorce from the cross. Yeah. That would be a real theologian of glory move just to talk about, like, the victory, but not the war, right? And that's not what Isaiah does. uh you you have to you have to then say like well how was it won yeah it's that uh blood

sprinkled victory right that's that's how you get the that's how you get this glory it's a glory that is always a glory of the cross glory of the suffering of christ yeah and this sprinkle uh he shall sprinkle uh many nations well this all sounds like he did something on his own this it sounds like he sounds like one guy doing all this stuff i mean doesn't talk about like the whole nation being up there this sounds like uh god is on the cross and uh so what does that do for me and how do i get it you know and and the answer is that oh it's not just you um this work is going to be sprinkled all over the earth right i'm going to baptize the whole world in this Yeah, it's a priestly verb too. This is the same verb that we have occurring 22 different times throughout the Old Testament. And it's the sprinkling of people or things. It's connected with atonement.

so this is the the priestly work of this suffering servant too so he's gonna he's gonna take his benefits everything he's won for us by this suffering which is being described and he's going to just sprinkle it over the uh over the entire world and i mean he does that through the preaching of the word he certainly does that through baptism uh and he's like you said he's the one who does this that's one of the the real strange things to me those who take isaiah 53 and try to force it into some sort of group deed as if this is israel or a remnant with israel who's who's doing this we've already seen where israel can't do anything for israel it has to be god who does this for israel and we've also seen other servant songs how the servant is distinct from

the rest of the people. He's the only one who's going to be able to accomplish what needs to be accomplished to save them. So here, he's singled out as the only one who can do this. And the result, of course, is you got people, you got kings, you got others, of course, who are going to be astonished by what happens. Kings in Isaiah comes up on a pretty regular basis where it's in reference, especially to foreign kings. So back in chapter 49, for instance, it says that the king shall see and arise and princes shall prostrate themselves because of the Lord who is faithful. So it's this idea of kings, rulers, Gentiles, nations shutting their mouths because of everything that they're about to see and to understand. Finish 52, kind of got into this

servant song but we'll uh we'll spend a lot of time over that when we come back next time yeah well that's like that that's a good lead-in i mean that's where 53 probably should have started but we'll start next episode where they decided it will start which is hey man this is going to be an unbelievable thing who's going to believe this like no this is going to go around preaching this thing god's going to also have to gender up some faith somewhere because this thing isn't something that anybody's going to naturally want to believe in yeah so we'll get we'll get into that all right man well i'll see you next episode all right see you then Thank you.