The Bible Recap - Day 198 (Isaiah 18-22) - Year 6
Episode Date: July 16, 2024SHOW NOTES: - Head to our Start Page for all you need to begin! - Join the RECAPtains - Check out the TBR Store - Show credits FROM TODAY’S RECAP - John 16:13 - John 14:26 - Isaiah 55:8 - Rate an...d Review! BIBLE READING & LISTENING: Follow along on the Bible App, or to listen to the Bible, try Dwell! SOCIALS: The Bible Recap: Instagram | Facebook | Twitter/X | TikTok D-Group: Instagram | Facebook | Twitter/X TLC: Instagram | Facebook D-GROUP: D-Group is brought to you by the same team that brings you The Bible Recap. TBR is where we read the Bible, and D-Group is where we study the Bible. D-Group is an international network of Bible study groups that meet weekly in homes, churches, and online. Find or start one near you today! DISCLAIMER: The Bible Recap, Tara-Leigh Cobble, and affiliates are not a church, pastor, spiritual authority, or counseling service. Listeners and viewers consume this content on a voluntary basis and assume all responsibility for the resulting consequences and impact.
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Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.
Today we continue with more oracles to the pagan nations in the areas surrounding Judah,
and some very surprising stuff happens in today's prophecies.
We start out with a mystery nation that is beyond the rivers of Kush.
Kush is another name for ancient Ethiopia,
though it's a bit further south now than it was in ancient times,
so it's possible that this points to the location of modern Ethiopia.
They're ascending for help to avoid disaster,
and then Isaiah calls for all the people of the world to do the same thing.
He prophesies that eventually the Gentile nations
will bring tribute to Yahweh and acknowledge His supremacy. all the people of the world to do the same thing. He prophesies that eventually the Gentile nations
will bring tribute to Yahweh and acknowledge his supremacy.
Next, we move on to Egypt.
Just a quick refresher.
Egypt enslaved the people of Israel for 400 years
and only let them go after God brought a string of plagues
and death their way.
They're racist toward the Israelites,
they're renowned for their knowledge,
and they're a major world power.
So what does God have to say to this long-standing powerful enemy of his people?
He's going to confuse their wisdom, he's going to oppress them the way they've oppressed others, and he's even going to turn them against each other. Good riddance, right? You'd think,
but Yahweh often has grace tucked up His sleeve.
We start to see it in 19.18.
It says,
In that day there will be five cities in the land of Egypt
that speak the land of Canaan
and swear allegiance to the Lord of hosts.
What? It gets better.
Verse 21 says,
And the Lord will make himself known to the Egyptians.
But that's not all.
Verse 23 says,
In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria,
and Assyria will come into Egypt and Egypt into Assyria,
and the Egyptians will worship with the Assyrians.
Assyria and Egypt, two of the most powerful enemies of God's people,
will worship him.
In verse 25, he calls them
Egypt, my people, and Assyria, the work of my hands, right alongside Israel, my
inheritance. This is stunning and really reveals God's heart of love for a
multinational family. He continues to show us the beautiful diversity of his
family. And as you're pict the beautiful diversity of his family.
And as you're picturing this,
try to remember that none of these people are white.
Don't worry, we'll join this family eventually,
white people, but we're still a few hundred years off.
I know we're in all the paintings,
but those are paintings, not pictures.
In chapter 20, the oracles are interrupted by a section
where Isaiah performs a prophetic sign
that pertains to some present-day activity.
You know how prophets like to demonstrate things with a little bit of theater to really
drive the point home?
That's what's happening here.
Isaiah is dressed in sackcloth, the standard sign for someone who's mourning.
Then the people of Ashdod, which is a Philistine city, are attacked by Assyria.
Assyria is really taken over the whole neighborhood, and Ashdod is just a few blocks over from Judah. It seems that the people of
Ashdod sought help from Egypt and Kush, but then Assyria took them captive too,
humiliating everyone basically. And the way Isaiah demonstrated this was to go
from a state of mourning with his sackcloth on to a state of humiliation
via nudity. The description sounds a lot like a prisoner of mourning with his sackcloth on to a state of humiliation via nudity.
The description sounds a lot like a prisoner of war who's being led away barefoot and
naked and ashamed.
And apparently Isaiah did this for three years, either constantly or intermittently.
Either way, prophets do not have an easy calling, that's for sure.
And we have more evidence of that in chapter one,
where Isaiah has a vision that really disturbs him.
He has a vision of two cities in Persia
that are about to destroy Babylon,
which they did conquer about 200 years later.
Isaiah's grief over the destruction of such a wicked city
shows us how tender-hearted he can be.
And his compassion really mirrors what we saw yesterday where
God mourned over Moab.
Isaiah has a series of short oracles for other nations, all of which amount to destruction.
They want to know how long it will last, and his reply is basically,
Dawn is breaking, but it will be followed by night. Yikes.
Today we wrapped up with an oracle for Jerusalem.
We've dealt with a lot of the neighboring nations, but as always, God's people are
held to an even higher standard.
So what does Isaiah have to say to Judah?
He's crushed by what is going to happen to them.
Devastated.
Jerusalem will be attacked and destroyed.
They'll try to fortify the city and prepare it for an attack, even digging water tunnels
that you can still walk through if you visit Jerusalem today, but none of it will save
them from the attack because God has planned it.
And when Judah realizes destruction is imminent, they don't repent.
Instead, they decide to spend their final moments in self-indulgence, and their hearts
are revealed in that process.
Isaiah also has harsh words for Sheabna, the king's servant,
whose pride is really making him look foolish
in the face of everything that's happening.
Shabna has made elaborate provisions for his own death,
but God is going to put a stop to it.
It's not often, if ever, that you hear God promise to, quote,
whirrle you around and around and throw you like a ball into a wide land.
But that's what he says to Shabna in 2218.
Then God will replace Shabna
with a new chief of staff, Eliakim.
I continue to be amazed at the extent of God's power.
My God shot today came from the part
where God is talking to Egypt, His future people.
In 1903, he says,
I will confound their counsel. And in 1914, he says, the Lord has mingled within her a spirit
of confusion, and they will make Egypt stagger in all its deeds. The thought of God being sovereign
over thoughts and words, it's a little humbling, it's a lot humbling. But if you think about it, it's also
super encouraging. If God couldn't do that, how else would God the Spirit guide me into all truth,
like Jesus promised in John 16 13, or remind me of what Jesus said, like he promised in John 14 26?
To be clear, we definitely know that not every thought we think is Him speaking to us, per se.
Isaiah 55-8 makes it clear that His mind works differently than ours does.
But I'm grateful that He's willing and able to whisper His thoughts and His Word to us when we
need to know them. His thoughts fascinate me, and I want more of them all the time. He's where the joy is.
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