40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Isaiah 54:1-17 (Episode 496)

Episode Date: February 3, 2026

God has good news for a barren people. A covenant better than the one made to Noah is coming. And all the children will be taught by the Lord. 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 while you're over there, make sure you check out everything else that 1517 is doing. A lot of articles, a lot of academies, a lot of other podcasts. Hey, there's events, and those events still have tickets available. At least the time that we're recording this, they do.

So you can come hang out with Chad and myself over there in Bentonville, Arkansas, which is where I am right now, actually. And you should come here too. Hang out. We're going to be talking about being baptized into Christ at the regional event. I mean, come on. I mean, a whole two days just talking about baptism. I mean, it's going to be good.

So Chad will be there. I'll be there. Hey, Flame will be there. I mean, you want to come see Flame, don't you? Scott Keith, Caleb Keith, Kelsey Clevara. It's going to be a good time. Come hang out with us. Also, sign up for the national event.

You can still get tickets for that. That is going to have a whole host of people. Of course, Chad and I will be there, along with some usual suspects, including a new guy, Wes Huff, coming out. I've heard of him. Yeah. Wes Huff's going to come talk to us at the national event. So grab those tickets. Come hang out with us. We'd love to see you there. Chad, we are in Isaiah 54. Just got done with Isaiah 53. We got the vivid picture of what salvation looks like. And by looks like, I mean like what it's going to look like, like if you were there and laid your eyes on it. And it's not the most pleasant sight, but it is the victory of God for your salvation.

And Isaiah describes it. And at the end of Isaiah 53, he does this great thing where he says, this guy that did all these things for your salvation, this person, this God, is now interceding for you. He's now praying for you. And that moves us into 54. I like the header here. I like the eternal covenant of peace. I like that. And that eternal covenant of peace, which he's going to talk about, he's also going to say, that's a good reason to, I don't know, maybe sing, rejoice, that sort of thing. Yeah, throughout the scriptures, that's exactly what you have. Anytime you have some great act of salvation or announcement of salvation, what do God's people do? Well, what they have to do, right? They sing. They cross the Red Sea on dry ground in Exodus 14. What do they do next is 15?

They sing. We saw it earlier in Isaiah too, where you have chapter 7 through 11, which talk all about this coming royal son of David, the Messiah. And then you get to chapter 12. And after this announcement of all the Messiah is to do and all he is to be, then you have a psalm. You have this psalm in which God's people break forth in praise. And that's what you have here too.

So when you were talking about Isaiah 53, we see what's going on. It struck me many, many years ago that one of the, I guess you'd call it an irony, is that in the Old Testament, in chapters like Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22, we actually have more lengthy, explicit visuals of the crucifixion than we really have in the four Gospels. I mean, there's, of course, a lot of details that the Gospels give us. One of the things they really don't say too much about is what happened at the actual crucifixion. You know, there's no mention of, well, then the soldiers, you know, forced Jesus on the cross and held his arms down and drove in the spikes. I mean, all those things that would have happened at any crucifixion, they just says, and they crucified him. Then you get to Psalm 22, you get to Isaiah 53, and just a whole lot more color added from the Old Testament to this kind of just real black and white description of the crucifixion that we have in the Gospels. And I think one of the reasons that the gospel writers didn't have to spell all this out is because everybody knew.

Everyone knew what happened at a crucifixion. I mean, they saw it happened. I doubt there was a single Jew living in Judea who went through life without seeing at least one, if not multiple, crucifixions happen. It would be like if someone was recounting something from the old west or something, and then when they caught some horse thieves and hung them, if they went into great detail explaining what that was like, I mean, everybody knew what that was. They didn't have to say, and then they tied in such a way, and then they don't have to tell you, you know. Yep, yep, no details needed. We've actually seen it happen. And yeah, so it would have been like that for anyone really living in the first century world.

Yeah, and that's why, I mean, that's why Isaiah 53 is, you know, the text you read on Good Friday and that kind of stuff, because it's not just, oh man, look at this, it's the crucifixion in the Old Testament. And so we should do that because that's kind of different. um no it's because that's where you have not just the the as i was saying like the the actual picture painted for you which of course you do have in isaiah 53 but you do have uh you have two things happening simultaneously which is that this is what it looks like but also you have theologically with what's happening right given to you pretty explicitly in isaiah 53 that uh you It's the chastisement, the iniquities are laid on him, the will of God to crush him. You have all of that stuff with this disfigured and marred and all of that going on.

So, yeah, it really is the kind of, if you want to know what's going on at the cross, Isaiah 53 is about as good as it gets. Yeah. And so what we're seeing in 54, and really in 55 too, is the outgrowth of that, the fruits of this. So we've seen this with other servant songs as well. This is the final one of the servant songs. And just like there was a, well, Alec Mateer calls it a tailpiece to every one of the servant songs. So that's what we have here too. So what are the ramifications, we might say, of the work of the servant?

And that's what we're going to see laid out in the next two chapters. 54 is going to be more of a focus upon the covenant people. So the people who have received the revelation of God. Here's what's going to happen to them as a result of the work of the servant. And then in chapter 55, it's going to expand outward to the Gentile world. So the peoples and the nations are going to come and they're going to be actually part of the kingdom of David, as it's going to explain once we get to those verses. But beginning here with verse 1, we're going to have singing, and we're going to hear a lot about marriage and children, or the lack of the ability to bear children, and the expansion of tents. And all of this is going to be various metaphors for what I would refer to as a great reversal that takes place because of the work of the servant.

So let me read 1 through 3. Sing, O barren one, who did not bear Break forth into singing and cry aloud You who have not been in labor For the children of the desolate one Will be more than the children of her who is married, says the Lord Enlarge the place of your tent And let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out

Don't hold back Lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes for you will spread abroad to the right and to the left, and your offspring will possess the nations and will people the desolate cities. So we start out here in verse one with the image of a barren woman. She hasn't had any children. She's not been in labor, but we're told that the children of this desolate woman, this woman who was barren, who didn't have any kids, that the children that she has are going to be more than the children of a woman who is married. So this is picking up the image, of course, of the people of God as the bride of Yahweh,

which, of course, is something we see multiple times in the Old Testament. It is the foundation of the Song of Songs. Of course, we covered that book, whatever that was, a year or more ago. And that is picked up in the New Testament when we hear about Christ and his bride, the church. So here, this barren one, the one who hasn't been in labor, the desolate one, she now is going to have all these children. So much so that basically, to put verse 2 in modern language, you're going to have to have a bigger house. You're going to have to add some rooms. Heck, you might even have to put on a second story to your house.

You need a lot more square footage because you're going to have a lot more kids. so you have enlarged the place of your tent and you got to have more curtains you got to have longer cords you got to have more stakes so you keep uh you keep adding on to your tent you know get some more goat hair woven together in these three foot strips and add it on and then add a little bit more and well that means you're gonna have to have more longer tent cords and if you got a bigger tent you got to have bigger stakes so all of this is basically what we would refer or two today is just building a bigger house because you got more kids. And why do you have more kids? Because you're going to be blessed by God as a result of the work of the servant.

You know, the gospel works like this a lot. I mean, Paul kind of says it works like this. It's great news if you can get over the initial offense of being pathetic. uh and and and that works this way too where uh hey i've got great news for you if you can get over this initial insult of me comparing you to a barren woman which doesn't feel like the insult that it is like to us right so we hear that and you're like oh that would be good news but god just referred to israel the children of israel as a barren woman in other words You've never brought forth anything, at least not anything good, but that's going to all change. And so if you can get over that initial sort of insult, it's great news, and that's the way it works with the gospel too.

And the reason it works that way is because, I mean, there is the initial news of you needing saving and being unable to save yourself or you being barren and being unable to bring about any good thing or any living thing yourself. And so God's going to step in. And obviously, you know, God's nation has had children, but how much faith have they had? This is what he's really looking for. And the answer is, well, not a lot, right? And he's like, as far as I can tell, looking at you, you're like a barren woman. I haven't seen you bear out a bunch of people of faith. I've not seen a bunch of God worshipers coming out of you.

But that's all going to change. In fact, to the point that you're going to have to build this thing up huge because I'm going to bring in kids from all over the place, right? Yeah. Yeah. And this is the image that I like to use when I'm talking about. Well, when I'm answering the question, as I often get asked, what's the relationship between Israel and the church? You know, people say, well, are you saying that the church replaced Israel? What's going on there?

And my response is always, no, the church didn't replace Israel. What Jesus came in and did was he enlarged the tent of Israel. So I'll use the image of him, you know, enlarging a house. Well, he made it even bigger. Why? Because, well, now it's all these Jews and Gentiles who are becoming part of—they're under this one roof of Christ's kingdom. So you have an expansion of Israel in which all those who believe in Jesus the Messiah, Jews and Gentiles alike, are now part of this house of faith in which you have us all dwelling under the grace of Christ. Well, I mean, Paul kind of gives you the language, right, of you have a vine or a branch and you can get grafted in or you can get cut off.

But it's funny when people ask the replace question because you're like, I always think that, listen, well, I mean, it's always been Jesus, man. Nothing's been replaced. He's been the root of the thing the whole time. And God has been looking for people of faith from the beginning. And so it's not a matter of something being replaced or anything like that. Now, things can be cut off, things can be grafted in, but the thing itself remains the same. This is why you can't say replaced if Paul is saying things like not all of Israel is Israel. Well, what does that mean? What does that tell you then?

Well, it tells you that all of Israel has never been Israel. Like it was never that it was never that way. And so it's not like entirely new or different. Paul says, yeah, I mean, it's from the beginning. it wasn't like you weren't just like born into this and like everyone that was born into this was this and now that's changed he's like it's not all of israel's israel uh god's had people in other places from the beginning and uh and that you know in the in the war after christ sure there's like a mass inclusion of the gentiles as you send as you become much more uh

proactive in your evangelism and trying to bring them in. But so, yeah, it ramps up. There's a lot of grafting that happens, but grafting was always happening just on a smaller scale. Yeah. And that's really was one of the primary failures of Israel under the Old Covenant. They were supposed to be a priesthood that reached out to the nations, right? They were always supposed to be a place to which the nations could come, a light that shines to the rest of the nations.

That's what God called them to be. And yeah, for the most part, they were very insular. And not only did they not do that for the nations, but they ended up aping the nations in idolatry. So rather than having a monotheistic magnetism that drew the nations in, it was more like, hey, look at what those Philistines are doing. Let's go worship their gods. Hey, look at what those people up in Tyre and Sidon are doing. Let's take some of the Syrian gods and goddesses and we'll start worshiping them. So not only did they fail to live out their vocation, but they did the exact opposite, which they basically canonized themselves.

Yeah, I think sometimes people think that when Jesus says of his disciples, and I think this applies to Christians in general, of believers, you're the light of the world. You're like, oh, this is like a new thing. Well, no, this is like what they were always supposed to be that and failed miserably. They were not a light of the world. They just tried to be like everyone else. uh when they what the light was supposed to be different is the light of the world that what's implied there is that the world's a dark place and yeah you're supposed to be this thing that's different and then like a moth drawn to the flames so this should be the nations uh and so

yeah jesus isn't saying anything new there about you know uh about christianity that wasn't true of what was going on in the old testament like you were always supposed to be that you just weren't Yeah. And sometimes we're not, which is a good thing to remember. It is. It is for sure. Yeah. I mean, that's the perennial temptation of the church as well, not to be Canaanized, but to be, you choose your country, choose your culture, right? To be Americanized or to be Europeanized or whatever it is, to so look like the world and to so believe and act like the world, that basically there doesn't exist any clear difference between the church and the world.

Yeah, that's an ongoing temptation for churches in every single culture of every single time period, whether you're talking early church, medieval church, or modern church. It's a good way to become barren. It is. Yes, exactly. Yeah, sterile and barren and offering nothing, really. Let me say one more thing about the third verse. that's the one that says, you will spread abroad to the right and to the left. So of course,

this is expansion. But then this, your offspring will possess the nations and will people the desolate cities. Now that kind of language about offspring possessing the nations, that's already suggested in Genesis 22. So after Abraham is stopped before he's got the knife in his hand, the son of God, the messenger of Yahweh stops him. And then he says this, this is verses 17 and 18. I will surely bless you and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, as the sand that's on the seashore, and your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies. So that's the language, of course, you possess the gate of your enemies. That means you, if you get the gate, you got the city. Just kind of like if you're a burglar and you kick in the

front door, the house is yours, more or less. So that same language of possessing the gate is now here rendered as possess the nations. And the idea here is basically your impact and your kingdom is going to expand. All of these children God is going to give to Israel, that is all these believers who are coming in, are going to spread outward. And so the kingdom also is going to spread outward to all these nations. Okay, so picking up with verse four, we're going to move into some similar language, except this has to do more with widowhood and with having or not having a husband. So children, or the lack of children, is the focus of the opening. This is going to be similar, but shift a little bit in theme. Fear not, for you will not be ashamed,

Be not confounded, for you will not be disgraced. For you will forget the shame of your youth and the reproach of your widowhood. You will remember no more. You might be saying, okay, why? Well, he's going to tell us. Verse 5, because your maker is your husband. The Lord of hosts is his name. And the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer, the God of the whole earth, he is called.

For the Lord has called you like a wife deserted and grieved in spirit Like a wife of youth when she is cast off, says your God For a brief moment I deserted you But with great compassion I will gather you In overflowing anger for a moment I hid my face from you But with everlasting love I will have compassion on you Says the Lord, your Redeemer so he starts out in verse 4 with saying uh you're not going to experience this shame and disgrace

anymore in fact you're going to you're going to forget that and the reproach of your widowhood you're not going to bear that in mind anymore because you're going to have a husband who is not going anywhere your maker is your husband the lord of host is his name and then it shifts a bit of focus to calling him your redeemer, that is your next of kin. So he's your husband, he's your next of kin, but he's also the Lord of hosts. He's the God of the whole earth. He's the maker. And if that one is your husband, well, then you are secure. And then he does make a point. He says in verse six, yes, there was a time when you were like a wife deserted and grieved in spirit, like a wife of youth who's been put aside, cast off. So you were like that because

just very briefly, just for a moment, I did desert you. And desert in the sense not of, don't hear that as if it's God's fault. Don't hear that as if it's a kind of a husband who just ditches his wife for no reason. But this is God setting his wife aside because of her infidelity, because of her spiritual adultery, her idolatry. God says, okay, I did that for a brief moment, but with great compassion, I'm going to gather you up. And yes, I had overflowing anger for a moment, which I hid my face from you, but all that's going to change because now, because of, and this is flowing from Isaiah 53, because of what the sermon has done. That anger is put aside, that desertion is put aside, and in compassion and in love,

I'm going to gather you to myself. Yeah, this is one of the things that God does where He just talks about time differently. And so there were, I don't know, go read about, go read Lamentations or something. Go read about when I'm sure God's people felt like God had deserted them. It's like just a brief moment, and I'm sure that they'd be like, well, we're out here crying out how long because it feels like it's been a long time, right? And this is how God always is. he's like it's just it's not long like not not compared to uh my everlasting redemption i mean this is just a brief moment right um yeah and that's how that's how it works uh this is why

he can say he's coming soon and we're like feels like it's been a while but uh in the scope of eternity not not that long i mean he could wait a million more years and it'd still be not too long in the in the scope of eternity yeah his perspective on time the watch that god wears set to a very different time than the ones that we were i was thinking too uh kind of a nice tie-in here with psalm 22 so when we when we hear psalm 22 verse 1 from the cross we hear and you know we hear this every good friday ali ali lama sabachthani you know my god my god why have you forsaken me Well, actually, we're hearing that in Aramaic, that Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani.

In Hebrew, the verb for forsake is actually azav. It's the very verb that's used here with translated as dessert. So it's kind of a nice parallel there. When God says, for a brief moment, I deserted you, that's the language of Psalm 22, verse 1. My God, my God, why have you abandoned or forsaken or deserted me? She can kind of pull those together, too. The reason that we are promised great compassion and everlasting love is going to gather us and pull us back to God is because Christ himself experienced that abandonment, that desertion on the cross for us for a brief moment in order that in his resurrection we might be gathered back to the Father. Yeah. I mean, this is the sort of thing he's putting forward is that for a brief moment, I deserted you. But the way that I'm going to get you back so that you can never be deserted again is by being deserted.

Yeah. That's how it all works, right? Yeah. I'm going to step in your place. I'm going to experience this in order that you might receive the wonderful benefits of what I experience. Well, the only way for this desertion to not last forever is for God to be deserted. He has to come in and take that, or else it can't be for just a moment. It'll have to be forever. This is the only way for him to—he's got to make you righteous, man. And for him to make you righteous, that sin's got to go somewhere. Yeah, which is also why it's popular in some religious circles to say that Jesus was not fully divine, that he was a creature, that he was whatever it might be. Well, that's not only a Christological heresy, so it's not just wrong in that way, which is bad enough, but it also has implications for what salvation is or is not, right? So if God himself did not take on this desertion, if God himself did not step in the gap and take care of what needed to be taken care of, if Jesus, in other words, were not fully God, then not only are we not fully saved, we're not saved at all. So it's not just a matter of Jesus must be God to have the correct Christology.

Jesus must be God if we are to have any hope, any salvation, because anything less than a fully divine sacrifice isn't going to be a sacrifice that saves us whatsoever. Yeah, it's not simply like, well, you can't believe that because some council a long time ago said you couldn't and you need to obey the rules because you don't want to be wrong about this specific theological point. No, your salvation is at stake here. It's not just about being, you know, well, good, I'm theologically correct. There's a lot more at stake than just that. This isn't just a 2 plus 2 equals 4 kind of truism. You can say 2 plus 2 equals 5 and be wrong, and that's not really going to affect anything more than your math score. You can say Jesus is not God, and not only are you wrong, this affects everything.

Yeah, that really needs to not be true. Yeah. Otherwise, as Paul would say, we are most to be pitied. Yep. Okay. So having kind of laid all that out there using images of bearing children and marriage and desertion and all of that, Isaiah makes a nice move here because Isaiah, like all of the prophets, was one that knew the scriptures. He read the scriptures. He preached on the scriptures. And so in this sermon, he's actually going to now use something from the Torah, from Genesis in particular, to be part of his preaching, part of the analogy that he draws between what God has done and what he's going to do. So this is what scholars call intertextuality, basically where you have one text interacting with another text. In this case, Isaiah interacting with Genesis 6 through 9, the flood in the days of Noah.

So I'll just read the next two verses, 9 and 10. He says this, meaning everything you've just been talking about, this is like the days of Noah. Or the Hebrew manuscripts also have the waters of Noah. So this is like the days of Noah or the waters of Noah to me. Well, how so? As I swore that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth, so I have sworn that I will not be angry with you and I will not rebuke you. For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed,

but my steadfast love shall not depart from you And my covenant of peace shall not be removed, says the Lord who has compassion on you. So not only is this like the days of Noah, you have an escalation here too. This is even better than the days of Noah because, you know, after the flood, yeah, you've got the mountains and the hills that are beginning to appear as the waters go downward. You know, here's creation being revealed again. It's been purged. You got Noah and the seven others, eight in all animals that go forth in the ark.

Isaiah is saying, oh, this is even better because you know what? If those mountains and hills are somehow removed, depart, then my steadfast love and my covenant of peace will still be there. It's even more secure, more steadfast, more certain than the very existence of mountains and hills. So it's kind of a nice Genesis preaching there. After the flood, God says, I'm never going to destroy the earth again with a flood. In fact, I'm going to hang my weapon, my bow, in the clouds upside down. I'm going to retire that weapon. And then I'm going to make this covenant with you.

And every time that I see the rainbow, the bow, I'll be reminded of this covenant with you. Well, something better is going to happen. And God's not even going to be angry or rebuke you anymore because he's made this covenant of peace with you. Yeah, I've actually told people that before that I know it's tempting. I mean, I get it. When you see a rainbow, I mean, you think of Noah, but it's not exactly like what you should think of because God has declared that there's something similar but better than that. So he says, like, hey, I did swear this oath that, like, all that stuff was going to happen, but I would never do this again and all that. Now I've got this even better thing, right, that's going to—this, like, I have a covenant of peace, and it can never go away.

So really, like, you know, for the Christian, I mean, when you see a rainbow, you're like, that's nice. But that just reminds me of something even better than that. Like, that's a good promise. Like, it's a good promise. but i got a better i got a better one than that yeah yeah let your eyes drift from the the rainbow to the cross yeah because as a so this is a nice tie-in between 53 and 54 because back in isaiah 53 verse 5 we read that upon him this suffering servant upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace. Well, there you go. Well, what is the fruit of this peace? It's a covenant that God

makes, a covenant of peace that's never going to be removed. So yeah, it's kind of a nice Old Testament example of this kind of typology that's happening. Of course, this happens more than once in the New Testament. Jesus talks about how his second coming is going to be like the days of noah and peter uses the flood and noah to talk about baptism so here we have isaiah kind of laying the groundwork for the same kind of typology that the new testament picks up as well well what you have in the you know with noah is you have a promise um to not destroy you which is nice like you know so god's like hey i'm not going to destroy everything that i made ever again you're like well that's nice uh what you have here is not just a promise to not kill

you uh but you have instead you have this promise that you're that his love will never depart from you well i mean that's better that's better than just much better i won't i won't kill you all right yeah yeah i won't drown you well that's yeah it's i guess that's good news it's okay news right But even better news is I love you. And because of that, yeah, I won't even think about doing anything to harm you because you're the apple of my eye. Yeah. So he's going to kind of take this same momentum and keep it going in the next few verses. But here he's going to shift to a city image.

And this is actually not much of a radical shift when you think about how many times cities are referred to as mothers or as in the image of a woman. So we started out the chapter with the image of a wife, and then we went to a mother. And now we're going to pick this back up by talking about a city. Oh, afflicted one, storm-tossed and not comforted. Behold, I will set your stones in antimony and lay your foundations with sapphires. I will make your pinnacles of agate, your gates of carbuncles, and all your wall of precious stones. All your children shall be taught by the Lord, and great shall be the peace of your children. In righteousness you will be established. You shall be far from oppression, for you shall not fear, and from terror, for it shall not come near you.

Let's stop there for a second. Hopefully I pronounced all those names correctly. As with, if you're looking in your English Bibles, a lot of times you'll see footnotes by the names of animals and by the names of precious stones. And the reason for that is because these things occur so infrequently a lot of times that we're not exactly sure what it refers to. I mean, we're sure that it's a precious stone, but, you know, it could be sapphires or it could be lapis lazuli. It could be agate, but it could also be jasper or ruby. So it could be carbuncles, could be crystal. You got a lot of options here. But the main point is that the city, which was storm-tossed and not comforted, is now going to be not just beautified by all these precious stones, but also secure.

That's one of the main messages being conveyed here that God is going to do for his bride, which is also his city, what needs to be done to make sure that she is secure. She's no longer storm-tossed and uncomforted, but stable and secure because of what God himself has done to make her that way. This is picked up in Revelation 21, which has, of course, this beautiful description of the new Jerusalem that comes down from heaven. You have precious stones, you have pearls, you have this brilliance and this beauty that is the way of describing the city itself, because what has God done? well, he's beautified the city. He's decked her out with all these precious stones. And it seems like God's going to get what he's wanted for a long time. And he's just, you know, he's been, you know, waiting on people to do it, and they're not going to do it. So he's just going to kind of do this himself. But this, I love this in verse 13, that all your children shall be taught

by the Lord, and great shall be the peace of your children. So this is what God has been always trying to get i mean he's just been wanting to teach his children so they can have peace and no one wants to be taught and so he's like it's also good news for me i'm finally going to get the thing i've been after this whole time which is to tell you things and have you listen which is great yeah this is uh and this is of course i mean this is what happens this is part of the the new covenant promise too right yeah they shall all know me and uh jesus actually quotes is this verse in john chapter 6 verse 45 he says uh uh talks about no one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws him i will raise him up on the last day as it is written

in the prophets and they shall all be taught by god which is a also great because who's doing the teaching in john chapter 6 the son of god god himself yeah so everyone who heard jesus was taught by taught by the lord and uh everyone who believed that teaching had that that kind of peace yeah that's right so at 14 he's going to pick up with uh uh more of this language he says in righteousness you will be established you will be far from oppression you shall not fear and from terror because it won't come near you. If anyone stirs up strife, well, that's not from me. So God's not saying, Hey, I never brought strife to you. He did. I mean, we know that, right? But he said, if anyone does it, that's not, that's not for me. In fact, whoever stirs up strife with

you shall fall because of you, or you could even translate that shall fall to you in the sense of surrender to you. And then just to wrap this up with verse 16 and 17, he says, look, I created the smith who blows the fire of coals and produces a weapon for its purpose. I have also created the ravager to destroy. So I've made these things. Yeah. I mean, I'm the one who providentially orders and makes all things. But here's this famous line, no weapon that is fashioned against you shall succeed or shall prosper. You shall refute every tongue that rises against you in judgment. This is the heritage of, this is a kind of a drum roll moment. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord. It's a beautiful thing that happens here. Oh, let me finish this. This is the

heritage of the servants of the Lord and their, ESV has vindication, I would translate that as righteousness and their righteousness from me, declares the Lord. So something important happens with this particular verse. It's the closing verse of Isaiah 54. Beginning with chapter 40, when we first heard about this servant of the Lord, every occurrence of the word servant was in the singular, no plurals. Beginning with this verse to the end of Isaiah, when servant occurs, it's going to be in the plural. So the servant, we've heard about so much and have now kind of finished his servant songs. What does he make? Well, he makes servants of the Lord. He brings into himself those who now begin to resemble him in being servants of the Lord as well,

and he gives them his righteousness and protects them from all those who would hurt or destroy them yeah no that's that's great uh yeah uh this is jesus bringing all people uh to himself right so he you have him doing the work of salvation alone and then spreading the benefits of his work uh to the the multitudes of people uh now you have all these people who are are servants of the lord in him which is great yeah good good stuff great way to end yeah and uh and next week We start with – I mean, 55 starts out great with one of my favorites in Isaiah. I love the way that 55 starts. I won't read it.

I won't say anything about it, but you can join us next week and hear it. Chad, I will see you then. All right. See you then. I'll see you next time.