Transcript 0:00 Teaches them of all the ways that he will bring comfort after they've lost so much because they've broken the covenant. Hey, don't lose hope. I know you're feeling marginalized. 0:10 I know you f- don't feel like you're that important, and that you're struggling with stuff, uh, with sin or whatever, but I can exalt you. So if you wanna summarize the scriptures, that's what's going on. 0:21 In the tabernacle, the temple, it's just he wants to be living with his people. Look at any powerful country today. It's dust in God's scales. How many of us are thinking in a 200-year timescale? 0:34 That's cathedral thinking. I don't know if I look beyond next weekend. I wanna know what's for lunch. Why does he quote Isaiah so much? Because he is walking out of Jerusalem right before exile hit. 0:45 I'm not even sure I know what a Bom Bom is. It is like a chocolate- With some ice cream in the middle? Is that what it is? I'm not sure. I don't know either. [gentle music] Welcome to Scripture Insights. 1:00 I'm Taylor Halverson. I'm Mike Harris. Today we're excited to continue exploring Isaiah. We'll be in chapters 40 to 49. And Mike, this is a big change in the Book of Isaiah. 1:13 This is a, a lot of scholars have pointed out over the years, this is a new trajectory in Isaiah's message. You wanna just give us an overview? 1 through 39, w- what would you say m- was mostly... 1:26 Yeah, 'cause they normally divide, scholars divide sect- or chapters 1 through 39 as one, and then 40 to 66 as another. Yeah. Major sections. Yeah. And 1 through 39's, like, a lot of history. There's a lot of judgment. 1:39 There's expressions of here's all these negative consequences that are gonna happen because people have broken the covenant. And then suddenly you get all this comfort. People think that... 1:52 I hear people say it all the time, "Oh, I don't like the Old Testament. God's just an angry God." And I always challenge people, like, "Show me the evidence." And they always can find a few passages here and there. 2:01 I'm like, "Okay, those things happened." Mm-hmm. Have you looked at all this other stuff? 2:07 And it turns out, if you look thoughtfully across the Old Testament, the primary expression is God's everlasting Hesed, him wanting to be in relationship with his people. And we see that here. Even though the people have 2:23 left relationship with him, they've gone into exile, they have violated the terms of the relationship agreement, he goes and seeks them out and offers them his comfort. Hey, friends. 2:37 If you're excited about gospel study and scripture study, I have a whole series of resources for you. 2:42 This book, First Nephi 1 Is a New Genesis, was initiated by waking up early one morning with the thought that Nephi's name in Egyptian might mean something like good, and then realizing that the creation story in the Old Testament has a pattern of using the Hebrew word for good seven times, which is a symbol of perfection. 3:01 So I thought, I wonder if there's some interesting connections between how Nephi constructs his writing and what we see in the creation story. 3:09 So I went through and I found more than 50 connections thematically and even structurally for how Nephi does his record and how it relates to what's happening in creation. 3:18 And the argument is that the Book of Mormon represents, in some ways, a new creation where God is bringing forth a new people who can do his work. 3:27 So I hope you enjoy this book and find new inspiration, both about the Old Testament and about the Book of Mormon. You can find these books and many other resources right here at these QR codes. 3:37 Have a great time learning. It's what you get, right? In verse one- The two words for emphasis, comfort ye, comfort ye. This is not a single time. It's like, when it's doubled up like this, this is an official statement. 3:51 And God then, for the next 11 verses, actually really for the rest of Isaiah, teaches them of all the ways that he will bring comfort after they've lost so much because they've broken the covenant. 4:07 He's saying, "You can come back into covenant." So you might mark in your scripture for the audience chapters 40 to 49. Call it the book of comfort. 4:17 So if you're ever looking for comfort in your life, uh, Psalms has a lot, Proverbs has some good stuff. Definitely you will find it in chapters 40 to 49. 4:26 So I like that this, uh, this first word here, comfort, is, uh, related to the same word we have in the name Noah, where God provided rest or comfort to the world after all the wickedness had swept over the world. 4:42 So it's almost like we have the Noah story being resurrected here, that God has allowed the people to experience the flood of their wickedness, and now he's bringing comfort, or a new Noah, and that's him. 4:55 He brings them the comfort. Verse two is really tender. The KJV says, "Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem." Literally in the Hebrew it's to speak unto the heart. Ooh. 5:12 Uh, it's just, it's, it's a, a tender way of saying that... Uh, how do we wanna say it? It's more of an idiom or an expression of how a lover would speak to his- Beloved... beloved. Hmm. 5:28 Yeah, it's super intimate, and it may not be language we're familiar with today, but ancient, any ancient Hebrew speaker would know you would really only hear this among a married couple who are intimately bound to one another in an unbreakable covenant. 5:43 Yeah. So it's very powerful that Isaiah's choosing these words. Now as a reminder, Isaiah's name means Jehovah saves. 5:53 And so as you're reading these chapters, look for, where am I seeing evidence that God saves his people? And some of these verses are quite famous in the restoration. Let's look at verses three and four. 6:05 "The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God." So this is imagery of the people have been out into exile. 6:17 This could be the physical exile of Babylon or the real exile that happens when we commit iniquity or we are showing covenantal infidelity to God. 6:28 God prepares a way, it's a covenant path, and he sends messengers to invite us back into his presence. 6:36 Verse five, "The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it." By the way, Mick, this is making me think about when Jesus appears, 6:47 and John the Baptist is actually seeing these very things. Or the scriptures talk about John the Baptist- Mm-hmm... as the one preparing... 6:55 He's the voice of the wilderness preparing for Jesus, and Jesus is baptized in the Jordan River. 7:02 The Jordan River originally had been split in half by God for his people to come through into the promised land before they conquered Jericho. 7:13 God made a path through the water, just like he made a path through the water to escape the Egyptian bondage through the Red Sea. 7:21 So you get all these themes are just kind of baked into these passages that God will break open a path for us to escape the bondages that we've experienced, usually self-imposed because we have been disloyal to his love. 7:35 Yeah. I like that. So I'm gonna... As we're going today, we're gonna be hitting just some highlight verses. We're not gonna go through every verse, but here's some other ones that are quite powerful. 7:47 Maybe we should quickly add, you skipped verse four. Yeah. And I don't know why you did, Taylor. I'm kind of upset at you. It's not in my Bible. We're gonna cover every... No, we can't cover every verse. 7:56 We don't have time, but I love how you pointed out that John the Baptist, um, he, he quotes this. Mm-hmm. Right? 8:04 "Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain." 8:11 If you go and you read the entire Book of Luke, this almost just seems to me to be the Gospel of Luke's thesis statement- Mm... where it's just replete with, uh, every time... 8:25 Because valleys can be also not just about the, the landscape, but it often symbolizes those that are lowly in station, or they're not- Mm... they- they're on the margins of society- Mm... 8:39 those that are considered sinners, or maybe they are sinners. Or the handicap. Mm. You know, the lepers. And all throughout the Book o- of Luke, well, all throughout scripture, but- But Luke in particular- Yes... 8:50 focuses on the marginalized. Yes, and how God wants to exalt them, whether you're a publican. If you come unto me, I'm willing to exalt you. And all you that think you're all that and a bag of chips- [laughs]... 9:02 the, the mountains, if you will, he's like, "I- I'm here to cut you down- Mm... because you need to learn to rely on me." And that seems to be the John's message. "Hey, don't lose hope. 9:13 I know you're feeling marginalized. I know you f- don't feel like you're that important, and that you're struggling with stuff, uh, with sin or whatever, but I can exalt you." 9:23 So in the ancient context, the Israelites have been off in captivity in Babylon. Let's begin with hearing it from their perspective. Let's look at verse eight. God's trying to convince them of who he is. 9:36 They've been drowning in exile, and he says, "The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand forever." That's really powerful. People who have felt so disenfranchised, 9:55 out of God's presence, not having access to temple, not being in the promised land, they know, they're told, "You can trust God. He will do his work. He will bring comfort." 10:05 Verse nine, "O Zion, that bringest good tidings, get thee up into the high mountain; O Jerusalem, bring a good tidings, lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God." 10:21 You might remember when we get to Ezekiel, we'll see that God's presence has left the temple and gone into exile with the people. What Isaiah's speaking about is God's presence returning- Mm... back to the promised land. 10:34 His presence returns, and the temple will be rebuilt, and he will once again dwell with his pe- people. Remember, for all of us out there, the simple message of the gospel is God wants to be in a relationship with us. 10:47 That's all he wants. 10:49 And everything going on in scripture is him showing how he's covenantally faithful, how he invites us to be in covenant, and what the consequences are when people receive covenant and are faithful to that, or they are disloyal to God, and what the outcomes are. 11:03 And then what God does to solve the problems that people have created for themselves and the disloyal. Mm. So if you wanna summarize the scriptures, that's what's going on. In the tabernacle, the temple, 11:14 it's just he wants to be living with his people. It's pretty simple. How many times does covenant show up? Well, in the last- 55... five years, 600 times- Mm... which exceeds any other decade- Mm... 11:28 going back to the 1850s. Mm. Incredible. So, I mean, that's what we keep hitting. Mm-hmm. But then also covenant path. He... I don't think... I think that just came out in the last- 10 years. Yeah. It didn't even exist. 11:44 Yeah. I actually was thinking recently about the phrase covenant path, and I'm realizing it's slightly misleading. In the sense? 11:53 Well, it's this path we're on that hopefully if we stay on it long enough, we'll be joined with God. Mm-hmm. And it misses that God has already chosen to be in relationship with us. 12:04 And the path is us just staying with him. We don't arrive to him and suddenly discover him. He's already there. 12:12 And in realizing just it's a subtle distinction, many of us think, "Oh, well, if I walk the covenant path, eventually- I'll enjoy the blessing. You have him and- Yep... eventually God will show up in my life. I'm like, 12:26 um, in some sense that's true. We'll get more access, but I'm not sure I even wanna say that. I've been relooking at the scriptures. Everything begins with God belonging to us, 12:43 and humans choosing to walk away from God. He hasn't moved. Right. 12:48 And so I'm re- realizing the covenant path is probably better expressed as how we continue to walk with God because he's already there with us, and he already belongs to us. Yeah. 13:00 We don't walk and walk and walk and then discover there he is, and we've now arrived. We have already arrived, and now we just remain by continuing to walk with him. Yeah. It's a small difference. 13:13 No, no, I think that's significant. Every day we need the grace. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So that's fascinating. So this website is called- Yeah, the S General Conference Corpus. Fascinating. 13:24 So you can search all sorts of words that show up across General Conference, and you've looked at covenant. It's been s- uh, 5,000 plus times, but increasing in usage in General Conference the last two decades. Yeah. 13:37 Covenant path, something like, uh, 106 times, two hundreds and tens, and then just in the last six years, almost 200 times. Wow. And then from 1850 to 2000? Never. Never mentioned. Yeah. It, it just seems... 13:54 I, I, the reason I like it is it gives us a, a glimpse, I think, into what Jesus wants to communicate, what he wants to emphasize. Mm-hmm. Right. 14:05 The message for us today is God is walking with us when we choose to stay with him on that path. And so [laughs] but the, the irony is, though, it's not a new emphasis. 14:21 Doing this podcast with you, Taylor, as we've been walking through the Old Testament, we hardly go an episode without repeating a dozen times hesed, covenant loyalty, and talking about this covenant connection that we have. 14:35 I mean, it's... The Old Testament is saturated with this concept of covenant. Yeah. Well, I'm glad you bring that up because some people think the Old Testament, well, it's old. It, it... The word testament's a bad word. 14:47 In the... I mean, it's a misleading word. It should be called Old Covenant. And even then, we should be call it the Original Covenant. Which is the same covenant we have today. [laughs] Correct. So it's not old. 14:57 It's expired. It hasn't expired. The covenant that God made to Abraham that he extends to all the families of the earth is still alive and well today. It's the original covenant. 15:06 Can you imagine what would happen if we opened up our scriptures and said, "I'm gonna read from the original, enduring, and still available covenant text"? Like, oh, yeah, well, this is actually relevant to me. 15:18 Now, clearly, this was written for ancient people. It wasn't written for us. But it can still be helpful for us. There's a difference, right? 15:27 Like Isaiah, these words can matter to us, but he is specifically talking to people who've been in exile. That was his immediate focus. 15:35 But we can also see that he was speaking to anybody who's gone into spiritual exile because they have veered off the covenant path for some time. And the amazing thing is the path never disappears. God never leaves. 15:48 He is always where we left him. Always. It's not like we show up to the path and he's moved on without us, or he's off taking a break. He's always there, always. 16:01 And that is the message consistently throughout the Old Testament. God has made an unbreakable commitment and covement, covenant to always be available to his people whenever they choose to find him, always. Nice. 16:14 So now that we've spoken on behalf of Isaiah for a bit- [laughs]... let's, uh, let's read a, uh, some more of these verses. So if you look at verses 12 to 26, uh, Isaiah spends time 16:28 reminding the people of who God is, the God who saves them. And Isaiah uses examples of, 16:38 of things from his society, particularly fake gods and idols, to compare, basically to show how God is so incomparable to anything that the people might know. 16:49 Uh, let's just read just a couple of verses to give people a sense of what... how Isaiah's using this very strong, 16:55 exaggerated rhetoric to get people's attention that God is far beyond anything that they think is of any worth. 17:02 So verse 12, "Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with a span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountain in scales and the hills in a balance? 17:16 Who hath directed the Spirit of the Lord, or, being his counselor, hath taught him? 17:22 With whom took he counsel, and who instructed him, and taught him in the path of judgment, and taught him knowledge, and shewed to him the way of understanding? 17:31 Behold, the nations," including the Babylonian nation that have held the people in exile, "are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance: behold, he taketh up the isles as a very easy thing." 17:48 Says little here in he, in the English. So this is so powerful. The people who feel overwhelmed by the majesty of the Babylonian Empire and then the Persian Empire, all their power and might. We can make that today. 18:00 Look at any powerful country today. It's dust in God's scales. And yet we get mesmerized by-... people's missiles and bombs and their armies or their economic prowess. And God's like, "Yeah, it's all child play. 18:17 I made all that possible, and none of it endures unless you're with me." So I find this extremely comforting language. If I put myself in the shoes of the ancient Israelites, that makes sense. 18:30 If I look today, I'm like, I need to hear the same message. I need to be reminded God is sufficient for any problem or concern I encounter. He's far beyond any of it, and I can trust him. Yeah. 18:45 You remind me of the language of, we'll get there next episode, Isaiah 54, "No weapon that is formed shall prosper against thee." Yeah. It's all in this second part of Isaiah where he speaks comfort. 18:59 You can trust that God has a plan, and he's got your back. There's no Babylon, there's no missile. [laughs] Yeah. There's no sin, there's no problem that I can't... It's child's play. I, I got this. And I... 19:13 You keep bringing up, um, the Babylonian exile, so maybe we should take 30 seconds and just reorient or remind our- Yeah... our listeners. Walk us through that. Because Isaiah lived around 740 BC to 700 BC- Mm-hmm... 19:26 in downtown Jerusalem. Mm-hmm. And the exile's not gonna happen for another 150 years. So Isaiah, would you say he's talking to a future audience? Yes. 19:37 Hey, once you're in exile, and you're gonna feel like God has forsaken you- Mm-hmm... and you're gonna feel like there's no... You need to know actually there is a lot of hope, and let me tell you why. 19:46 And that's why, that's why we got sec- or chapters 40 to 66. Is that a fair assessment? Yes. It's a great reminder. You're helping us to see there's a 200-year time span 19:57 that Isaiah's looking at, maybe possibly even longer. And sometimes when we look at scriptures, we wanna look- think about, all right, I just need to get through the day. 20:05 [laughs] Like, how many of us are thinking in a 200-year timescale? That's cathedral thinking. If you remember in the Middle Ages, 20:15 many cities, as a way to show their love and devotion to God, poured their best resources and talents in, into building tremendously beautiful cathedrals that still dot the landscapes of Europe. 20:27 Most of those cathedrals took six to eight human generations to build. So whoever conceived the cathedral, it was their great-great-great-grandchildren who finally got to worship inside a completed one. 20:41 That's looking seven to eight generations out. Mm. 200 years ahead. I don't know if I look beyond next weekend. [laughs] I wanna know what's for lunch. [laughs] Okay. So I might be slightly ahead of you. 20:52 Yes, I'm, I'm like... I'm just 72 hours ahead of you. But that's such a beautiful concept, isn't it, Taylor? To be so unselfish. Wow. Think about Nephi. He has a thousand-year view, but he's also pulling in Isaiah. 21:06 Why does he quote Isaiah so much? Because he is walking out of Jerusalem right before exile hits. 21:12 In fact, technically, he's going into exile outside of the original Promised Land, but they get a new Promised Land, and he sees the comfort passages- Mm... 21:21 from Isaiah, and he wants his people to not too long look back for Jerusalem. What did Laman and Lemuel do? Oh, my gosh, Jerusalem was awesome. They're like the Israelites who wanna go back to Egypt. Yes. 21:34 And Nephi, with his own revelations, his dad's revelations, and Isaiah, is saying God has a better way. Yeah. So actually, I was just doing some study about this this morning. I didn't realize this, but, um... 21:49 So Nephi does a lot of quoting of Nef- of Isaiah. So we actually already read through, like, Isaiah 2 to 12. Nephi just kind of wholesale quotes all that. 21:59 But in terms of repeated quotes of Isaiah, Nephi turns to the second portion of Isaiah, between chapters 40 to 66. Mm. So there's more content that he quotes from earlier Isaiah. 1 through 14? Yep. 22:16 Yeah, I said 2 through 12. I should've said 2 through 14. No, and he didn't quote chapter 1, yeah. 2 through 14, you're right. But yeah, I always get that a little mixed up. 22:23 But when Nephi decides to repeat what he has already said about Isaiah, he always turns to the comfort chapter- The second... portion of Isaiah. That's a nice observation I haven't thought about. 22:33 I had never realized that till this morning. Yeah. In fact, I was looking at this, and I had to go do some more research to confirm 'cause I went, "I'm not sure that's right." And then like, yeah, sure enough, it is. 22:42 So that's the message here is that God does bring comfort, and we can trust him. In fact, these verses say, verse 25, "To whom then will ye liken me, or shall I be equal? saith the Holy One." The answer is nobody. 22:57 Verse 31, this goes back to your comment from no weapon will f- uh, prosper that's been formed. 23:03 "But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings of ea- as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint." 23:18 Now, there's a bunch of interesting connections here. Doctrine and Covenants section 89, that's the, uh- Promise blessing for those that keep the Word of Wisdom? It's the Word of Wisdom, and this is one... 23:30 These are some of the outcomes is that you will have God with you. Eagle's wings is interesting because not only does it connect us to Lord of the Rings, which is really important to talk about- [laughs] It is... 23:42 [laughs] some of the great literature in the last hundred years. But more s- uh, seriously, though, when God brings the people out of Egyptian bondage, he tells them, "I bore you on eagle's wings." Exodus 19. Yeah. 23:57 And he says, "I wanna be your God. Will you be my people?" And you highlighted this for us when we were talking about those portions. They all shout, "Yes." And here Isaiah is referring back to that. 24:09 Just as God saved the people out of Egypt and bore them on eagle's wings, he will do it again. Super powerful. And I, I wonder, listening to you, Taylor, the need for Jesus to re-emphasize this to the people. 24:23 Because if we put ourselves in their shoes, like you were suggesting we need to do... I mean, if you spend 70 years in exile in Babylon or 400 years in bondage in Egypt- A long time... you, you would... 24:40 I think you'd feel justified to say, "You know what? I don't know if God's really..." 24:44 I mean, that's really cute that we always wanna say that God's perfectly loving and He's, you know, He's gonna speak comfort to us, and we love to 24:52 get our calligraphy out and, and write, and we put it on our fridge, our favorite passages that are all cute. But sometimes we get hit with trials that are just excruciating, and we just wonder if they're ever gonna end. 25:07 And so I think the Lord's trying to... I think He sympathizes. I mean, He gets it. Mm-hmm. 25:13 At the same time, it's ironic because, like, Joseph Smith spends almost, what, it was six months in Liberty Jail, and you get that passage in, what is it? 25:21 Doctrine and Covenants 121 or 122, "Hey, your suffering will be a short time." And you're like, if I had to spend one hour- Yeah... in the dead of winter, in this filthy... And you're... 25:33 The bathroom is in the corner, and I'm sleeping on the, on the floor. You know, I'm like, "One hour? You're telling me that six months is a short time?" Yeah. I mean- But what about 70 years or 400 years? Yeah. 25:45 It's just- You've highlighted some really important things here, Mike, that discipleship means discipline, and that can be hard. And when we are enduring 25:56 difficulty without immediate closure or a clear sense of when will this end, it can feel, it can feel really tempting to say, "I'm out of here." Like, "God's not faithful." Yeah. Yeah. 26:10 "He makes these claims, but I'm not seeing them happen in my life." Yeah. And what does Moroni do at the very end of the Book of Mormon? 26:19 He says, "When you receive these things, the book of God's love endures forever," because the word Mormon means God's love endures forever. When you receive this book full of stories about God's enduring love, 26:32 I want you to reflect on all of God's love from Adam until the time you receive these things, and then ask if these things are not true. And we often tell people, "Pray to know if the Book of Mormon is true." 26:42 I think that's the wrong question. You think that these things, the antecedent, would refer to- All of God's love. Well, when he says, "Ponder it in your hearts," the it- Mm... clearly refers back to how merciful- Yes... 26:58 God has been. In Moroni chapter 10, yes. And so the invitation is, look, it's not wrong to ask if the Book of Mormon is true. It's great to get a testimony of that. Yeah, yeah. 27:07 I believe that we've slightly misinterpreted that, that Moroni, what he's really driving at is now that we've written all these stories about God's everlasting love, 27:16 I exhort you to find out for yourself, is his hesed true? So getting a testimony the Book of Mormon's nice. 27:26 Far more powerful is to know a certainty that God's everlasting love is true, 'cause that's, would encompass the Book of Mormon and everything else. 27:36 If you have a testimony of the Book of Mormon but not the Doctrine and Covenants, well, that's kind of interesting. But what if you had an unbreakable and unshakable testimony of God's enduring hesed- Mm... his love? 27:48 That encompasses everything. 27:51 Then you can have a testimony and you could declare testimony about Book of Mormon, the Old Testament, the New Testament, the modern-day revelations, modern-day prophets, 'cause it's all encompassed in God's enduring love. 28:02 So here we are in Isaiah, and we're bringing in Moroni. I hope these two men are happy with that, that we are putting them in conversation with one another. All right. Mike, let's go to chapter 41. 28:13 I wrote at the top of this a little note for myself. I like to do this for each chapter. It helps orient me to what the main themes are. The Lord strengthens his servant Israel. Okay? Why would this matter? 28:27 The people of Israel are his vassal or his servant. They were put under covenant obligation at Mount Sinai. They broke those covenants. The consequences was exile. 28:38 But God, because of the Abrahamic covenant, is welcoming them back in to renew the covenant, and he's explaining how that's going to happen and what the outcomes will be. And the theme of the inco- incomparability of God 28:54 is also showing up. Let's just read here verse one. "Keep silence before me, O islands, and let the people renew their strength. Let them come near. Then let them speak. 29:03 Let us come near together to judgment," meaning we're gonna reenter the covenant that we started at Mount Sinai. 29:10 "Who raised up the righteous man," verse two, "from the east, called him to his foot, gave the nations before him and made him ruler, rule over kings? 29:18 He gave them as the dust to his sword and as driven, as driven stubble to his bow." This is about God, who's the author and finisher of the covenant. He's the man in verse two, you think? Yeah. 29:31 Now, listen to what's going on here. Well, he's the, he's the one speaking here. 'Cause it says he'll r- raise up the righteous man from the east. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I'm seeing this as God is the one doing these things. 29:46 The righteous man is probably Cyrus, who's gonna let the people go. But the, the overall reference is Isaiah speaking about God. Like, who raised the righteous man? God did that. 30:00 Notice what- And I'm, I'm looking at some of my, uh, scholarly commentary- Yeah, let's see... and they, they would agree with you. Maybe we don't know definitively, but it sounds like it makes... 30:10 This commentator says, "It makes perfect sense if Cyra- Cyrus is understood as the manifestation of the famous Uh, individual here. Yeah. 30:19 So this is really helpful that Mike is clarifying for us there's multiple things happening on, in this verse. 30:23 Is- Isaiah's speaking about what God is doing to call a deliverer to let the Israelites go, and that deliverer, who's later called the Messiah, an anointed one, is Cyrus, the Persian ruler who'd made a decree that allowed the Jews to leave covenant bonda- or to leave bondage. 30:44 So can we... Are, are we pushing it too far if we say that Cyrus can also, even though he's a Gentile, [laughs] 30:51 he can also serve in, in certain ways as a type and a shadow of Jesus, who will eventually come from the East as well? I think you're spot on. Who's a Messiah, who's a deliverer- Yeah... 31:00 who's gonna deliver us ultimately- Mm-hmm... from our captivities. That's right. Okay. So what Mike's doing f- I'm talking here to the audience, is that seeing multiple frames for understanding these verses. 31:13 I'm gonna go to verse, uh, four. "Who hath wrought and done it, calling the generations from the beginning? I the Lord, the first, and with the last, I am he." 31:24 So it's as if God is reintroducing himself to the people he wants to be in covenant with. 31:30 There's a covenant framework where God introduces himself, reminds the people his great deeds and his loyalty to them, and then invites them to be loyal by explaining to them, "Here's the stipulations f- for how to show covenant loyalty." 31:44 This is that s- in that same framework. And I'm just talking out loud here. Um, he says, "I am the first... I, the Lord, the first, and with the last, I am he." Mm-hmm. 31:59 In the parable of the laborers where they all get a penny, he ends, he concludes the parable by saying, "The first shall be last and the last shall be first." 32:09 The last who come at the 11th hour in the immediate context would've been, and this would've, would've been the Gentiles. Mm. And the first that had started working at 6:00 a.m. in the morning would've been the Jews. 32:23 Mm-hmm. And they're like, "Hey, we've been a part of the gospel all along, and now you're letting these Gentiles come along at last, and they're gonna get the same reward as us?" And Jesus is like, "Yeah." 32:35 And he's calling them out for their... They were thinking they were kind of hoity-toity. They were elite, right? And I wonder if it's that the same language kind of speaks to it. "Hey, I am the first. I'm also a Jew. 32:48 I'm part of the covenant. I've been in the gospel all along." But then he says, "And I am with the last." Hmm. "But I'm also gonna be very inclusive of the isles of the sea, if you will. 33:01 Not just those right here in your immediate context. I am also gonna include everyone." Is that- I love that... you think that's...? I love it. That's a really great reading 'cause it just shows his extensive mercy. 33:12 And if you go back to that parable that you were referencing, uh, Jesus is calling people out for seeking to limit the boundaries of his mercy. 33:23 And if anything, we go back to the Book of Mormon, the book of God's love endures forever. If God's love endures forever, what happens when we create false limits on his mercy? 33:35 We have just denied the core essence of who he is. What he's declaring here, "This is who I am. My mercy has no bounds." 33:45 Oh, I think that's a, a good reminder for me, 'cause sometimes when I do something that I know I shouldn't, I'm kind of like, "Yeah, I don't deserve the Holy Spirit today." Yeah. And you're right, I, I don't. But maybe 34:00 in that sense, I'm negating his mercy. I need to own my mistake. I need to take any consequences that come with it, sure, and I need to make it right. 34:10 Nothing's gonna sc- get swept up or under the rug, but at the same time, I better realize what you're saying. Yeah, that's what mercy's for, where you get what you don't deserve. That's why we call it amazing grace. 34:20 It ain't amazing if it's expected. That's right. So. It goes back to God's divine autobiography in Exodus 34, 34:6-7, where that he declares his covenant character, 34:35 and it's in a chiastic structure, and the turning point is the word truth, his faithfulness, his trustworthiness. But it's bounded by the word hesed, his everlasting kindness, twice. His mercy 34:47 is the boundary for all of his justice and truth. Hmm. His justice cannot spill over the boundaries of his mercy. His mercy create the outer boundaries for everything he does. And what's interesting is 35:03 those boundaries of mercy themselves have no boundaries. Hmm. Absolutely powerful. So this is what Isaiah wants his people to hear. 35:15 You guys have been suffering for 70 years, or at least you've been outside of the promised land. So you're welcome in. God will do his work. Now, notice here in verse eight, 35:28 God again is trying to reenact the conditional covenant. We call it a suzerain-vassal treaty. We've studied this in the Exodus story of chapters 19 to 24, where God is the great God. 35:41 He's loyal to the people, and he invites them to show loyalty, and to do so by living according to covenant obligations. The Ten Commandments were the stipulations for covenantal loyalty. 35:52 And the people, when they enter into covenant, they take the role of, of a child, a servant, or, or a son. Listen to this language. 36:00 Verse eight, "But thou, Israel, art my servant," meaning you're under obligation to fulfill these covenant obligations, "whom I have chosen: the seed of Abraham my friend." 36:12 Back to Genesis 15, 12, 15, and 17, God made an eternal, unbreakable covenant to Abraham and all the families of the earth that God would always be willing to be in covenant with anybody who's willing. 36:25 And anybody who's willing is called a son or a servant. So in the ancient world, the father is the initiator of the covenant. The son is the recipient and has to live faithfully. 36:36 This is why when Abinadi says that Jesus is the Father and the Son, Jesus is primortal Jehovah who initiates the Abrahamic covenant. He also shows up in the flesh 36:49 and lives all the expectations of the Mosaic covenant, the Ten Commandments. Mm-hmm. So he lives as a son. Therefore, he's the Father and the Son. 36:58 He encloses the two core covenants that we've been talking about through the entire Old Testament. I've heard so many different interpretations of that. I like... I- I think what you just shared is worthy to chew on. 37:11 Yeah. I like that perspective. I just had that insight a few weeks ago, and I'm like, "This feels really relevant." Let me see if I understand what you're saying. You're quoting Mosiah 15:2- Mm-hmm... 37:25 where Abinadi says, "God him-" Well, verse one, "God himself shall come down among the children of men and shall redeem his people. 37:34 And because he dwelleth in the flesh he shall be called the Son of God, having subjected the flesh to the will of the Father, being the Father and the Son. The Father because he was conceived by the power of God. 37:46 And the Son because of the flesh, thus becoming the Father and the Son." 37:48 And if our listeners are kind of confused, Father, Son, Son, Father, blah, blah, flesh, spirit, and you're just like, I have wrestled with that my whole life. Mm-hmm. 37:58 But you're suggesting that a possible way of interpreting this is Jesus was the Father in the sense as the primortal Jehovah, he gave the law of Moses. 38:10 He's the father of the covenant and of the laws, the stipulations of the covenant. Mm-hmm. But then when he's born on Earth, he becomes subject to the law of Moses. He also enters into the covenant. Mm-hmm. 38:24 And that humility reflects a sonship, if you will. I'm gonna submit to- Right... those demands. I don't know if I... if that's how you would've worded it. 38:34 In covenantal terminology, the title of father is the initiator and the holder of the covenant. The son, that title, is the recipient of the covenant and the one who's under obligation to fulfill the expectations. 38:53 And so he is the author and finisher, which makes him the Father and the Son. And it's interesting that Abinadi says, "In the flesh." Yeah. 39:04 'Cause God, primortal Jehovah, is not under the Mosaic covenant obligations in the primortal... when he's in his primortal set- setting. 39:16 The only way he can become the Son is to be under the obligations of this conditional covenant, and that title that shows up in ancient covenant literature is Son. So father means the initiator of covenant. 39:30 Son means the person who receives the covenant and needs to live it. And to give strength to that, you were telling me Abinadi means what? My father is present. So let's think about this. If... 39:45 So Jesus is primortal Jehovah. He's the father figure who initiates the covenant, and then he shows up in the flesh, so the Father is present in the flesh. Mm-hmm. He's the Father and the Son. 40:00 And why does King Noah's court execute Abinadi? For this very claim, that the great God will become a son. The Father will become a son. Maybe they executed Abinadi because they're confused by his, his theology. 40:16 And I would suggest this is probably the most confusing theological verse anywhere in the Book of Mormon. Well, I've been confused b- with it my whole life. So have I. 40:28 And this covenant framework of the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenant, the Father's covenant, the Son's covenant, um, tho- those roles I think provides clarity that cuts through the confusion. 40:42 Just to support what, what you're saying, Taylor, Mosiah 17:7-8, King Noah pronounces the death sentence upon Abinadi, and here it is. "Thou art worthy of death for thou hast said that God himself," 40:58 or you're saying that God meaning Jehovah- Mm-hmm... "should come down among the children of men." The Father is now present. Abinadi. 41:09 That's expl- That- Abinadi gets, gets executed for the meaning and testimony of his own name, the Father is present. You gonna write an article about that? Um, I should. 41:22 I've been so busy writing so many [laughs] other things. I, I have- You have been watching Netflix all day and eating Bon Bons. You know it. Yes. Let's step it up. Let's write that. 41:32 Hey, the Lord has created the good things of the earth. Should I not partake? Okay. Oh, boy. [laughs] No, I... That, that's, that's a delicious, uh, insight, insight, Taylor. 41:42 Oh, I thought you were saying the Bon Bons are delicious. And the Bon Bons are delicious, but I, I love even more your insights to that. I'm not even sure I know what a Bon Bon is. 41:49 It is like a chocolate- With some ice cream in the middle? Is that what it is? I'm not sure. Oh, I don't know either. You know what? I probably need to talk to somebody about this, that I've been... 41:58 These things have been withheld from me all these years. All right. So, um, we made so much progress through Isaiah. 42:05 Like, uh, when people say there's not much to talk about, I don't know what they're- We're one-tenth the way through- [laughs] Lovely... uh, for today's podcast, yeah. 42:13 Let's highlight a couple more verses from 41 before we jump into chapter 42. So verse 10, verse 13 are really awesome ones. Mike, will you read verse 10 for us? "Fear thou not, for I am with thee." 42:26 Be not dismayed, for I am thy God. I will strengthen thee. Oh, this sounds like a hymn. You should start singing it for us. I will strengthen thee. Yeah, I will help thee. 42:34 Yeah, I will h- uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness. Verse 13. For I, the Lord thy God, will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, "Fear not. I will help thee." This is such powerful language. 42:49 Mike, let's think about, you know something about the ancient world. Think about all the ancient gods. 42:55 Is there any passage anywhere from any ancient literature that says a god is going to hold the worshiper's right hand and support them? Gods are separate and aloof from humanity among all the pagan religions. 43:12 Here's God, the creator of the world. He wants to hang out with messy, smelly humans. Well, that's what he calls them in verse 14. "Fear not, thou worm." Oh my gosh, I totally missed that. 43:25 And he's talking about- Jacob... Jacob, the men of Israel. Yeah, he, he knows that we are in our lowly state, and we are m- we have issues. And he still wants to put his hand out to us. Now think about this. 43:39 In the ancient Israelite religion, there were gradations of holiness, and you didn't want to become ritually impure. And if somebody was ritually impure and they touched you, you would also become ritually impure. 43:53 That's one of the reasons the story of Jesus healing the woman with the issue of blood when she reaches out to touch him. She's now made him ritually impure. 44:03 Here's Jesus saying, the Lord, J- Jehovah, "I am willing to make myself ritually impure to hold your hand, to pull you out of the chaos of Babylonian wickedness, to bring you back home." Mm. Really powerful language. 44:20 So my hope is that we keep talking about the ancient past, that people are immediately thinking, "Wow, how is God reaching out to me today, giving me his hand, and not holding back, not worried about whatever mess I've created for myself that might stain him?" 44:36 He is okay. There's not anything any one of us can do that's going to disrupt his ability to save us, except our unwillingness to receive his salvation. That's the only thing. 44:53 Um, so if you're looking for encouragement, I'd recommend reading verses 17 through 20 and highlight all the ways of what God is going to do and his purpose for do- so doing. 45:05 It ultimately is about generating sustaining testimony in the hearts of his people. Verse 21 is interesting. I wrote the word lawsuit next to this. "Be- Produce your cause," saith the Lord. 45:19 "Bring forth your strong reasoning," saith the King of Jacob. 45:25 What's happening here is that the people have experienced the consequences of broken covenant, but God is still faithful, because of the Abrahamic covenant, to always offer them to be brought back in, and he's asking them, "Raise a lawsuit against me if I have not done my end of the bargain. 45:44 Show me the evidence. Where's the evidence I have failed to be your God?" And the answer is, there is no evidence. 45:52 This is again confirming rhetoric that Isaiah's using to convince these people who've been out in the wilderness of Ba- Babylonian exile for 70 years, this is a God you can trust. This is a God you can love. 46:05 All right, chapter 42, there's a little bit of complexity here because, as Mike's taught us, sometimes there's multiple references. One phrase or verse might have multiple meanings. So let's unpack this. 46:17 The first thing to note is, uh, I have a header. I wrote, "Servant of the Lord and Light to the Nations." 46:24 So there is a lot of discussion about, um, there's a servant that God calls who spreads light to the nations, and then there's a very, a, a set of songs that are sung. Now, it's interesting. Songs is what 46:41 help us to worship. It's kind of a very powerful thing. Anciently, in the Old Testament scriptures, they would use songs to model for people how to worship. 46:51 And you might wanna write this down, but there's five songs that we have in Isaiah. Two of them are here. Song one is verses one through nine. That's the mission for the servant. 47:03 Song two, verses 10 to 17, is a new song of praise. Song three is chapter 49, verses one to 13, and it's a song of frustration. We'll get to that in a little bit when we get there today. 47:20 Song four, chapter 50, verses four to 11. This is about the servant needing to be obedient and to endure persecution. And song five is chapter 52, 47:33 verses 13, all the way through the 12th verse of chapter 53, and this is the suffering of the servant and exaltation. Now, the servant could refer to Israel. 47:47 It could also refer to Jehovah coming as the great king, being born, and, and being Jesus Christ, and him being the suffering servant. So there's, there's probably two references here. 47:59 And 42 does make quite a bit of sense to read it as referencing the Israelite nation returning from bondage. It also references Jesus in the future. But let's take a look at some of these things. Uh, verse six. 48:14 "I, the Lord, have called thee in righteousness and will hold thine hand." We had just seen how God had called the worm Jacob, all these men of Israel. He's gonna hold their hands. 48:23 "And will keep thee and give thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles." Well, that's super interesting. 48:29 Remember the Abrahamic covenant is God will give seed, like posterity, property, and make a great name, and every family of the earth will be blessed. Guess what's happening here? 48:42 God is calling his child, Israel, out of bondage, saying, "You're gonna be my servant who witnesses of my everlasting, unconditional, unbreakable covenant to Abraham and all people. 48:53 I am choosing you to be the reference point for everybody, to be a light to everybody." And of course, the Israelites failed at that. So Jehovah becomes the Son, and he shows people how it's done. 49:07 That's quite a holy charge or calling, because we know ultimately that Jesus is the light. Mm-hmm. And then he's saying, "And I have an assignment for you." Yeah. "I'm calling you to be the light." Whew. 49:21 That's a high and holy charge. He's asking us to literally represent him to the world. That's why, that's why there's been so much debate among scholars, is the servant Israel, or is it Jesus? And it's like, 49:39 yeah. [laughs] The answer is yes, it's both. Yeah. Because Jesus is the one who ultimately fully fulfills everything the servant should do. He models how the rest of us as servants should be. 49:52 Remember the word servant could also be the word son, and in covenant language, the role of the son is to take on obligations and to act under the direction of the father. 50:05 And so Israel is God's child, his adopted child at covenant, covenant Mount Sinai, and when they don't really do it very well, Jesus is like, "Well, Jehovah says, 'If you need to get anything done, I guess you gotta do it yourself.'" 50:18 And he shows up in the flesh, and he does it. Yeah. Isn't that where that phrase comes from? [laughs] Maybe. [laughs] Uh, I like what our call... It's not just the Savior's call, but verse seven. 50:30 What are we supposed to do? To open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house. I, I love to read that both in a temporal sense- Mm-hmm... 50:42 but also in a spiritual sense. There are so many people that are in the prison of bad habits, or they don't have friends or whatever. W- that's our calling, to reach out to people that have blind eyes. Mm-hmm. 50:57 Uh, maybe they don't see the truth. Mm-hmm. And we need to try to gently help them along, yeah. When Jesus stands in the synagogue at Nazareth and announces himself, he quotes Isaiah. 51:10 It's actually a different passage than this one, I believe, but it does have similar themes, that Jesus is coming in the acceptable year of the Lord to open up the prisons and to give sight to the blind and so forth, so the same thing. 51:22 That's Luke 4. That's Luke chapter 4. Yeah. And when I take tour groups to Israel, I love going to that, the remains of that synagogue and to read that passage from Luke and then to go on to Isaiah and read it. 51:35 And then we, we look at Jesus fulfilled that. Isaiah records that Jehovah asked his people to act as a son, to follow instructions as well. So Mike and I were actually a little confused. 51:49 Where is it that Luke, or Jesus is quoting from in Luke? And it's actually Isaiah 61:1-2, but it's the same theme. Yeah. So same, same idea here, okay? 52:01 So we'd already mentioned verses 10 to 17 is the new song, and we are part of this call as being God's child, or in the posture, the covenant relationship of being required or asked to live the covenant obligations. 52:17 We should be singing this new song. And I encourage people just to stop and look at what is, what is the essence of that new song? What are the themes of that new song? 52:25 And how does that fit into my role as a liver of the gospel to love my neighbor? It's quite powerful. Um, I highlighted verse 21, and I'll explain why when we, when we read it. 52:38 "The Lord is well pleased for his righteousness' sake. He will magnify the law and make it honorable." Law in our day, Mike, is something that feels hard and cold and not very loving and inviting. 52:53 And the Hebrew word here is Torah, and Torah comes from the word instruction or teacher. 52:59 What God is saying is that the covenant instructions that he gave to the people as a father at Mount Sinai, where he instructed them on how to be a son, 53:10 he is well pleased for his righteousness' sake, his own faithfulness. 53:14 He's been faithful to his covenant to liberate the people, like he did from Egypt, he's now done at Babylon, and he will make the covenant instructions honorable for people. 53:25 He will invite them in in such a way that they will want to live the covenant obligations and be loyal to God. That's what's going on here in this verse. So more, more comfort, we look at chapter 43. 53:37 I have a title here of Fear Not, For I Have Redeemed You. Mike, will you read verse- Before we go to that chapter- Yeah... I just want your thought on something real quick. Mm-hmm. 53:45 I just can't help it, 'cause I've wondered about this for years. But back in 42:11, uh, "The wilderness and the cities thereof lift up their voice, the villages that Kedar doth inhabit." Let, here it is. 53:57 "Let the inhabitants of the rock sing." Rock comes from the Hebrew word Sela. Hmm. That's the, that's a Gentile, uh, it's, it's a city on the border of the Amorites. Hmm. "Let them shout from the top of the mountains." 54:14 So when on Palm Sunday- Hmm... you see where we're going? On, I... You need to walk this through. I th- I'm getting an inkling. Don't, isn't it, like, the Pharisees or the Sadducees or someone are... 54:27 They're all upset that the people are shouting, "Hosanna." Mm-hmm. They're accepting him as the Messiah, and the Jewish leaders are like- Tell them to stop. 54:36 And Jesus says, "If I tell them to stop, then the rocks will cry out." Boom. That's amazing. I wonder if he's trying to say, "Hey, if you Jewish leaders don't allow this, I'm still gonna... 54:49 The Gentiles, they'll at least accept me." I like where you're going with this. 'Cause it's the same language there. It s- it's- That's powerful. In fact, he's... 54:58 It sounds like he's calling upon, like, "Listen, I am the covenant son. I am under obligation to do these good deeds, and I have been commanded in scripture to sing this new song. 55:11 And if I don't, the rocks will sing it for me, or by extension, the Gentiles will sing, and you guys will be removed." My covenant people won't do it. 55:21 The Gentiles will accept the covenant eventually, and they will- Yeah... they'll, they'll sing my praises. Yes. Hmm. So I like how you're helping us to see that these... 55:30 What Jesus is doing is simultaneously fulfilling multiple aspects of two different covenants- Hmm... in his own person. He fulfills both the Abrahamic and the Mosaic covenant. All right, so chapter 43, uh, more comfort. 55:44 "Fear not, I have redeemed you." This is a really powerful chapter. I- just the message here is just so unmistakable. I can imagine a distraught, downcast Israelite hearing this and just being shocked into joy 56:00 and the desire to be fully aligned to God. Let's just read some of this. "But now thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel, Fear not: for I have redeemed thee." 56:13 All of this is covenantal language. God made a covenant, and he has fulfilled it. Verse, uh, still in verse one, "I have called thee by thy name: thou art mine." Remember, what does God want? To be in a relationship. 56:26 Again, this is all covenantal language. And he's also kind of alluding to how he has saved the people in the past, and therefore he will continue to save them in the future. This is all part of his covenantal nature. 56:38 "When thou passeth through the waters, I will be with thee, and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. 56:49 For I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Savior: I gave Egypt for ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for me. 56:57 Since thou was precious in my sight, thou hast been honorable, and I have loved thee: therefore will I give men for thee, and people for thy life." There is so much covenantal language going on here. 57:07 The phrase love in the ancient covenantal meaning meant to be covenantally loyal and faithful to somebody, and this is exactly what God has done. 57:17 He has been enduringly, covenantally faithful to the people, and that is the essence of love. So we go back to the word Mormon, God's love endures forever. 57:26 You could read that as God's covenant, God's covenantal faithfulness endures forever, and Isaiah is preaching it. I mean, this is some of the most powerful preaching anywhere. 57:37 He goes on, verse five, "Fear not: for I am with thee." This is covenantal language. God has made an eternal covenant. You go back to Genesis chapter 15. It's unbreakable. God will be with us. We can walk away, 57:54 but he is always there when we return. Well, and I like... Keep reading the same verse. Yeah. Were you gonna keep reading? Go for it. Same verse, verse five, "I will bring thy seed from the east." 58:03 Now, if you're in downtown Jerusalem, like Isaiah, where's east? Bab- Babylon. Yeah. So even if you're in Babylon, in exile, I, I got you. Okay, keep going. Next line. 58:15 And by the way, the seed, remember Abraham, the un- the unbreakable eternal covenant God made to Abraham included seed. So God is speaking from this covenant of Abraham- Hmm... stance. 58:28 So just as a reminder, any time you're in the Old Testament, if God is acting, it's always within the framework of the Abrahamic covenant. When the people are acting, it's within the Mosaic covenant. 58:39 You know, if they're being loyal and faithful, they're getting all the blessings. If they're being disloyal, they're not. And God always shows up in each case to always try to be with them. That's his ongoing commitment. 58:54 And this would be really radical i- through that... 58:58 if we're l- reading it through that lens, because when Abraham and Sarah are pr- promised seed as numerous as the stars, the sand, and as the dust, it's not just, "Oh, you're gonna have a lot of babies and a lot of greatki- grandkids and great-great-great-grandkids." 59:12 This isn't about just demographics. This is about covenant keepers. That's right. And these are people in Babylon in exile that were breaking their covenants. Mm-hmm. 59:25 And the Lord's, uh, unless I'm misunder- understanding, the Lord's like, "Hey, I haven't given up on them yet." Exactly. God is covenantally disallowed from giving up on his people. Yeah, and he seems to be... 59:40 This is great comfort, not just for the Isaiah or for Nephi, who knows a little about having a lot of people that aren't keeping their covenants. 59:49 He's like, "Yeah, I know there's a struggle right now, and we all might have family members that struggle," but the Lord's like, "I haven't given up on them. 59:57 Yeah, this is painful, and it might take decades before they turn around, and it might even take into the hereafter." Right. "But we're not gonna lose hope." 1:00:06 God committed covenantally and eternally to never give up on us. Hmm. Now, he can't force us into salvation. He cannot force us to receive or live any of the covenant that he offers us, 1:00:23 but he covenantally has disallowed himself the possibility of walking away from us. Hmm. That is the Abrahamic covenant. 1:00:32 President Oaks said, "Of course, many church members have beloved family members who do not embrace gospel values and expectations. Such members need our love and patience. 1:00:42 In relating to one another, we should remember that the perfection we seek is not limited to the stressful circumstances of mortality. 1:00:50 The great teaching in Doctrine and Covenants section 138 verses 57 to 59 assures us that repentance and spiritual growth can continue in the spirit world that follows mortality." Hmm. Boom. 1:01:06 I'm gonna build on that right now. Isaiah and President, uh, Oaks would get along just fine. If we continue here in chapter 43, what President Oaks has taught is the same message that we're hearing from Isaiah. 1:01:21 Listen to some of these phrases. Well, he didn't even... We didn't even finish the chapter, though, or I mean the verse. Oh, sorry. I did cut you off. Ke- let's... Yeah, go for it. No, no, no. 1:01:28 Uh, well, well, "I'll bring thy seed from the east," and then the next line, "and gather thee from the west." In other words, or if you're in Egypt. And then he says, "I will say to the north, 'Give up.'" 1:01:41 Or if you were carried away into, uh, Syria, and you're scattered, and then to finish the completeness, or you've gone to the south. I, I... It doesn't matter where you go. 1:01:53 The south of it from Jerusalem would've been great, d- down to the desert, which also symbolizes this desolation, and you've lost hope. Hmm. It doesn't matter where you've gone. I've got... I- I'm not giving up on you. 1:02:04 Okay. Sorry, I, I interrupted, but- No, this is- I, I just love how comprehensive his mercy is, his, oh, his relentless pursuit for us. 1:02:14 Mike, what you've pointed out is this, this geographic reference that Isaiah has packed in here to make it unmistakable you can't go anywhere that God can't find you. And not to find you like, "Oh, you made a mistake." 1:02:30 To find you because he simply wants to be in a relationship, in a covenantally bound relationship. And look at what he, what he says here. I'm gonna quote a bunch of verses as we go through here. 1:02:43 Verse seven, "Even every one that is called by my name: for I have created him for my glory, I have formed him; yea, I made him." This is all covenant language. 1:02:54 In the ancient world, the king would identify what he'd done for the people to be loyal to them, and therefore, the obvious conclusion was the people should be loyal back. 1:03:04 They should expect some set of instructions for how they can show covenantal love and loyalty. 1:03:10 Um, he goes on in verse 10, "Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen," okay, speaking to Israel, "that ye may know and believe or have trust, uh, trust in me, and understand that I am he. 1:03:24 Before me there was no God formed. Neither shall there be after me. I, even I, am the Lord." I'm on verse 11, "And beside me there is no savior." End of verse 12, "I am God." 1:03:38 Verse 14, "Thus saith the Lord, your redeemer, the Holy One of Israel." Verse 15, "I am the Lord, your Holy One, the creator of Israel, your King." 1:03:49 This is all a new exodus, a revamping of the Mosaic Covenant at Mount Sinai. All this is language of God reminding the people of what faithful deeds he's done. 1:04:02 In the ancient world, this conditional covenant followed this format. 1:04:06 The king introduces himself, reminds the people what he's done, and says, "Because I've been faithful to you people, I want you to live in my land as my subjects, to be my children. 1:04:17 I expect your faithful loyalty in the land." These are people who've just been kicked out of the land. He's saying, "Guess what? I'm bringing you back in. We're resurrecting the covenant commitment. 1:04:29 I'm still the same God, and I'm gonna allow you to come back in. Here's the updated expectations if you wanna live in peace and prosperity." 1:04:37 By the way, this covenant format shows up when God calls the saints out of New York to gather to the first Zion at Kirtland, and he gives them the law of the church. It's section 42. 42. It follows the same format. 1:04:51 When God calls the people to Zion, Missouri, one of the first revelations it received where God says, "I wanna give you land. I've been faithful to you. I want you to be faithful to me." 1:05:02 Section 59 follows the same format. When God calls Brigham Young to call the people out to the West to get... 1:05:09 settle a new land, and he wants them to be faithful to him because he's been faithful to them, section 136 follows the same format. Hmm. 1:05:16 When Abinadi goes to King Noah and says, "You guys have not been faithful to God in the land, and therefore, if you don't repent, you're gonna suffer consequences," it follows the same format. Hmm. 1:05:28 It's everywhere in scripture. We call this the Mosaic Covenant. It's the conditions for how the son or the servant is supposed to be loyal to the father or to the king. The Abrahamic covenant is the king or the father. 1:05:42 We are in the Mosaic Covenant. And when Jesus showed up, he came as the great king of the Abrahamic covenant, and he lived as the faithful son, and he lived everything from the Mosaic Covenant and gave an upgrade. 1:05:55 It's similar to the map. He said, "Here was the past instructions. Here's how to show loyalty and love to God now." Yeah. The higher and holier way. 1:06:03 And he calls prophets to preach that message and to provide updates from time to time. 1:06:07 So when, when we go to general conference, it's the prophet's job to help us know what does God expect us to be doing to show that we love him, we're in relationship. So section or chapter 43, super awesome. 1:06:22 I keep calling things section. I mean, we've been out of the Doctrine and Covenants here for quite a while, and I just can't get over it. Chapter 44, the same message. The Lord alone is God. 1:06:36 So verses one to eight, this Spirit's poured out over Israel. Verses nine to 20, God or Isaiah makes fun of idols. Like, you can't trust them. 1:06:45 The whole point is, like, why would you wanna go make deals with other countries, other kings, other gods when they're useless? The God who made the world, made the Earth, 1:06:56 saved your ancestors from Egypt through the waters of the Red Sea, through the Jordan River, gave you the Promised Land. Why not trust Him? So He goes on in verses 21 to 28. Uh, these are really important verses. 1:07:13 "Remember these, O Jacob and Israel, for thou art my servant. I have formed thee. Thou art my servant or my son," which means you need to live these covenant obligations. "O Israel, thou shall not be forgotten of me." 1:07:29 Again, God made a covenant to Abraham that He cannot break. Therefore, it is impossible for God to forget His covenant obligations to us, to offer us salvation. 1:07:42 Verse 22: "I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins. Return unto me, for I have redeemed thee." Blotted out, if you look at the, uh, academic lexicon, 1:07:58 blotted out can mean to wipe out. Hmm. And it can also mean to, I love this, ani- annihilate. Oh, [laughs] that's a better translation. 1:08:08 We, we, we, we like to say, "Yeah, I've been forgiven of my sins," and that is divine. That's beautiful. I love annihilate. I'm, I'm gonna reread this. I have annihilated your sins. Hmm. 1:08:21 And you see the same thing in 43 as well. Uh, chapter 43? Yeah. Verse 25. Read it to us. It says, "I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions." 1:08:36 "I am he that annihilate thy transgressions. I will not remember thy sins." Psalm 51:1, same thing. Uh, "According unto the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions." 1:08:54 Yeah, annihilate my transgressions. Lehi uses similar terminology when he's wandering in the dark mist before, like in his dream. He says, "Have mercy according to thy tender mercies." Kind of the same thing. Yeah. 1:09:10 Okay, so here in chapter 44 and 45 is where we get a specific reference to the Persian king, Cyrus. Let's read verses 28, uh, from chapter 44, and then continue on, um, verses one and, 1:09:28 uh, one through four. Mike, will you read those for us? And as just a brief background, Cyrus is the Persian king who knocked out the Babylonians. The Babylonians actually didn't like their king. 1:09:36 When Cyrus showed up, the Babylonians were really happy to have Cyrus come along because he was a very generous king. And he writes a decree, 1:09:44 and he basically liberates all these captive people and gives them their money back that had been stolen from their temple treasuries. 1:09:51 And not just the Jews, but people anywhere who'd been conquered by the Babylonians were allowed to go back to their homelands and to rebuild their, um, their national sanctuaries. 1:09:59 And archeologists have discovered that official decree. It's called the Cyrus Cylinder, and there's a copy of it in the UN building in New York City. 1:10:10 It's the earliest evidence we have anywhere in the world of religious freedom and is granted by a Gentile. Hmm. And it's granted by a Gentile to a bunch of nations, including the Jewish people. 1:10:22 That would've been around 520 BC. Yeah. Here we go. 1:10:26 Isaiah 44:28, "That sayeth of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure: even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built; and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid." I'm gonna pause for a minute. 1:10:41 This is wildly shocking. A pagan king rebuilds the Promised Land and God's holy habitation. Yeah. Like, what? That is just wild. 1:10:54 Like, you imagine for an ancient Israelite, like, there's this whole thing like, "No, we're God's special people." They actually misunderstood what it meant to be chosen. 1:11:00 They thought it just meant God likes them more than anybody. He had chosen them to be the bearers of his covenant grace to everybody. 1:11:10 But instead, they hoarded it to themselves and then violated the terms of the agreement. So God's like, "Great, I'm gonna go find a Gentile, and he will build my house." Super shocking. I love it. [laughs] Yeah. 1:11:25 If you covenant people don't wanna get on board, I'm gonna use Gentiles. That's right, who are also my people. They'll be my children, and they will be loyal. 1:11:33 And the Book of Mormon is replete with this message, that if, in fact, n- the Nephite nation falls, 'cause they're like the Jews. They're like, "Nope, I don't really want all that God has to offer." 1:11:46 And I have to be careful when I say the Jews, because we're talking about some segments of Jews at certain historical time periods. We wanna be careful we're not labeling anybody today, 'cause that's... 1:11:56 they're not the ones we're talking about. [laughs] Right. And even in Jesus' day, not all the Jews were behind wanting to have Jesus crucified. Correct. It was- Many were shouting hosanna at the triumphal entry. Right. 1:12:09 Right. It's, uh, it's often people who are in power who lead the masses into really bad decisions. If you look across human history... Uh, by the way, here's a crazy thing. 1:12:19 I was studying something about, uh, European history or, from 1800s to the 1900s. 1:12:24 Most of the most consequential wars in Europe from the 1800s all the way to World War I were basically European leaders who were blood relatives, as cousins. 1:12:36 Millions of Europeans died on European battlefields fighting wars on behalf of their leaders- And the leaders are cousins to each other. Do you think the people dying in battle really cared that much? 1:12:52 Or did they get drawn into the rhetoric and propaganda of their leaders? It is deeply important that the only leader that we follow, ultimately, is Jesus. 1:13:05 And any other leader, whoever stands up to speak, anything they say, any action they take, should always be measured against, does this bring me to Jesus, or does this violate any aspect of Jesus' message? 1:13:21 If so, retain your agency and don't be misled. It's pretty simple. I interrupted. So let's go on. What else does God say about- Chapter- Chapter 45, verse one. "Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, 1:13:34 whose right hand I have holden to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two-levied gates; and the gates shall not be shut. 1:13:48 I will go before thee, and I will make the crooked places straight: I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron: and I will give thee the treasures of darkness and hidden treasures of secret places, that thou mayest know that I, the Lord, which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel." 1:14:11 That's powerful. Keep going. Sorry, one more verse. "For my, for Jacob, my servant's sake, and Israel mine elect, I have even called thee by thy name, and have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me." 1:14:25 So yeah, it's fascinating. So Cyrus doesn't know who Jehovah is, but Jehovah knows him and has called him, and the surname is Shepherd. Shepherd was an ancient symbol of being a nurturing king, 1:14:41 and that's the title he gives to Cyrus. In fact, this phrase here, "The Lord... Thus saith the Lord to his Messiah, Cyrus." 1:14:53 This is really also wild that we have a Gentile who's a Messiah, an anointed one. Anybody that God chooses to do his work can be on God's side. 1:15:09 So Mike, anything else you'd like to share about, uh, that wildly unexpected call that God makes to a Gentile to be the Messiah who rebuilds his temple? 1:15:20 I, I guess maybe I would just say on verse seven, though, "I form the light." Okay, I like that. God forms the light and everything that's good, "and create darkness. I make peace," okay, yeah, "and create evil." 1:15:35 We gotta be careful how we interpret that. God is never the author of evil. Yeah, it's really interesting. I was just writing about this a few days ago. In our day, we wanna say God is just a bed of roses. 1:15:45 It's all nice and fuzzy all the time. Think about if you're an Egy- you're an Israelite in Egyptian bondage. You've seen serious evil. If God, if the boundaries of God's power stop at what's evil, 1:16:03 can you trust him that he can truly save you out of the worst circumstances? Hmm. So today, we wanna focus on the goodness of God, that he doesn't make bad things, and he doesn't violate people's agency. Anciently, 1:16:18 they needed to see God's character as having full control over everything. And so therefore, if he trigs- creates the light but not the darkness, who's in charge of the darkness? And can God get there? Hmm. 1:16:32 If God is not in charge of the darkness, God actually can't get you out of it. So what you're suggesting is that verse seven, from an ancient perspective, would just be communicating God has control over all. 1:16:47 He's all-powerful. Right. So it is a little rhetorical to say God created evil. 1:16:52 For an ancient listener, they would understand not that God is out there just, like, shooting bombs on people for fun, but that he has total control. There's nothing out of his power to fix. Okay. 1:17:07 And we do create problems for ourselves theologically when we say, "Yeah, yeah, God is not the God of the darkness." Okay, well then who is? 1:17:14 And if you're in the darkness, and we all get there at times, how in the world will you ever get saved out of the darkness if you don't worship a g- God who also is a God of the darkness? Well, and on the cross- Phew... 1:17:29 he certainly descended into the darkness. Yes. He was in the thick of it. Yes. Well, think about it. He, uh- And he conquered it. [laughs] Exactly, 'cause he has the keys of death and hell. Mm-hmm. 1:17:41 We sing that in our hymns. Well, if you have the keys to something, it means you have authority over it and you control it. Well, wait a second. If you control death and hell, like, did you create those things? 1:17:50 At the end of the day, it's irrelevant. It's the outcome we're looking at. If we say, "I don't like God 'cause he created death and hell," it's like those are stopping points. 1:18:00 He is the one who's in charge of the beginning and the end, and the end is eternal life with him. And one of the stepping stones is you have to go through death, but he's broken it. 1:18:11 But if he's not the God of over death, you're never getting out. There's a really f- uh, there's a famous Broadway show right now called Hadestown. Went and saw it with my family. It was so powerful. 1:18:21 And the story is about how, um, anciently, everyone knew people died and there was no way out. There's this young man, beautiful voice, name is Orpheus. Our word orphan comes from that. 1:18:33 He's a solo person, doesn't have any family, and he falls in love with a beautiful girl named Eurydice, and her name means true judgment. And she dies, and he's so distraught. 1:18:43 Orpheus, this beautiful singer, is so distraught at the death of his girlfriend, of his lover, True Judgment. By the way, we all die. That is true judgment. That he goes into the underworld, he goes into Hades, 1:18:56 and he sings a song to get her out. And his song is so beautiful that even the god of the underworld, Hades in Greek, Pluto in Roman times, 1:19:11 that even Hades, who never lets anybody out, says, "Your song was so beautiful, I will not only allow you out, that you've come down here to get her, but I will allow true judgment, Eurydice, out. But 1:19:25 when you guys are leaving this long, dark path out of Hades, or hell, you can never look back at her until you both are in the sunlight." And so they had this long, trudging, dark, foreboding path out of Hades. 1:19:43 And as Orpheus emerges into the light, he's so excited to finally be able to behold and embrace again his beloved, he turns around to see her. And she has not yet fully emerged in the light, and she slips 1:19:59 back into the darkness of death. True judgment. Death is irreversible. That was the ancient world's view. Mm. And Hades, who was the god of the underworld, never let anybody out. What does Jesus do? 1:20:15 He dies, he goes into the underworld, and he sings the song of everlasting joy. And what happens? He gets out. Nobody's ever gotten out of the underworld, ever. And then everybody gets out. Everybody. 1:20:32 Imagine you're an ancient person hearing the story of Christianity. You know all the stories of the ancient world, that everybody dies and nobody gets out, ever. 1:20:40 And the Christian missionaries come along and say, "Yeah, you know what, Orpheus, Eurydice?" Everyone knew that story. It was super popular in the ancient world. "Well, there's actually another man named Jesus. 1:20:52 He also was a great singer. He sang the song of redeeming love, and he came back." Be like, "What? Somebody came back from life, from death to, to life?" Yeah, not only that, everybody who was stuck in the grasp of death 1:21:10 has been allowed to get out if they're willing. Well, everybody gets out, but those who actually get resurrected immediately, they would have a teaching about, like, the first and second resurrection. 1:21:22 What's powerful about this is that this shows us Jesus, the great Jehovah, is the king and the God over darkness and death. 1:21:34 So that's why anciently people would be okay hearing that God was also the God of death and evil. 1:21:40 It sounds weird to us today, but anciently, you wanna worship a God who has control of everything and the keys to everything. Is that helpful? Yeah. Yeah. So when I sat through Hadestown on Broadway, I just... 1:21:51 My mind was just on fire with how powerful the Christian story was. And by the way, the musical was quite amazing. All right, so the rest of chapter 45 is quite powerful. 1:22:03 I encourage listeners, go through and mark every single time God speaks in the first person. And I'll just summarize what he's doing. 1:22:12 This is still the covenant format where he is giving a litany of reasons why he has been faithful to the people, and therefore they should be loyal and faithful to him. I'll just read just a couple of verses here. 1:22:26 Verse 21 at the end: "Have not I, the Lord... There is no God else beside me, a just God and a Savior; there is none beside me. 1:22:37 Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else." 23: "I have sworn by myself." This is back in Abraham chapter 15, verse 17. 1:22:51 Actually, chapter, Genesis chapter 17 also says this. "I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, that unto me every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall swear." 1:23:04 Meaning, God has made a commitment to be our God. We can't change that. We can choose to receive him or we reject him, but God will always be there available to be our king and our God. 1:23:15 Wow, I just noticed that, "Every tongue shall swear." Mm-hmm. Where we're used to hearing every tongue confess. Mm-hmm. But here, swear- Yeah... means shav- comes from the Hebrew word shava, which means to make an oath. 1:23:29 That's powerful. It's one thing... I g- wow, I never thought about that. It's one thing to, like, "Oh, I admit, I confess- Mm-hmm... you're, you're the true Messiah, you are the Christ." 1:23:40 But every tongue shall make an oath? The reason is this. Remember, this is a covenant ceremony that's happening here. 1:23:48 Think back to the Exodus story when the people are at Mount Sinai, God says, "I've done all these great deeds for you. I wanna be your God. Will you be my treasured people?" 1:23:55 And they all say, "We covenant yes to be your people." And if you wanna be in God's eternal kingdom, the only way to stay there is to covenant, to make an oath, to stay loyal in the covenant to him. Hmm. 1:24:10 That's interesting. I love it. By the way, our word answer comes from the word an-swear. The word answer means to swear back to somebody, meaning I speak back to you i- in as if an oath, meaning you can trust my word. 1:24:28 An answer is something you can trust. But the word answer drops the A out of the word swear, and it just becomes an-swer versus an-swear. But originally, it was an-swear. I am oathing back to you. 1:24:42 You ask me a question, on oath I am gonna speak the truth to you. Let your yeas be yeas, your nays be nays, and no equivocation about what people mean. All right. Chapter 46. 1:24:54 I wrote a header, Babylon's gods bow down to Jehovah. Just to highlight a couple verses here. Bel, a god of Babylon, bowed down. Nebo stupeth. 1:25:04 Their idols were upon the beasts, and upon the cattle your carriages were heavy laden. They are a burden to the weary beast. They stoop down. They stoop, they bow down together. 1:25:14 They could not deliver the burden, but themselves are gone into captivity. 1:25:18 Meaning, God now has taken these Israelites who are leaving Babylon, are taking images of the Babylonian gods out of their homelands into the promised land to show that these gods have no power, and they're actually in captivity in God's promised land. 1:25:33 It's kind of funny. And notice again, he's just all this comfort, convincing people who he is. It seems like they've forgotten. Verse four, "And even to your old age, I am he. And even to the hoar hairs will I carry you. 1:25:46 I have made, and I will bear, and I will carry, and I will deliver you. To whom will you liken me, and make me equal, and compare me that we may be like?" And the answer is nothing. 1:26:00 Verse nine, "For remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else. I am God, and there is none like me." What does it mean when a prophet or God repeats himself twice? 1:26:15 This is serious, and it's legal, and it's binding. So really powerful chapter. God is speaking in the first person. The comfort is there because we know we can trust him to do what he says. 1:26:28 This is also to g- give comfort to the Israelites because chapter 47, Isaiah predicts the fall of proud Babylon. Okay? I'm gonna read just a couple verses here. 1:26:41 Verse three, middle of the verse, he says, "I will take vengeance, and I will not meet thee as a man." He's speaking against the Babylonians. 1:26:48 Even though the Babylonians were God's instrument to execute judgment against the faithless Israelites who had broken covenant league with God, he is now gonna take judgment out against the Babylonians. Verse five. 1:27:03 Sorry, verse four, "And for our- as for our redeemer, the Lord of hosts is his name: the Holy One of Israel sit thou silent, and get thee into darkness, O daughter of the Babylonians," or Chaldeans. 1:27:14 "For thou shalt no more be called the lady of kingdoms." Right? So Babylon's gonna fall, and people aren't gonna care about her anymore. Jehovah speaking, "I was wroth with my people," right, because they broke covenant. 1:27:26 They violated the terms of the agreement from Mount Sinai. "I have polluted mine inheritance," meaning God allowed non-covenant people to be in his land. "And I give him my people into thine hand," Babylon. 1:27:41 "Thou didst shew them no mercy." So God's saying to the Babylonians, this is verse six, "You didn't show any mercy to my people. Upon the ancient hast thou very heavily laid thy yoke." 1:27:51 So from old to young, they all suffered. Verse seven, "And thou," Babylon, "has said, 'I shall be a lady forever.' So that thou didst not lay these things to thy heart, neither didst thou remember the latter end of it." 1:28:04 So basically, he's just saying that Babylon is full of pride and will be humbled. Verse 10, Babylon says... Well, he says to Babylon, "For thou hast trusted in thy wickedness. 1:28:16 Babylon has said to themselves, 'None seeth me.'" God then says, "Well, your wisdom and your knowledge hath perverted you, Babylon. You have said in your heart, 'I am and none else beside me.'" Well, you're wrong. 1:28:30 There is God and none else. "Therefore," God says about Babylon, "shall evil come upon you, Babylon. 1:28:37 You shall not know from where it comes: and mischief shall fall upon you, you shall not be able to put it off: and desolation shall come upon you suddenly, which you won't even know about." 1:28:50 And that's actually what happened to Babylon when the Persians came in and conquered. Isaiah chapter 48. Well, actually, if you go to the end of chapter 47 verse 15, Babylon falls. 1:29:00 Verse, uh, chapter 48, the Lord refines his people. So he's spent all these chapters reminding them of who he is. It's now time for them to be prepared to receive him. Think about the Israelites, Mike. 1:29:14 When they were taken out of Egyptian bondage, God introduced himself to them. They said, "We wanna be in a relationship with you." And he says, "Great. 1:29:20 Get prepared to join me on the mountain and to come into my presence." And his presence is, was so awesome and overwhelming, the people were like, "We might die. 1:29:30 So Moses, you go mediate for us because we're not totally fully prepared." Okay? Something similar is happening here. God needs to prepare his people to be ready to be with him. 1:29:42 And people think, "Well, why can't he just take them where they're at?" It's like, well, he does, but think about a marriage. 1:29:47 Don't the bride and groom spend a lot of time getting ready and looking nice for each other, and getting showered up, and, you know, getting cologne and perfume? You don't get married when you're five or six years old. 1:29:57 Uh, that's also true. I mean, there's some maturation that needs to take place. And that's exactly what's happening here. God is allowing them to be mat- uh, the maturation and the preparation for the marriage. Okay? 1:30:11 So this is quoted in, is it 1 Nephi 21 or 22? Yeah, 1 Nephi 20. Or 20. Okay. By the way, these are some of the first things that I, Nephi ever quotes from Isaiah. 1:30:22 And remember, he introduces this saying, "I want my people to know their Savior, and I want them to know the king they can trust, and I want them to have comfort." He comes right here. 1:30:32 And remember, God is a great king who always lives his covenant, and he's inviting people to join him in covenant. What does Nephi want? I want my people to join Jehovah in covenant. 1:30:44 Therefore, he reads these two chapters because that's exactly what's happening covenantally in Isaiah chapter 48 and 49. 1:30:53 So- First one, "Hear ye this, O house of Jacob, which are called by the name of Israel, and are come forth out of the waters of Judah, which swear by the name of the Lord, and make mention of the God of Israel, but not in truth, nor in righteousness." 1:31:04 Meaning, hey, you guys have claimed to be in covenant with me, but you actually weren't. You did it in vain, with empty purpose, empty meaning. 1:31:12 When we talk about taking the Lord's name in vain, that's what's going on here. When you make a covenant with God and you have no intention of keeping it and you purposely plan to break the covenant, 1:31:24 that's taking the Lord's name in vain. Yep. Okay? It's one thing to make a covenant and then mess up. That's not taking the Lord's name in vain. It's like purposely, intentionally, um, deceit, trying to deceive God. 1:31:35 Okay? It goes on, "For they call themselves of the holy city, and stay themselves upon the God of Israel. The Lord of hosts is his name. 1:31:43 I have declared the former things from the beginning; and they went forth out of my mouth, and I shewed them; I did them suddenly, and they came to pass." This is the God you can trust. He is in charge. 1:31:54 So if he's been loyal to us, we should be loyal to th- to him. That's what Isaiah wants to convince the Israelites of. That's why Nephi quotes this to convince his people, trust God. 1:32:03 "Because I knew that thou art obstinate, and thy neck is an iron sinew, and thy brow brass; I have even from the beginning declared it to thee; before it came to pass I shewed it; lest thou should say, Mine idol hath said this." 1:32:16 Basically God's saying, "Look, I knew that you were gonna mess up. I made those predictions back in Exodus and in Deuteronomy and 1 Samuel 7. I laid all this out. That shows you I am God. 1:32:29 It also means I knew that you were gonna need more help, and I am here, back, ready to be in covenant with you. Trust me. I know the end from the beginning. 1:32:38 I knew that you were gonna fall, but that fall does not be per- uh, does not have to be per- permanent. Choose to receive me." 1:32:45 Verse nine, "For my name's sake will I defer mine anger, and for my praise will I refrain for thee, that I cut thee not off." This is super powerful. What is God saying? 1:32:57 He has made an unbreakable covenant on his own name. He's swore an oath on his own name, which he can't break. You go back to Genesis 15, Genesis 17, 2 Samuel 7: like 10-15. 1:33:10 God has made oaths on his own name, and he's telling the people, "You can trust me. I am God. I cannot die. I cannot break my oath." 1:33:18 Verse 10, "Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction." For my own purposes, even for my own purpose, my own sake, will I do it. "For how should my name be polluted? 1:33:33 and I will not give my glory to another." This is covenant hesed. This is some of the most powerful covenant language anywhere in scripture. 1:33:43 The covenant logic is saturating the text, and we read this and take it seriously. And I understand, I know that this is why Nephi read it. This is the God who makes and keeps covenants. 1:33:54 The people are not cast out forever. He comes to them. He finds them in their wilderness. 1:34:00 All right, so if we look at, say, verses 16 to 22, what's happening is God telling the people, "It's time to come back to a relationship with me. 1:34:09 Had you stayed in a relationship with me the first time, you would have avoided all this trauma." But the trauma's happened. So look at verse 18. 1:34:17 "O that thou hadst hearkened to my covenantal instructions," and had been covenantally loyal based on what I taught you at Mount Sinai in Deuteronomy, "then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea. 1:34:32 Thy seed also had been as the sand, and the offspring of thy bowels like the gravel thereof; his name should not have been cut off nor destroyed from before me." That's the Abrahamic promise. 1:34:42 God is saying, "The Abrahamic promise is alive and well, but you guys rejected it. You did not live the conditions to receive it." So what should you do now? And think about Nephi telling this to his people. 1:34:52 "Go ye forth out of Babylon," or out of wickedness or out of not trusting God or not believing God or not being willing to be loyal to God. Flee from all of that. 1:35:03 "With a voice of singing declare," and tell this, utter it even to the end of the earth, say, "The Lord hath redeemed his children." This is for Nephi's people, it was for Isaiah's people, it's for us today. 1:35:20 So the last chapter for today, the servant restores Israel and the nations. And this chapter builds on the end of 48, where God shows how he fulfills his covenant. 1:35:33 When people choose to be in a relationship with him, he can deliver all the good things that he had promised, um, all the way, going back, all the way back to Genesis 12, 15, and 17. 1:35:44 So there's a number of really powerful verses here. Let's take a look at, um... Well, first, verse one. You can see why Nephi would have loved this. "Listen, O isles, unto me; and break, and hearken, ye people from far. 1:36:00 The Lord hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name." So Nephi's using this because they're out in the isles of the sea. They're like, "This message is for us." 1:36:11 Verse five, "And now, saith the Lord that formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob again to him, Though Israel be not gathered yet, shall I be glorious in the eyes of the Lord, and my God shall be my strength." 1:36:22 So here this seems to be either speaking of Jesus in his ministry or a prophetic figure, maybe Nephi's taking on this role, of being called by God to do the hard labor of inviting the people back into covenant. 1:36:37 That's how I see this. Yeah. Verse 15's a classic. Let's hear it. "Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. 1:36:53 Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me." I think to understand, I don't pretend to understand all of that, but it sure sounds beautiful. 1:37:07 But notice in Isaiah 26:1, it elaborates on what the walls might symbolize. Hmm. It says, [lip smack] "We have a strong city; salvation will God appoint for walls." Hmm. So 1:37:26 if we can equate walls with salvation, when Jesus says, "Here your walls are continually before me," your salvation is of top... is my top priority. I love that. My good- That's my focus... I love that. 1:37:41 I've never seen that before. It's a great connection. 1:37:44 I'd always kind of seen it as the walls of Jerusalem, it would have been so imposing and powerful to protect the people, that that should be a physical reminder to people that God's salvation is even greater. 1:37:55 So that reference I think is still true, but what you're pointing out is that back in Isaiah 26: verse, was that one? Two. One and two, that God's salvation is symbolized by a wall. 1:38:06 Meaning, don't get too fancy thinking about these walls. Think about my salvation is stronger than anything you've ever seen. Yeah. So he goes on to verse 18. 1:38:19 He says, "Lift up thine eyes round about, and behold: all these gather themselves together, and come to thee. As I live, saith the Lord..." This is a very serious covenant. 1:38:29 God cannot die, and so he's making a covenant based on his own life. "Thou shalt surely clothe thee, clothe [swallows] thee with them all, as with an ornament, and bind them on thee as a bride doeth." 1:38:42 Who are the these, Taylor? All these gather themselves together. So I see this in verse 20, 21, 22 all is about restoration, and the gathering of Israel, and the Gentiles being brought in. 1:38:55 Look at verse 22: "Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will lift up mine hand to the Gentiles, and set up my standard to the people: and they shall bring thy sons in their arms, and thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders. 1:39:07 And kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their queens thy nursing mothers: they shall bow down to thee with their face toward the earth, and lick up the dust of thy feet; and thou shalt know that I am the LORD: for they shall not be ashamed that wait for me." 1:39:20 So the people have gathered to the Promised Land, 1:39:23 and he's going to clothe them in the garments of salvation, and then offer that to everybody else anywhere in the world, just as he promised to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12, and confirmed it in Genesis 15 and 17. 1:39:37 So then verse 24: "Shall the prey be taken from the mighty?" In other words, in Isaiah's context, in his immediate world, shall those that are taken or scattered by Assyria, or those that are in exile in Babylon, 1:39:54 are they gonna ever be released? And the answer would be like, "Uh, I don't think so." But the Lord's like, "Uh, actually you're wrong. Nope, I'm gonna deliver them. You wouldn't expect it, but I will." Yes. 1:40:07 He says in verse 25, in the middle, um, "I will contend with him that contendeth with thee, and I will save thy children. 1:40:14 And I will feed them that oppress thee with their own flesh; and they shall be drunken with their own blood, as with sweet wine: and all flesh shall know that I the LORD am thy Saviour and thy Redeemer, 1:40:26 the mighty One of Jacob." And that is actually where Nephi concludes his first book. He is comforting his people who've been sent off into wilderness, and he's like, "This is the God you can trust. 1:40:40 He knows where you are. You will be brought back home. You're in the Promised Land, but ultimately the full Promised Land of his kingdom will be yours, and nobody can capture you and hold you. 1:40:51 No Lamanite, no water of the sea, no nothing, no sin, if you're willing to choose God." And it's amazing our agency boils down to that one choice. Will we choose every day to come back to God? 1:41:09 Will we choose every day to trust him, to believe him, to love him? Every day we fail, we fall, but are we persistent to come back? That's all we have to do, and everything is laid out for us. The table's set. 1:41:24 The meal's ready. We're always welcome. It does not go away. Will we join the Lord at the feast? Friends, we appreciate you spending time with us as we d- dive deep into Isaiah. 1:41:38 He was a man of God, a man of truth, but more importantly, he was a man who spoke words of comfort. Those words were all focused on who God is. 1:41:48 Jehovah of the Old Testament, Jesus of the New Testament, and our Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ. May those words comfort you today and always. And we leave this with you in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. 1:42:01 [outro music]
