Recently, we began an exciting sermon series in the book of Isaiah. Specifically, we will be going through Isaiah chapters 40-66, which stand together as one of the largest bodies of prophetic texts regarding the Messiah. It also contains some of the sweetest, most authoritative declarations of the sovereignty of God, and his unwavering commitment to the redemption of his people. Josh has written a short introduction to this series (found here), which I encourage you to take a look at.

In the interest of enlarging our worship through these amazing texts, we thought it would be beneficial to take some time to help set up some context for the book of Isaiah. As we read through the Prophets, it is very beneficial to have at least a basic understanding of the events going on at the time, and the immediate events that took place thereafter. Among the chief benefits of understanding the context of the Prophets is that it "widens the eyes of our hearts" toward a greater vision of the glory of God through seeing and understanding what he has been doing throughout all of redemptive history, in order that we might have hope (Romans 15:4) and increasing joy, knowing how secure we are in the Father through Christ Jesus.

To that end, my aim in this short paper is fourfold: 1) To give you a taste of some of the glorious declarations God makes about himself through Isaiah, 2) To discuss the events both leading up to and taking place during the time of Isaiah, 3) To discuss some of the prophecies Isaiah gave regarding the kingdom of Judah, and their immediate fulfillment, and 4) To leave you with some key passages to familiarize yourself with as we worship together through this series in the coming weeks and months.

The Flavor of Isaiah: Glory

First things first. The book of Isaiah is amazing. Of course, the whole Bible is amazing. But for me, at least, the book of Isaiah is perhaps the most intense book of the Bible. It is so full of glory. I don't know how else to put it. It leaves me utterly stunned and captivated by the glory of God. Perhaps the best way to summarize what this book is all about can be found in chapter 40, verse 9, where God tells Isaiah to go up on a mountain and say to the cities of Judah, "Behold your God!" That's what God does to us through this book. He calls us to behold him -- to consider the glory of his might, and then ask ourselves with awe-struck trembling, "to whom shall we liken God? (Isaiah 40:18).

In this book, Isaiah testifies repeatedly of God’s complete and total dominion over all things (Isaiah 10:15, 14:24, 14:27, 37:26, 40:21-22, 43:11-13, 46:8-11). He speaks countless prophecies about the Messiah (Isaiah 7:14, 9:1-7, to name only a few). And he shows us the sovereign, tenderhearted plan that God had purposed before the foundation of the world: to save his people from the dominion of sin (Isaiah 30:18, 40:1-2, 43:1-2, 43:25, 44:21-22).

God uses the word "I" more in the book of Isaiah than perhaps any other book. Countless times and in countless ways, he declares to us in explicit terms who he is:

"I am the LORD; that is my name; my glory I give to no other." (Isaiah 42:8)

"I, I am the LORD, and besides me there is no savior." (Isaiah 43:11)

"I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no God." (Isaiah 44:6)

"Who is like me? Let him proclaim it. Let him declare and set it before me." (Isaiah 44:7)

"I am the LORD, who made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens." (Isaiah 44:24)

"I am God, and there is no other, I am God and there is none like me." (Isaiah 46:9)

Surely, this book is filled with some of the most glorious and absolute statements of God in all the Bible. Studying it ought to leave us face down in worship, declaring with Isaiah, “I am undone!” (Isaiah 6:5).

The Backstory

Before talking about Isaiah himself, let's talk briefly about the backstory that led up to Isaiah's life.

After the death of king Solomon around 930 BC, the kingdom of Israel was divided (1 Kings 12). Solomon's son, Rehoboam, became king of the southern kingdom which would thereafter be known as the kingdom of Judah. The capital city of Judah would remain Jerusalem. The northern kingdom, however, was given to Jeroboam, a man who had been a servant of king Solomon (1 Kings 11:26). This northern kingdom would be known simply as the kingdom of Israel, and the capital city became Samaria.

The division of the kingdom ushered in several hundred years of sin and rebellion for the people of God. From the beginning of his reign, Jeroboam turned the nation of Israel to idol worship (1 Kings 12:26-28). Likewise, Rehoboam -- whose poor leadership had been the catalyst through which the kingdom was divided to begin with (1 Kings 12:15) -- adopted the idolatry that his father had known in his later years (1 Kings 11:4), and the hearts of the people of Judah were turned from the Lord (1 Kings 14:22). From here on out, the history of these two nations would be marred by idolatry, treachery, betrayal, war, and judgment.

By the time of Isaiah, in a short 200 year span, the northern kingdom of Israel had known nine separate dynasties, as God judged the kings of Israel for their sin and brought treachery upon them (ex. 2 Kings 9:6-9). Yet even though the kings of Judah often walked in the same manner of idolatry as the kings of Israel (2 Kings 8:18), God remembered his covenant with his servant David (2 Samuel 7:16), and the line of Judah was never once broken (2 Kings 8:19, Genesis 49:10).

As the people turned further and further from the Lord, the judgment that Moses had warned the people about all those years ago was imminent (Deut. 8:19-20). They had turned from the Lord their God, and soon God would eject them from the promised land, and enslave them to the nations of the false gods whom they chased after (Deut. 4:25-29).

This was the backdrop of Isaiah's life. Rampant sin and idolatry. They burned their children in pagan sacrifices (2 Kings 16:3). They engaged in ritual prostitution (1 Kings 14:24). The very place where God had caused his name to dwell was defiled by God’s chosen people (2 Chronicles 33:7). God would liken Israel’s idolatry to nothing less than an adulterous wife giving herself to whoredom (Ezekiel 16). Judgment was imminent.

Yet God's sovereign purpose to save his people through the line of David was being sovereignly upheld. God would not utterly depart from his bride (Ezekiel 16:60). This is the general tone of the book of Isaiah.

Where Isaiah Enters the Scene

Isaiah prophesied in Judah during the latter years of the reign of King Uzziah (Isaiah 6:1), as well as through the reigns of both Jotham and Ahaz, and through most of the reign of Hezekiah (Isaiah 1:1). The book of Isaiah was written during the span of about 740 BC to about 690 BC. The final chapters that we are studying (40-66) are generally regarded to have been written around 700 BC, during the final years of Hezekiah.

While Isaiah himself was a prophet in the land of Judah, the time in which Isaiah prophesied was during the final years leading up to the exile of the northern kingdom of Israel, which would come by the hand of the Assyrian empire, culminated by the fall of Samaria in 722 BC. At the time that Samaria fell, Hezekiah had begun to reign in Judah (2 Kings 17:1-6, 18:1).

To give a some additional perspective, one of Isaiah's contemporaries was the prophet Hosea, who prophesied to the northern kingdom of Israel from around 755 BC (if not earlier) to 725 BC. Specifically, Hosea was the final prophet to the northern kingdom, serving as one final voice of reason, calling the northern kingdom to repent before the impending judgment of the Lord (Hosea 9:1-3). While Hosea's audience was primarily the northern kingdom, God did not refrain from indicting Judah through him as well (Hosea 12:2). So while Hosea was prophesying against the northern kingdom, Isaiah was prophesying against the southern.

The prophet Micah was also at work in Judah during this time. To sum up, God was by no means being silent with his people! He was speaking clearly through his prophets!

What Immediate Events Did Isaiah Prophesy About?

While both Hosea and Isaiah prophesied of the coming destruction of Israel by the hand of the Assyrians (Isaiah 7:8, Hosea 10:6), Isaiah also prophesied about the later fall of Judah to the Babylonian empire (Isaiah 39:6-7). On that observation, we must stop for awhile and marvel.

I am amazed to look back on history and consider how wondrous it is that God prophesied through Isaiah about the Babylonian empire. At the time that Isaiah prophesied of the fall of Judah in Isaiah 39 (which, again, would have been around 700 BC, during the final years of Hezekiah), Babylon was actually little more than a vassal-state of the Assyrian empire, whose power grip would be firmly held for about another century. The Assyrian empire did not effectively fall to Babylon until about 612 BC when Nabopolassar of Babylon destroyed the Assyrian capital of Ninevah (the same Ninevah that Jonah had prophesied to about 150 years earlier). A few years later, in about 605 BC, Nabopolassar's son and heir, Nebuchadnezzar, would crush what was left of the Assyrian empire at the Battle of Carchemish, firmly establishing Babylonian rule. Nebuchadnezzar would later go on to conquer Jerusalem in 587 BC and exile the Jews into captivity.

So Isaiah prophesied not only about the fall of Israel to Assyria (722 BC), but also the fall of Assyria to Babylon (605 BC), and also the fall of Judah to Babylon (587 BC). But here's where it gets really awesome.

Isaiah also prophesied about the fall of Babylon to Persia. And not only that, Isaiah gave us the name of the Persian conqueror (Isaiah 44:28, Isaiah 45:1)! Isaiah prophesied that Cyrus would be the unwitting instrument (Isaiah 45:5) by which God would redeem Judah and bring them back to Jerusalem. And sure enough, about 150 years after Isaiah's death, Cyrus the Great rose to power and conquered Babylon in 539 BC. Shortly thereafter, he gave a decree that would usher in the freedom of the Jews from captivity (Ezra 1:1).

Think about that. Isaiah named the ruler who would rise up 150 years later to conquer an empire that didn’t even exist at the time. Amazing. Can you imagine what people would have thought at the time Isaiah wrote this? Surely, the fact that Cyrus the Great was named by Isaiah is one of the most remarkable, non-Messianic prophecies in the Bible, and it drives secular scholars crazy. Still, even Cyrus the Great, in all of his splendor at the height of his empire, was only a foreshadow that pointed us to Christ (Isaiah 44:28).

The Conclusion Of Isaiah: Christ!

As we look at history, we see that a great deal of the prophecies concerning the redemption for Judah were brought to their immediate fruition in the years following Cyrus the Great, but these prophecies and others surrounding them would find their ultimate fruition in the true redemption of God's people, the true Israel (Romans 9:6-8; Galatians 3:7-9, 3:29, 6:16; Philippians 3:3), through the Messiah!

Everything that Isaiah prophesied about ultimately pointed forward to Christ: the suffering servant (Isaiah 53:3), the Redeemer (Isaiah 43:1), the Comforter (Isaiah 51:12), the Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6). Let us therefore glory as we read the Prophets, marveling at the fact that God has blessed us to live in such a time that we might look back and see what the prophets longed to see: the salvation of God revealed in Christ Jesus (1 Peter 1:10-12)!

A Little Homework!

Now that you’ve been given a taste of some of the events surrounding Isaiah's life, and the events he prophesied about, here's some reading I would encourage you to do in the coming days or weeks:

1) Familiarize yourself with the narratives of the four kings of Judah who lived during the time of Isaiah. (2 Kings 15-20, 2 Chronicles 25-33). Give special attention to Ahaz and Hezekiah!

2) Familiarize yourself with Isaiah's dealings with King Ahaz. (Isaiah 7-8:10). Read this, bearing in mind what you've already read about what was going on between Israel, Judah, Syria, and Assyria at this time. Consider the fact that Ahaz is regarded as one of the most wicked of the kings of Judah (2 Kings 16:3), yet still God extended him amazing blessing.

3) Familiarize yourself with Isaiah's dealings with King Hezekiah. (Isaiah 36-39). You'll notice a lot of this passage reads almost identically as a re-telling of the Hezekiah narratives in 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles, but I would still encourage you to read it. This will help solidify the context of Isaiah 40-66 as a whole, which follows during the final years of Hezekiah.

May God bless you as you abide in His Word, and may it be your joy and the delight of your heart (Jeremiah 15:16) as you behold the might of your sovereign Savior!

I look forward to continuing to worship together with you through this series!