40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Isaiah 65:11-66:3 (Episode 506)

Episode Date: May 6, 2026

The blessed person is the one who has their sin forgotten. Everything must be made new. And the promises of redemption are many. 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 of the podcasts that are living over there. And while you're over there, make sure you check out everything else that 1517 is doing. Events, articles, academies. Sign up for that Chad Bird Academy. Sign up for that national event out in San Diego.

We want to hang out with you. We're going to be talking about the scriptures. So, you know, you like this podcast? You must be interested in the scriptures. What else would you be doing here? So go and go check that out. We'd love to hang out with you. Chad, we are in Isaiah 65.

We are coming down to the end. I mean, I think this is the second-to-last episode, the penultimate episode of Isaiah. Where we ended, God says, hey, I've been here. Here I am all day long just reaching out my hand. It's just out there. And are you accepting this hand? Are you grabbing hold of this hand? No, you're an obstinate people.

and the ways that you walk in, they're not good. So, no, you don't ever take this hand. Now, you do do some stuff. You know, you'll do some offerings here and there and stuff, and pretty much I hate all of that. So everything you do is smoke in my nostrils. So this is just like God is like, I am steaming right now. That's what's happening.

The smoke in his nostrils I envision is not just like him like sniffing around, smelling your offerings, but smoke coming out of his nostrils because he has ever seen those cartoons, you know, where a guy gets so angry, his face gets all red, and then finally he just like starts smoking. This is how God is feeling. Yeah. But we ended with a little bit of good news where God says, I mean, yeah, that's going to result in some judgment, but there's not going be a cluster of grapes left. And I can do something with just one cluster, man. Maybe I can plant a whole new vineyard with that. Yeah, and that theme of a remnant is going to be picked up in verse 13, where we're going to hear over and over about my servants. So it's

really leading us into chapter 66 too, which is the last chapter of Isaiah, where you have a clear contrast set up between the two different groups, those who listen to the word of the Lord and those who don't. Those who are actually part of his family and those who have rejected him and thus are at the very end of Isaiah are going to be in this kind of vast, vast graveyard. So we're kind of getting into that here in the middle of 65. So he's going to, first of all, in verse 11 and 12, he's going to talk about people who have abandoned him. And then he's going to shift in verse 13 to talk about his servants and contrast them with the other group so i'll read 11 and 12 but you who forsake the lord who forget my holy mountain who set a table for fortune and in your

bible's fortune is that's capitalized because it's a name for a uh a deity who set a table for fortune and fill cups of mixed wine for destiny same with destiny capital letters because these are in reference to a couple of minor deities. Set a table for fortune, fill cups and mix wine for destiny. So you guys, God says, I will destine you to the sword and all of you shall bow down to the slaughter. Why? He says, because when I called, you did not answer. When I spoke, you did not listen, but you did what was evil in my eyes and chose what I did not delight in. So that ending in verse 12, I mean, that just, you can't get much clearer than that. It's right in black and white. They didn't listen to God. He called, they didn't answer, he spoke, they closed

up their ears. And not just that, but they actively did what was evil in the eyes of God and delighted in those things that God didn't choose. And we have an example of that with this idolatry with a table set for fortune and and mixed wine uh full for for destiny we don't know a whole lot about uh these two minor deities uh fortune in in hebrew is gad and then destiny is many uh but whatever their connection was i mean there's a lot of there's uh the greek and the Roman deity for fortune. So this was kind of its Semitic equivalent. People are worshiping. They're forsaking the Lord and they're worshiping these other deities. And at the same time, neglecting, forgetting God's holy mountain where he has dwelt. So that's anyway going to be the

focus, the end of the focus, at least for now, upon that group. We'll hear more about God's servants in just a second. Yeah, God's not too angry to make a play on words here, right? It's like, hey, you filling up those cups of mixed wine, huh, for destiny? Hey, I've got some destiny for you. Let me tell you what I've destined you for. Yeah. Yeah, it's quite the wordplay. It's like, oh, you like destiny, do you?

Well, I'll give you all the destiny that you want. You shall become like that which you worship. It's a dead God. Well, I'm going to destiny you for the sword and for slaughter. as opposed to the group we're going to hear about next uh which is where we'll go in verse 13 and i'll read 13 through 16 therefore thus says the lord god behold my servants shall eat but you the you here referring back to the people we just talked about you shall be hungry behold my servants shall drink but you should be thirsty behold my servants shall rejoice but you shall be put to

shame. So a pretty common prophetic contrast that's set up there. You see this in the Psalms as well. And just by way of reminder, we talked about this several episodes ago, but there's a switch that takes place in Isaiah where you hear all about the servant in the singular, the servant of the Lord and everything he is, everything he's going to accomplish. But then after that final servant song in Isaiah 50 into 52, and then into 53, there's a switch to a plurality of servants so we become servants of god in that one servant of the lord so the plural the group we would call just the church the community the faithful they are referred to in that latter part of isaiah so here you have the servants eating and the other group

going hungry they're drinking other groups going thirsty so on and so forth and then in verse 14, he goes on. Behold, my servant shall sing for gladness of heart, but you shall cry out for pain of heart and shall wail for breaking of spirit. You shall leave your name to my chosen for a curse and the Lord God will put you to death. But his servants, he will call by another name so that he who blesses himself in the land shall bless himself by the God of truth. And he who takes an oath in the land shall swear by the God of truth, because the former troubles are forgotten and are hidden from my eyes. So yeah, these, you know, the folks who are setting this wine for, setting this table for destiny and doing all the idolatry, they're going to be the ones who

are deprived of the gifts of God, cry out in pain of heart for breaking of spirit. Even their name is going to be basically a curse. But the servants of God, in addition to being blessed by God and gifted by God, are going to be called by this another name. And that's picked up multiple times in Revelation where you have the believers receiving a new name

or a new name that no one knows or the name of God or the name of God is written on their foreheads. It's all building upon promises like we have in Isaiah where another name or a new name is given to the people of God. And this is just a way in Isaiah, in a revelation of saying, God's going to write his name on his people.

They're going to be his people so that they bless by the God of truth and swear by the God of truth. Yeah, I like this, where it talks about at the end, like, so is the distinction here just like some people were like really bad and other people were great and perfect? and that's how I'm going to decide. But it's not how he's going to decide. How he decides is just based on what—well, I have my hand out here,

and some people maybe grabbed it. I spoke some words, and some people maybe heard, other people ignored. And what you have is that they're going to swear by the God of truth because the former troubles are forgotten and are hidden from my eyes. When you hear about, like, all the blessings that maybe you might get from God, and, you know, there could be a lot of them, the one that comes up a lot in the Bible is, like, blessed is the man whose iniquity is covered, whose transgressions are not remembered. this kind of this is the this is the real blessed person here where it's like not that you don't have anything but that god is like yeah i'm gonna cover it and i'm gonna forget it and this is this is the the forgetfulness of god like the willing forgetfulness of god where it's like there are

certain things that i uh i'm deciding to not remember you know i think paul has this section or at least a section like this from isaiah in mind in second corinthians 5 because we haven't read it yet but the very next verse says behold i create new heavens and a new earth right so he's going to shift here to talk about a new creation that is coming but he's just talked about the former troubles are forgotten and hidden from my eyes now paul in second in Corinthians 5, 17 says, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Okay. There's your creation language. And then he says this, the old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. So just to piggyback on what you were saying. Yeah. Well, so what is the old that's passed

away? What are the former troubles that have been forgotten? Well, everything that you had against you right all your sins yeah everything well that was yeah it's part of the old and part of your former troubles part of your all your sins all this old stuff it's gone it's forgotten it's hidden from the eyes of god it's passed away and then what's replaced it is the new the new creation the new that has come the new things we have we have in christ and of course there's a you know there's an eschatological dimension this as well but as far as applying to the individual well in christ we have that new creation and because of that all that stuff is part of the past hidden from god's eyes forgotten by him and thank god he he does not

have a good memory when it comes to the things that he has forgotten he literally puts them out of his mind they're not going he's not gonna like remember like oh yeah i'd forgotten what chad did 10 years ago he's like no he purposely excludes those forever from his memory yeah Yeah, you hear people all the time say, like, I forgive, but, you know, I don't forget. You know, and this is, like, put forward as, like, the wise thing to do. So, like, forgiveness is what—that would make you a good person, but not forgetting would also make you a wise person, see? So you want to be a forgiving person because it's a good way to be, but you don't want to be a fool. And so you must also learn.

and uh god uh i mean jesus is god's own fool so he uh in christ god says hey now i'm gonna forgive and forget like that's what that's what i want to do yeah the parable of labors in the vineyard uh is the one that uh i always think of in that respect he keeps sending person after person then at the end he's like i'll send my son no respect to him like don't no they won't I mean, look at their track record, right? This is not going to end well. But that's God. Yeah.

He keeps on sending and sending because, well, it's the only way it's going to get done. Yep. Okay. So we are now switching to a section that I love. It's actually a beautiful ending here to chapter 65. I think I'm going to read all of it because you kind of have to hear all of it together. So when I'm reading it, for all the folks out there listening, I want you to listen, but I want you to put your Genesis ears on right now.

So take off your Isaiah ears and just put your Genesis ears in and listen to all of the creation, Genesis 1 through 3 really, all that kind of language that's going to be woven into this promise. For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind but be glad and rejoice forever in that which i create for behold i create jerusalem to be a joy and her people a gladness i will rejoice in jerusalem and be glad in my people no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress no more shall there be in it an infant who lives but a few days

or an old man who does not fill out his days for the young man shall die a hundred years old and the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed they shall build houses and inhabit them they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit they shall not build and another inhabit they shall not plant and another eat for like the days of a tree and i have to pause here because in the Septuagint, it adds tree of life here, which is kind of an interesting addition. So, for like the days of a tree, or if you take the Greek version, like the days of the tree of life shall be the days of my people, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labor in vain or bear children for calamity, for they shall be the offspring of the blessed of the Lord and

their descendants with them. Before they call, I will answer. While they are yet speaking, I will hear the wolf and the lamb shall graze together the lion shall eat straw like the ox and dust shall be the serpent's food they shall not hurt or destroy and all my holy mountain says the lord now that is the gospel of the lord there yeah that's it can't always say that in parts of isaiah but definitely that's some isaiah isaiah gospel there so i first thing i mean there's a lot we talk about here. We'll try and keep moving. But one of the first things that jumps out at me in this section is how there's a focus on God creating a new heavens and a new earth, but there's also a focus upon him creating Jerusalem. And you see this same thing,

I don't, several years ago when I first noticed this, this same move from kind of the big perspective, heavens and earth, to Jerusalem is the same move that John makes in Revelation 21. Very beginning of that chapter, he says, I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven, first earth passed away. The sea was no more. And he says, I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. So it's a focus upon kind of the big picture. And then it narrows to Jerusalem. And this same kind of narrow focus continues to the very end where you have, they shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, says the Lord. And I think what's happening in Isaiah is the same thing that happens in Revelation, where you can talk about the new

creation or the new heavens and the new earth, or you can talk about the new Jerusalem. You can talk about all of this because it's really all the same reality. I mean, it's like a worldwide mountain. It's a new heavens, a new earth. It's the new Jerusalem. It's all different ways of trying to use language to capture that which is beyond human speech all of the the newness that comes with the resurrection and the the the recreation that christ is going to bring with him but anyway that's one of the first things that that jumps out at me and in this section well i mean also like um if you were to say like god was going to create you know if you're reading this you know god's going to create like a everything new it's over one thing there's

one thing that he's just going to kind of rescue you might think it would be jerusalem right um by saying that like that he will have a new jerusalem this is another way of saying i mean everything is going to be new uh even the holy city is going to be new that's not like the one thing that i transfer over to my new creation because it's good the way it is no it's not good the way it is like everything including the most holy city all has to be made new yeah that's that's a great point yeah there's nothing in this creation that god's gonna look at and be like oh i think that's okay just the way it is yeah we can just like slide that we can grandfather that one in no it's everything has to be made new uh even those who are still alive at the second

coming of christ will still be made new right not just gonna like oh okay well you know i didn't die and here I am. I'm just living in the new creation. No, no, you will be changed. Everything will be changed. You know, one of the things that's striking about this to me, I noticed just because I was recently talking about this to somebody on Easter, we all went to my parents' house, and then my grandma, who died in January, she was 97, we went up to the cemetery where she's buried and uh it's an old cemetery and like a really really small town by a small town i mean that there's like 300 people that live in this town and it's like everyone who ever lived in this town is in this cemetery you know it goes way way back um you know before the civil war

and stuff one of the things that's interesting we i was walking around with my brother-in-law uh kind of around we were kind of looking at some of the the headstones and stuff and there was an era apparently where um they had the same headstones for for infants and they've got like a little like angel on them i mean they're very old these are all from the 1800s so it's hard to see um and they're all like you you're looking at the dates in these and there's like bunches and bunches of them that are you know days old because of the birth date and the death sometimes it's the next day sometimes it's six weeks later they're all very young and it's like really sad right where you're like man there's a lot of kids dying back this wasn't like you know

it's a long time ago but not crazy long ago you go back um 200 years and it's like it was just so common for infants not to make it you know um and you and you and this this graveyard is real evidence of that there was like man that's a lot of that's a lot of kids like that that are in here there's probably just as many kids as adults in that particular graveyard like i said it's it's so old and that that i was thinking about that as you were reading this where it's like the where emphasis now we don't have that that same thing doesn't happen now like obviously like infant mortality rates are not what they used to be but at the time that this was written i mean infants died all the time right for any number of things and yeah um and you have to so

you have to think about what kind of a promise that is i mean because probably people had a lot of kids back then but if you were someone who had six kids there's almost like zero chance that you're like you don't lose one as an infant oh yeah i mean i i suspect that i mean i don't have any numbers to back this up, but given what we know about infant mortality, there were probably very few families that had more than two or three children that had not lost at least one, if not more children who were just a few, a few days old. That's why you'll sometimes hear numbers saying, oh yeah, people back in, you know, choose the century. You know, the average lifespan was only in the late thirties, early forties. Well, actually it wasn't, that was maybe the average,

but it's so low because so many infants died the median age was much higher but so many infants and toddlers died that it brings those numbers way down yeah it was the reality of almost all human history yeah so like this you know this might not hit you exactly because of modern medicine and like i mean um but this is quite the promise for for people back then you So you're like, hey, and you can see sort of how much God hates that. I mean, it's real indicative of the curse, right? Yeah. Well, this line down in verse 23, so you're referring to like verse 20.

So an infant who lives but a few days, and then 23 is kind of the twin to that. they shall not labor in vain or bear children for for calamity you know as as someone who's who's lost a child lost lost luke man what a promise you know you're not bearing children who are gonna die young very young or in their 20s or whatever it might be so yeah those kind of promises, they, they hit home along with everything else. I mean, these are the whole, uh, I mean, for us, when we hear, you know, of course I'm going to inhabit the house I build, you know, of course I'm going to eat the fruit of my vineyard, whatever. Well, that was not a, uh, a guarantee back in Israel's day or a lot of, a lot of history, you know, you, and we could,

we could say the thing, we could make the changes and say the same thing a day. You know, sometimes people, they work really hard to build a business up and something goes wrong. And all of a sudden, it's not theirs anymore. You know, it belongs to the bank or it's bought out by somebody else or whatever, whatever the situation might be. Well, none of that's going to happen. And keep in mind too, that all of this is, I mean, there's some literal stuff here, of course, but this is also just trying to use language from creation, language from everyday life, poetic language to give us a full color picture of what the new creation is going to be like. So when it says that you know there's going to be uh where's my my reference here about uh yeah the young

man shall die a hundred years old well it's not saying that people are going to die in the new creation it's just saying that yeah uh yeah young people 100 years old and they're still young right they're going to live forever i mean everyone's going to live forever in the new creation but it's a it's a way of saying uh the same way of saying that but in a way that's maybe like putting an actual number on it, which is there's nobody that doesn't make it to 100. Whereas now you're like, basically nobody makes it to 100. And you're like, yeah, but everyone's gonna, right? It's young, man. And the contrast there where it says a sinner 100 years old shall be accursed. I like Alec Mateer's comment on this. He says, you know, for the sake of argument,

even if a sinner were able to escape detection for a century, the curse would still search him out and destroy him. So that's what's kind of behind this. A lot of this is, I mean, the whole building houses and inhabiting them and planting vineyards and eating their fruit. That language is taken from Deuteronomy 28, Leviticus 26, the covenant curses. So there are no more curses that are happening. Instead, people are going to live like, you know, the days of a tree, century upon century upon century. And then when we get to the very end, or close to the end, those last two verses, when we hear about the wolf and the lamb grazing together and the lion eating straw like the ox, we've already heard that language back in Isaiah 11, where the wolf

dwells with the lamb and the leopard lies down with the young goat. So this is the restoration. This is Eden language, Eden restored, but of course, Eden improved. That's where this language is drawn from. But what you don't see in Isaiah 11 is that final line about dust being the serpent's food. Well, that takes us, of course, right back to Genesis 3 and the curse upon the serpent, the curse upon really the one the serpent is representing here, the devil. So you've got mostly positive language, but it's interspersed here with also promises about the destruction of evil. So it's not like the serpent is all of a sudden going to be saved and no longer crawl in his belly and eat dust.

No, he will be destroyed. And then it finishes with, they shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountains, says the Lord. I like, too, this promise in 24. Say, hey, before you even say anything, I'm going to answer you. And while you're yet speaking, I will hear. This is basically like, how close to God are you going to be in this new place? Well, I mean, you're going to be thinking about something to say, and I'm going to give you the answer. Yeah.

God's going to be so close, he's going to be interrupting you all the time. I don't know if this happens to you dad but my my wife and I will be driving somewhere and I'll be thinking something and she will say it oh yeah or she'll be thinking something and I will say it and I'll shake my head I was like I mean it's good it's it's it's the point it's kind of weird you know but it's in a in a good way that's kind of what this is like you know I'm thinking I'm gonna ask God for something's out here you go well I didn't even ask for yeah but I you were about to. I knew what you needed and I gave it to you beforehand. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of grace. I mean, we could go point by point through this, but I think just kind of soaking it all in as we

have is the best way to do that. Just a lot of beautiful promises about what is to come. And John then, in the apocalypse of John, he's going to pick up a lot of the same kind of language to describe the vision that he saw especially in in those last two chapters of revelation yeah it's great yep good stuff all right well uh we are now stepping foot inside the final chapter of isaiah i did not look uh to see how many episodes we have on isaiah i think have we been in here for 14 months maybe 13 it's been i know it's been over a year it's been over a year yes This has been a while, so we'll begin chapter 66 of this episode. Of course, we won't attempt to finish it, but we'll at least get through a little bit in these next 10 minutes.

So I'll start out with the first two verses. Thus says the Lord, Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. What is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest? all these things my hands has made my hand has made so all these things came to be declares the lord but this is the one to whom i will look he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word it's kind of a it's kind of a nice uh segue from what he was just talking about We're in a sense kind of moving backward here because the final part of Isaiah 65 put us into the new creation. I mean, we were all in Revelation 21 and 22 where the old has passed away completely and everything is now made, made new.

So a full restoration of creation. Now in Isaiah 66, we're going to kind of take a step back from that. And that really shouldn't surprise us because Isaiah does this all the time. He has this dance where he's going backward and forward, past, present, future, future, present, past. And so here we're going to go back to the past because in just a minute, we're going to hear about people committing murder and all kinds of atrocities and all kinds of ritual impurities. So that's going to be coming up in just a minute. But I like the segue because we just heard about the creation of a new heaven and a new earth. And now he's going to pick up that language as he begins a chapter by saying, oh, yeah, heaven, this heaven right now, what's my throne and earth is my footstool.

You can kind of picture God in this massive image enthroned in heaven and its feet are down here on the earth. So all creation is where he rules. So he says, well, you're going to build a house for me. Good luck. This is familiar language, Chad. God lets you know that heaven is his throne and earth is his footstool. And he also lets you know, I mean, he let David know, this house building thing that you want to do for me is a little bit, there's a little preposterous. Yeah, right.

Solomon will say the same thing when they dedicate the temple. He's like, okay, I know heaven and earth cannot contain you, much less this house that I built. I mean, it's very good and gracious of God, of course, for him to put his name, his presence, his power, all that kind of stuff, his glory into the Holy of Holies so we know exactly where to find him, right? But never get the impression that, oh, we got God boxed in here. You know, he's stuck in that Holy of Holies and he's not going anywhere, nor get the impression that because God has graciously put his presence there, that you are now kind of had this magical hold on God, right? That was what was happening in Jeremiah's day. People thought, oh, we can go out and we can commit adultery and murder and do all this stuff and then run back to the temple and say, oh, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord. Doesn't work that way.

So God is reminding us here, especially, I think, in Isaiah 66, that his focus isn't on a supposed house you built for him or whatever. He says, here's what I'm looking at. I'm looking at the one who is humble and contrite in spirit and who trembles at my word. That's where my focus is. Yeah. Isaiah is wrapping up, right? And so I feel like in chapter 66, he kind of is going to try to do like a little bit of everything, right? So he's going to go back and he's going to go forward.

He's going to do it all. Like this is the like, okay, and in conclusion, this is what's going on here. So a lot of this you do feel like is stuff he sort of said before, but he is now like saying it all together. Yeah, that's very much what happens here. In fact, when you get to the very end of the chapter, he's going to bring up new moon and Sabbath. And we'll talk about that next episode. But that's the way he started out. He started talking about how they had profaned the new moon and the Sabbath. So he is really—he's like a preacher who's been—he preaches a really long sermon, and then he takes, you know, one final long breath and says, in conclusion, and then he summarizes, you know, the five or six points that he's made. Well, that's what you're looking at here. So this is what God is looking for. That reminds me of—I went to my dad's church on Easter, and it reminds me of what—he had a point in the sermon.

My dad preaches longer sermons than the typical Lutheran does. You know, that's just how it is. At one point he says, you know, that's pretty good. I could end right there. Of course, I'm not going to. Well, I'll take that over the sermons where you think in your mind, oh, he's wrapping up. And it turns out, no, he's not. Might as well let you know.

Like, I'm not. I could, but I'm not going to. Yeah. Let's just be upfront about this. Listen, you might be thinking I'm done. I'm not. So just settle back and listen, because I got a lot more to say. Yeah.

All right. So that's the way he's going to start out, by telling you God's too big to get boxed in by some temple that we built him. And the one he's really looking for is this humble, contrite in spirit, broken in spirit. You could also translate that. And not just someone who hears the word. In this case, he uses the image of trembling at his word. The word for tremble is used in a few different spots to describe someone who is anxiously awaiting news, which I think is a pretty good way to think about this. I mean, you're just like, you know, think of those times when, you know, maybe it's bad news, maybe it's good news.

But, man, you cannot sit still. Yeah. Right. You just kind of stand up, you walk around. Maybe it's a hospital situation or maybe it's, you know, some exciting that's coming, a phone call is supposed to come and you're like antsy, you're moving around. That's the image here. You know, you just can't wait to hear what God has to say. You're trembling at his word. Yeah. There's like an anticipation there, right? That's kind of like what it is. I remember the first – and this is a totally different thing, but it just reminds me of that because I was sitting in my car with my daughter, and it was the first time she had accepted a phone call from a college basketball coach. and you're she's like anticipating like okay is this like the first time a college is going to offer me a basketball scholarship well the phone call goes on for a couple minutes and it's just like hey how you doing how's like school going how's your season going and like it's all just like whatever like right yeah let's get on to the real point of this conversation and so she you

know you're trying to you're answering all these questions and stuff and she was like uh and then he said you know he gets to the part finally was like well uh the reason i'm calling is and you know then you made this offer and she's like shaking right you know and uh and yeah it was like an intense five minutes leading up to that where you're like well maybe he's not going to hey we just want to get to know you know uh there's a lot of build-up involved in this thing and uh yeah that's what that's what reminds me of like trembling there like are you gonna you're gonna come through you're gonna say it are you gonna do it or uh yeah so it's good yeah oh that's a that's a great that's a great example i think i mean we rings true with all of us we've

been in those situations where uh we're just shaking as we hold the phone or shaking as we're talk to someone and in this case we're trembling as we wait for god to speak yeah i think we can do one more uh one more verse uh verse three what yeah verse three for sure it's it's a bit of a it's a bit unclear let me put it that way so the esv and a lot of translations make this a simile by adding the word like. So the first line is, he who slaughters an ox is like one who kills a man. He who sacrifices a lamb,

like one who breaks a dog's neck. Except there is no like in the Hebrew. Those words are added in English translation. So what you have is one who slaughters an ox, one who kills a man. One who sacrifices a lamb, one who breaks a dog's neck. One presents a grain offering,

one offers pig's blood one makes a memorial offering of frankincense one blesses an idol they have chosen their own ways and their soul delights and their abominations so you got three possibilities here either there is some sort of simile going on where god is saying yeah that guy who's slaughters an ox well he's he is so far from me that he's just like one who is a murderer That's one possibility. The other possibility is that this is describing two groups of people. You got one guy over here slaughtering an ox or sacrificing a lamb or presenting a grain offering or making a moral offering, and they're doing that which is right. You have other guys over here who are killing a man, breaking a dog's neck, offering pig's blood, blessing an idol.

So this could be setting up the two different groups. the other possibility is kind of like the first one i put forward where this these are describing the same actions of a person so he's engaging in hypocrisy he's doing what seems to be right over here but he's also doing that which is obviously evil over here i don't know where i land on that i kind of tend towards seeing these as two different two different groups because two different groups are going to come up quite a bit in isaiah 66 but it ends by saying They've chosen their own ways, their soul delights, and their abominations. So that's going to be pointing toward the group that are engaged in the obvious evils.

And we're going to hear more about those as we go through the rest of the chapter. Yeah, it definitely seems like it could be either of those things. I will admit that initially reading it, the – yeah, I don't like the like thing either. Even if that was the case, even if that's what you were trying to do, something like that, I would still think it would be better, like, maybe you slaughter an ox. Maybe you kill a man. Maybe you sacrifice a lamb. Maybe you break a dog's neck.

Maybe you present a grain offering. Maybe you present pig's blood. Maybe you make a memorial offering of frankincense. Maybe you bless an idol. Hey, I don't really care. If you've chosen your own way, you're an abomination. Right? Yeah.

You could have like this sort of – this contrasting thing without it being this is like that. It could be more I think – look, you might just be out there slaughtering animals for sacrifices or you might be killing people and killing pets or dogs and stuff. You could think you got all the offerings right. I'm just telling you if you – because you could still do all that and choose your own way. there's a way that seems right to a man but it's end is the way of death how have you seen it in Isaiah where it's like yeah you're doing the stuff

right but you're not doing the stuff which is yeah you get an A plus for going through the actions of worship I mean you're out worshiping everybody at the same time it's smoking God's nostrils yeah so I don't know for sure but like if I was going to read it

as not two groups of people I would or maybe this is like the bridging between the two like maybe it is two groups of people but god is saying hey because he does say these have chosen their own way you're like well who's these well maybe all of them right yeah so whether you're the guy who's going through all the acts of worship or whether you're the guy out there killing dogs and people either way if you've chosen your own way it's not god's way yeah you're an abomination and we'll pick it up next episode but he's like I've got the same treatment for both of them.

All right, so one more episode to go on Isaiah. That's it. Next episode, we will wrap up the prophet Isaiah. Chad, I will see you then. All right, see you then.