40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Isaiah 61:10-62:12 (Episode 503)

Episode Date: April 1, 2026

God promises that righteousness and praise are going to spring up naturally. The language of bride is completely different from any other God. And the only way to be free is to be a slave. 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: 1517 Youtube: How God Still Speaks Today Being Family by Dr. Scott Keith A Reasoned Defense of the Faith by Adam Francisco Stretched: A Study for Lent and the Entire Christian Life by Dr. Christopher Richmann The Essential Nestingen: Essays on Preaching, Catechism, and the Reformation Philip Melanchthon's Commentary on Ecclesiastes, Translated by Dr. Derek Cooper  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 sign up for Chad's new academy course Yeah, it is available to you I mean, you obviously like the Bible You're listening to this podcast

You want to learn how to read it all on your own I mean, we don't want you to stop listening to the podcast or anything But hey, you might need to take this academy course Get some hermeneutics going on Chad's going to teach you how to read and interpret the Bible It's free, so go check it out over at 1517.org and sign up for a couple events sign up for the the regional event i think by the time this comes out it'll be right there upon us but um we are getting close uh to it but there

is a couple of tickets left so if you want to go to that grab those and of course you can still grab some tickets to the national event in october and uh also going to be talking about the scriptures hey man if you just can't get enough scriptures listen to this podcast take the academy, come to the conference, hang out with Chad and myself and Wesley Huff and a whole bunch of other people, and it'll be a good time. You can do all that. That might suffice. If you're doing the Bible in a year on top of that, I mean, I don't know, you got to be in the top 1% of Bible knowers at that point. So, you know, do all that. Chad, we are in Isaiah 61. Got to talk about, you know, Jesus' favorite chapter in Isaiah, you know, the one that he gets up and reads a couple

verses from and says, that's about me, if you didn't know. The year of the favor of the Lord, yep, that's right here in front of you, man. You can take that to the bank. And we kept going. We went a little further than Jesus went, though. We said, hey, Jesus, like, we know that was enough to try to get people to kill you. We're going to go ahead and read some more. We got to hear about other things that are going to kind of happen in this and how the Lord loves justice and hates robbery and wrong and all this stuff kind of ended with that there is this offspring

that the Lord has blessed. And that's kind of where we ended. And it's interesting because at the beginning of this chapter, you have Jesus saying, hey, here, you know, the prophet is talking about me. We're here at verse 10 where it's not really the prophet talking, but Jesus talking again. So, yeah, it's right. It's a you have this first person language of I and my and me coming up with verse 10. So we're going to hear the Messiah talking here The very one described earlier in the chapter, of course

Also talking about himself He's going to continue that with the last two verses in this chapter And he's not stopping He will continue into chapter 62 as well So I will read the last two verses of Isaiah 61 See what he has to say I will greatly rejoice in the Lord My soul shall exult in my God

for he has clothed me with garments of salvation he has covered me with the robe of righteousness as a bridegroom here we have four different similes that are coming up as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels for as the earth brings forth its sprouts and as a garden causes what is sown in to sprout up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to sprout up before all the nations. So he starts out with a lot of clothing images. He's been clothed with the garments of salvation, covered in the robe of righteousness, and then he uses a couple of comparisons like a bride and her groom, you know, they're getting themselves all ready for the

wedding day. The groom is decking himself out like a priest. He's got this headdress just like the priests had their special holy headdresses that they wore, their caps. A bride, of course, is going to get herself all looking beautiful with jewels and whatnot. So he's going to be like that. So he's, in other words, you might even say he's being robed, vested, we might say, for the task at hand in his garments and his robe both have to do with saving and giving righteousness so he's happy about this too that's the way this starts out right i will greatly rejoice my soul shall exalt so it's not as if when he's clothed in his garments of salvation and he's robed with righteousness and he's getting ready to cause righteousness and praise to sprout

before, not just Israel, but all the nations. It's not like he's like, ah, man, I guess I got to do this. I don't really want to. I'm like that sometimes, you know, I got to go do something, but I got to get dressed up for it. I got to put this on, I got to put that on. I really want to go do this, but well, you know, duty calls or I'm socially obligated to do this. And so, you know, kind of begrudgingly get dressed up and go do this. No, no, the Messiah is happy. He's like, yeah, put those garments on me, put this robe on me, because I am ready to go out like a bridegroom, and I'm ready to accomplish the task for which God has robed me, invested me. Yeah. One of the things I love about this is this part in verse 11 where, you know, you have this

language of, you know, the earth is going to, you know, bring forth these things, righteousness and praise uh and what i like about the the language here is that uh it's actually gonna he makes it sound very natural right where uh like this righteousness and praise is going to uh up before the uh the nations just as naturally as you know stuff sprouts up from the earth you know like stuff sprouts up in your garden or your yard or whatever um it's going to be so i think like two things happen there one is going to be that much of it right so like it's it's going to be in abundance uh and it's going to be just a natural thing he's not it's not going to take a ton of work to make it happen right like it just is going to be the case so it's what almost like

creation gets to go back to what it was intended to do and just sort of naturally produce yeah that's a great point i hadn't not really just until you started talking about this thought about how genesis 2 2-ish this is you got a bridegroom you got a bride well of course the first bridegroom and bride were adam and eve god brought them back together after he took part of adam out and built e brought him back together and where this happened well it happened in a garden we have all kinds of things growing up here so it is a genesis one and two kind of kind of text and to get to the very end you have the language of sprouting up which is a verbal form the noun form of that is where we get this messianic title the branch that crops up several

times in in the prophets so here he will branch up we might say before all the nations so it's a Yeah, it's a hearkening back to Genesis 2, it's a pointing forward, of course, to the work of Christ, it's pulling everything together. And I love how it ends too, that he's going to do this, not just before Zion or Jerusalem or Judah, but before all the nations. It's this universal view that Isaiah is constantly talking about. I mean, he starts out the first few chapters of his book talking about it, and he doesn't let up. It's this promise that what the Messiah is going to do is not going to do just for the physical descendants of Abraham. He's going to do it before all the peoples, all the nations. Yeah, it's weird. Like, you wouldn't describe righteousness and praise as common things. We don't, like, see those all over the place, right?

But the day is coming, and the way it went, and probably, you know, not probably, but the way things were originally made and the way that things were returned to is that wouldn't it be great if righteousness and praise were sort of ordinary? Yeah. Right? Yes. Instead of being extraordinary. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, what do we commonly see sprouting up everywhere? Weeds.

Yeah. wickedness cursing all those things i mean that's like so ordinary that it's not even noticed in some ways yeah what is extraordinary what is uncommon yeah righteousness and praise and that's why it stands out because it is going against the tide it's flowing upstream it's just not the kind of stuff that you're used to that you're used to seeing yeah but god has an intention of changing that yeah which is great yeah which is great yeah that's what we're i mean know we're experiencing that in a limited degree now but uh the fullness is coming that's the picture of revelation 21 and 22 yeah okay so that's ended 61 uh 62 the messiah is not stopping

he's going to continue talking in fact he's going to make it clear that he's not going to be silent He's not going to be quiet. So I will read, let's see, the first five verses. For Zion's sake, I will not keep silent. And for Jerusalem's sake, I will not be quiet until her righteousness goes forth as brightness and her salvation as a burning torch. The nation shall see your righteousness and all the kings your glory. And you should be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will give.

You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord And a royal diadem in the hand of our God You shall no more be termed forsaken And your land shall no more be termed desolate But you shall be called My delight is in her And your land married For the Lord delights in you

And your land shall be married For as a young man marries a young woman So shall your sons marry you and as a bridegroom rejoices over the bride so shall your god rejoice over you man we are in some great we're a great part of hosea you know it's it's uh all kinds of promising hopeful uh gospel centered promises that we got going on here it's kind of a it's kind of an interesting turn that's taken and maybe turn is the right language to use but you know we go from all the nations, very end of 61, to a focus again on Zion and Jerusalem. And this is the dance that

you see through the prophets. So you have a view of salvation reaching all the nations, and yet it's Zion-centered, it's Jerusalem-centered. You see that already in Isaiah 2, when the mountain of the house of the Lord will be established as the chief of the mountains, and all the nations will stream upward to it so it's it's for everyone and yet it's also a very particular kind of promise that's connected to zion and to and to jerusalem and that really is i mean that's the gospel right it's who was salvation for well everybody i mean it's it's a universal atonement that christ has accomplished he didn't he's not the lamb of god who takes away the sins of some But the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world

But it's also just that Lamb It's just Him That's where you have the particularity of salvation And this particularity also then Is connected to Zion or to Jerusalem Because these are the people of God That's what Zion and Jerusalem stand for here This is the people of God

That of course are connected to God Himself Or the body of Christ connected to Christ So it's for all the nations And yet for Zion's sake For Jerusalem's sake, the Messiah will not keep silent or be quiet. Yeah, and you get to see them zoom in a little bit saying, hey, for Zion's sake and for Jerusalem's sake, I'm not going to keep silent. I'm not going to be quiet, which is also, I think, another way of saying for the sake of the promise I made, right? I mean, because the promise was – it involves all the earth, but it's made to a particular people.

and uh and so for the sake of that um he's gonna he's going to keep it through those people but it's the nations that are going to see your righteousness and the kings are gonna see your glory so like this this does serves both purposes so it's also kind of what paul is saying right for the jew first and also for the greek as as romans puts it yeah and then i also think that here you the sort of bride and bridegroom language that you're starting to have like a bunch of here sometimes kind of like strikes us as maybe like something that is i don't know maybe more uniquely new testament you know uh like paul of course like really uses this language um maybe jesus uses it a little bit you know and but uh but here you have it in isaiah where where

god is kind of showing that he's always sort of had it in his mind that this is the way that it works this is the analogy he's using right yeah yeah it it seems to seems to build as you go through the old testament i mean we we spent several weeks of course on the song of songs so i mean it's you know right in your face when it comes to uh to that particular book but you have it here in isaiah jeremiah is going to use the same kind of language you know ezekiel does kind of in a different sort of way i mean he uses some pretty graphic language to describe the not so much the fidelity of the bride of of the lord but her infidelity her just you know prostituting herself out to every passerby so you've got that hosea is going to pick up the same kind of language

about god and his bride so yeah even though we associate it with the new testament but it's uh It's maybe not full flower in the Old Testament, but man, it's certainly starting to bud. You can see it all over the prophets. You know, I think this opening verse with the Messiah speaking here, not being quiet, not being silent. I think maybe a couple of things are going on there. First of all, he's going to speak, right? He's not going to just sit there. He's got words to say, and he's going to say them.

so he's gonna be speaking some of these words to zion to jerusalem to the nations but if you if you keep looking down i didn't read this yet but uh if you read one more verse verse six talks about the watchman on the walls of jerusalem all day and all night they shall never be silent same verb in hebrew that's used in verse one well what are they not being silent about they are reminding the lord they're putting the lord in remembrance or taking no rest giving him no rest so it's the idea of crying out to god giving him no rest so i think that's probably at least contextually part of what's going on here which is a it's kind of a different dimension of of the messiah's work that we've seen in the rest of rest of isaiah where he's actually

he is speaking to people but he's also not being silent with regard to his heavenly father He's praying to him. He's crying out to him. He's not going to stop talking to him until the righteousness of Zion goes forth as brightness in her salvation, as a burning torch. Yeah, I mean, all of this is so different than what you have with, like, any other god. I mean, there's other gods that were, like, talking about brides and bridegrooms. They didn't talk about you that way, that you were like that sort of husband-wife. That's not how any god would have ever talked about people that worshiped them.

Of course not. And there was no other god that was like, don't worry. There's going to be this advocate that's going to be in my ear on your behalf all the time. It's not a thing, right? And when you read the Old Testament or the New Testament, too, and you just think about the other God options out there, this one is definitely way different. Yeah, way different. I mean, I was thinking of the Roman gods and goddesses. What would they do?

Well, what was Zeus constantly doing? he was it was a philanderer right yeah he didn't love uh like some corporate people he would find some human being human a woman that he was really attracted to and he would uh commit adultery with her i mean this was happening all over and the same thing with with the goddesses you know a goddess would find some young uh striking and looking young man and she'd strike an affair with him. This is the kind of, quote, love that the Roman gods and the Greek gods and goddesses would show. It's completely removed from what we're seeing here, where God has one bride and he's faithful to her. He pours out his love into her heart. He speaks to her heart. He's

devoted to her exclusively. Yeah, you don't find that happening with not just the ancient gods, but the gods of the day as well yeah or having a god that says like hey don't worry like i'm setting this up when this guy's going to be in my ear all the time reminding me of all my promises yes yeah an advocate with with the father yeah i love this there's a revelation connection another revelation connection here too in verse in verse two the nations will see your righteousness the kings all the kings your glory you should be called by a new name so that is going to come up uh, more than one place in revelation. It's actually all over the place. God's name, the name of the Messiah, secret name, a hidden name, uh, give you a new name.

This comes up with the letters to Pergamum and Philadelphia, this promise of a, of a new name. And I think all of those together, really all of those should be considered together. And what he's really talking about is God's going to give his people, not some like secret, mysterious name he's going to give them his name it becomes clear as you read the revelation you get to the end and everybody's walking around with the name of god on their forehead right it's like yeah yeah well that's that's marking you as the status of a high priest because the high priest had the divine name on his forehead too on his the the band he wore across his forehead so god puts his name on you and of course that's exactly what he already has done for us in baptism that's

Well, you're baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God has already put his name on you in baptism. So here, already in Isaiah, you have the promise of a new name that the mouth of the Lord will give. Well, he's given you his name. In other words, he's saying, you're mine. I'm claiming you as my own, and I'm incorporating you into my family by giving you this name. Yeah, that's great. did uh so did you uh when you're growing up did you sing beulah land did you sing that you're

familiar with that song i don't think so that's an old spiritual beulah land it comes from verse four so you shall no more be termed forsaken not be called desolate anymore and if you're looking in your bible so forsaken and desolate are both capitalized like you know this is sort of a nickname that you had so you're not going to have those names anymore instead you're going to be called Hephzibah, which means my delight is in her. And your land is going to be called Beulah. So yeah, there's an old spiritual talking about Beulah land. Chad grew up singing Old Testament songs. See, this is the whole thing. Yeah. So Beulah land anyway comes from verse four. My mom loved that song. So I'd hear her

talking about it uh we sang some songs about jehovah gyra but that was about it that's about it that's as far as you got yeah well for any listeners out there who know beulah land or you youtube it that's that's where it comes from so beulah means to to be married so your land shall be married and your sons shall marry you well this is you know this is just the old testament's way of talking about the commitment of the children of god to the kingdom of god this is just using marital language to describe this intimate union between god his people the kingdom of which they they are a part and you got to love how this ends verse five as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride so shall your god rejoice over you man that's uh that's that's pretty amazing just you

see this picture of bride and groom walking down the aisle or a party afterward and they're both of course, beaming and the bridegroom is just, you know, smitten with his bride. So happy. Well, just take that and quadruple it or multiply it by a hundred thousand times. Well, that's God rejoicing, rejoicing over you. It's a lovely picture. Okay. Verse six. Now we're going to to shift the image a bit to these watchmen that I alluded to a minute ago. On your walls of Jerusalem, I have set watchmen all the day and all the night. They shall never be silent. You who put the Lord in remembrance, take no rest and give him no rest until he establishes Jerusalem and makes it a praise in the earth. I just stopped there for a second. It's quite an image here. You

got these watchmen. It's like, nope, we're not going to let God go to sleep. All day, all night, we're going to keep pounding on heaven's door. We're going to be putting God in remembrance of all the promises that he has made. No rest for you, God. We're going to keep reminding you over and over and over again, which is actually pretty biblical. We're always talking to God about God. we're recounting his promises we're making reference to his deeds we're talking to god about what he's done what he's promised like the widow in the parable that jesus tells we keep coming back again and again and again except god's not like the judge he doesn't get like peeved and finally be like all right i'll give you whatever you want because you're driving me nuts

no actually he loves that because this is his people remembering exactly who he is and what he's done yeah that's exactly the the thing that came to mind was the persistent widow you know um you know i remember uh so my dad is like a he's better at praying than us chad um without a doubt no no mean to it i don't mean to offend you or anything but it just no i i fully in agreement with that but uh i remember as steven paulson once um when uh he was like not well or whatever He was sick, and I was like, oh, I hope you get better. I'll pray for you. And he's like, okay, yeah.

He's like, I don't think I need your dad to pray for me yet. I'm going to save that until I'm really sick. And then he said, as I know, you know, he harasses God so much that he finally just gives him what he wants. It's a very biblical thing, right? I'm just going to not leave you alone. Yeah. Well, your dad and my mom, same thing. Yeah.

I've told this story before about when I was, I don't know, 12 and a firework blew up in my face and my eyes were just completely coated with gunpowder. And I was laying in the hospital bed all night, you know, in pain and scared. And I can hear my mom over there beside the bed and she's just like harassing God. She's like, all night would not stop. And yeah, doctors come in the morning and god listen you know the gunpowder started to to uh to disappear so there's something about god not giving god any rest right was there any was there any of that that kind of praying like my favorite kind of praying in those situations is the lord you know my son's an idiot you know i'm sure whether she said it or not i'm sure i'm sure she thought it

Yeah. Please do not hold this idiocy against him. He's just a regular testosterone-driven teenage boy who thinks he should blow up things and not have to suffer any consequences. Yeah. He knows not what he does. His brain is not fully developed for it. You know he's a moron. That's right. Well, God has not let me forget because any of my eye doctors over the years have asked me, did you have something happen to your eyes? Because I'm noticing a couple of little black specks that are embedded in the whites of your eyes. And be like, yeah, let me tell you a story and I'll tell you a story. So it's still there to my dying day. A little reminder of not getting too close to fireworks lest accidents happen. Well, I'm sure you've told your grandkids that. Be like, hey, be careful with that. Let me tell you. I do. Yeah.

I get nervous every Fourth of July. Back up a little bit. Those things can blow up in your face, literally. Okay, so that was verse 7. Verse 8. I'll read 8 and 9. The Lord has sworn by his right hand and by his mighty arm, I will not again give your grain to be food for your enemies,

and foreigners shall not drink your wine for which you have labored, but those who garner it shall eat it and praise the Lord. And those who gather it shall drink it in the courts of my sanctuary. So this is, if you know the covenant curses back in Deuteronomy 28 and Leviticus 26, this is an echo of that. We see this a lot in the prophets. Jeremiah is big on Deuteronomy, So he'll often allude to these sorts of things. So the covenant blessings, the covenant curses, of course, are where God says, hey, if you keep the covenant, all these great things are going to happen to you. If you don't, all these not just bad, but truly horrific things are going to happen

to you. So some of these bad things involve you labor for something, but you don't get to enjoy the fruits of it because your enemies come in and they eat it up. They take it away. The house you built, the crops that you have sown and harvested, the wine, the vineyards you've planted, and you're not going to drink that wine. You're not going to eat that bread. Instead, your enemy is going to come in, and basically everything that you have labored for is going to be taken away from you. So that's the kind of language that is used in the covenant

curses. Let me just give you one example. Deuteronomy 28, 33 says, a nation that you have not known shall eat up the fruit of your ground and all of your labors, and you shall be only oppressed and crushed continually so that's the background here and god is basically saying that's not going to happen the grain is going to be yours the wine is going to be yours in fact you're going to gather together you're going to enjoy the wine in my in the courts of my sanctuary you're going to eat the grain you're going to praise the lord so just you know taking this language from the torah covenant connected and using that to describe the blessings that will come with the servant of the lord yeah i mean what is the the curse is there is pretty

straightforward where it's like uh if you serve the lord well he's generous and so he's gonna you know let you drink your own wine and eat your own bread i think i mean he don't need your wine bread you know but uh if you don't if you don't want to serve the lord well it's like the old bob dylan song well you're going to serve somebody and the other person you're going to serve if you're not serving the lord not as good because he's going to drink up your wine and eat up your bread and all that stuff and then uh this this hey i'm going to be a non-server is not an option so choose wisely yeah i'm gonna choose to worship no one uh that's not on the list there's a b c and d and that's none of them none of the above so you are going to serve someone

yeah yeah so yeah i mean this this is the this is kind of how uh paul talks in and people sometimes be like how does this work exactly where paul will refer to himself as having a master but also being absolutely free yeah right and you're like well which is it paul like i mean do you have a master i mean paul referred himself as a slave you know and i mean that's the greek word i mean sometimes it you know sometimes your bible softens it up a little bit and it's a servant or something but that's not what that is slave that's what it is yeah Yeah. And how does that work? Well, Paul understands, which is a great thing to know, that you're going to belong to somebody. There's no option not to. And it just so happens that

there's one person and one person only that you could belong to who desires you to be free. That's how it works. Yeah. Yeah, that's the beautiful irony of the Christian life, right? Luther summed it up so Well, I don't know if I can say it word for word, but on the freedom of the Christian, right? A Christian is perfectly free, Lord of all, subject to none. Okay? A Christian is the dutiful servant of all, subject to all. Yeah.

That's the irony, right? And you're right. You're going to be a slave. You're going to serve someone, but the only person you can serve and at the same time be free is Christ himself. Yeah. It's great. Yeah. Good stuff.

Okay, let's wrap up this chapter, verse 10 through 12. Go through, go through the gates. When Isaiah gets excited, he doubles things several times. So go through, go through. You can just kind of hear the excitement in his voice. He's going to say, build up, build up in just a minute. So go through, go through the gates. Prepare the way for the people.

Build up, build up the highway. Clear it of stones. Lift up a signal over the peoples. Look, behold, the Lord has proclaimed to the end of the earth, say to the daughter of Zion, behold, your salvation comes. Behold, his reward is with him and his recompense is before him. And they shall be called the holy people, the redeemed of the Lord. And you shall be called sought out, a city not forsaken. so yeah multiple times isaiah gets uh gets excited and he uses these double imperatives

he does it back in chapter 51 52 uh 57 but here it's go through go through build up build up get everything ready right go through the gates get everything ready for the people let's build a highway get all those stones out of the way and while you're at it wave the flag lift up a signal for the peoples. He's used that language two other times. Isaiah 11, which is a chapter that focuses upon the Messiah as the son of David, says that he shall stand as a signal for the peoples. So same thing's happening here. Lift up a signal for the peoples. You'll see it again in Isaiah 49, 22. So get these gates open, get the highway built, lift up a signal because God's about to do something he's got three beholds behold the lord is proclaimed behold your salvation comes behold

his reward is with him so god is making this known everywhere north south east and west to the end of the earth and the addressee is the daughter of zion that her salvation is coming and this salvation is not just some sort of abstract release because it goes on to say his reward is with him so the salvation is embodied of course it's embodied in the messiah he's coming his reward his recompense is with him and the result as it ends verse 12 is going to be that when he comes with salvation does everything that his people are going to be the holy people they're no longer going to be enslaved they're going to be now the redeemed of the lord because he's going to be their next of kin and step up to buy them back.

And they shall be called sought out, a city not forsaken. Kind of a cool connection there, by the way, to Psalm 52. Most of us know Psalm 22, rather. Most of us know that in the Aramaic version, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani, which Jesus quotes on the cross. but in the in the hebrew the verb that would be used there is azav so that's the same verb that's at the root of a city not forsaken so it's a city not forsaken because christ himself was forsaken so as a result of his work therefore his people will be called a city not forsaken yeah the

beginning of this in verse 10, it sounds a little John the Baptist, right? Like, hey, you got to prepare that way. You got to build up a highway. You got to make it straight, flat, right? That sounds like John the Baptist saying something's coming, I mean, real soon. Isaiah might have been saying this way back, but I'm telling you, the day has arrived. If you weren't preparing the way and you weren't clearing the highway before, you really need to be doing that now uh which is great uh this is this is very much you know even just behold your salvation comes you know like this is this is very kind of stuff john the baptist would do you know behold the lamb of god who takes away the sins of the world uh so that's all super cool uh what a title

to be given though think about this as your name like if you're just going to be called sought out like that's great uh like who are you oh i'm the one the lord sought out that's who i am like i'm the one he like went through all these lengths to find that's pretty that's pretty awesome i mean i like that i'll take that yeah i'll take that too you know the disciple whom jesus loved like yeah yeah you know who i am i'm the disciple that jesus sought out yeah i'm sought out and not forsaken that's my name that's what i'm called that's what god calls me the sought out not forsaken one all right i like yeah i mean we need to we need more churches that are called that what's this church a church not forsaken that's that's what we're that's what we're called i was thinking too

the way this uh way verse 12 begins it should be called the the holy people uh this reminds me of way back in Exodus 19, you know, this covenant language about you'd be a kingdom of priest and a holy nation. And that is, I mean, certainly God called them and made them his own and sanctified them. But this is still couched in kind of if-then language back in Exodus 19. This is part of the covenant, right? Nowhere in verse 12 does it say, and if they will, whatever, then they shall be called

the holy people. Well, there's no if here because they have nothing to do with it. They were the ones who had to be sought out. They didn't come seeking the Lord. They had to be sought out. They weren't the ones who woke up one day and were distraught over their impurities and thought, man, we need to sanctify ourselves. No, they're just like, they're called the holy people. That means he sanctified them.

He's made them such. And they were the ones who were enslaved. They were trapped. couldn't rescue themselves just like the israelites in in egypt so they had to have a next of kin come show up and to redeem them so verse 12 is just bursting with monergism right god alone doing the work for for his people he's making them holy he's redeeming them he's seeking them out in as a result of that he makes sure that they're not going to be not going to be forsaken well i I mean, and you even see this in verse 11 when it says, you know, behold, your salvation comes.

Okay, that's good. Behold, his reward is with him. Well, okay, wait a minute. So my salvation is coming, and that salvation is an individual person. That's what your salvation is a person because he has a reward with him. So, like, your salvation is a him, right, which is great. and he's got all the stuff like so like his his reward's not with you you know he's got he's got everything yeah this is uh we see this the same kind of language applied specifically

to him on palm sunday so zechariah 9 9 has rejoiced greatly o daughter of zion shout o daughter of jerusalem behold your king is coming to you righteous and having salvation Well, that's an echo here of Isaiah, and of course, that's quoted by Matthew in the entrance on Palm Sunday. So he has salvation. He is salvation. He's embodiment of salvation for his people. Yeah, yeah, that's good stuff. Yeah, very, very monogistic.

There's not a lot of you doing stuff here. I mean, you're the one that's going to be saved. He's got a reward that is with him, not with you. So you're called a holy people, redeemed of the Lord. So he first calls you this, which makes you this, right? So when the Lord calls you something, that's what you are, and then goes and seeks you out, and that's how you know you're not forsaken, right? You can't be sought out and forsaken.

That can't be the case. So, yeah, it really is a text where you have God doing all the work when it comes to saving you. yeah and a great way to great way to wrap up the chapter and we're out of time so great way to end the episode too it is a great way to end the episode because the the lord's day of vengeance is coming and you know that we don't seems like maybe we should get into that next next episode we'll let this one lie right here yeah sounds good we'll see you then all right see you then