Page 102 - Isaiah Student Worktext

Through Cyrus, God would do ‘His pleasure’ in Babylon and against the Chaldeans. Again, they were evil
and were appointed by God to do His work, but in the end, they will be punished for their evil. God
didn’t ‘make’ them evil but used what they were already doing to accomplish His purposes.

V. 16 God doesn’t speak in secret. Unlike false gods of the time, God didn’t declare His purposes quietly
or secretly. The end of V. 16 is another indication of the Trinity: the Lord God, His Spirit have sent ‘Me’
which is a prophecy of the coming of Christ.

This will be covered more fully in the next chapter.

V.17-19 God established Himself as the Redeemer, the Holy One, the Lord God who leads in the way we
should go. The problem then and now is that people must follow the One who is their leader. V. 18
shows that they did not. Matthew 23: 37 If they had, there would have been ‘peace…like a river’ and
waves of righteousness.

Like the earlier promise to Abraham, their descendants would have been like the sands of the sea.

V. 20-21 The people of Israel have been held captive in Babylon. Now, once they are free, they need to
get out, get away from this place. As they go, they were told to proclaim their Deliverer, their
Redeemer.

‘They did not thirst’ is another reminder of what God had done for them in the past. He brought water
from a rock as the Hebrew people traveled through the desert.

V. 22 We go from the possibility of peace like a river and waves of righteousness to the absence of peace
for those who are wicked.

Chapter 49 - Main Idea: It is insufficient for the servant of the Lord
(Jesus) merely to restore the exiles of Israel; beside that and against
all obstacles, He will extend God’s salvation to the ends of the earth.

This chapter focuses on this profound truth: Jesus is too great to have been
sent for the Jews only. Through Him, salvation was extended to the entire earth.

V. 1-2 It begins here, from the coastlands to the peoples from afar, the Lord has called Jesus ‘from the
womb’ to all people.

From His mouth comes a sharp sword, not as a weapon of slaughter, but to pierce the hearts of the
people.

This of course is echoed in the New Testament. Luke 2: 32 Simeon saw the infant Jesus as a ‘light for
revelation to the Gentiles’.

For us today, this is fairly simple to accept because nearly all of us would have been considered
‘Gentiles’. For the people of Jesus’ time and even more so in Isaiah’s time, the Jews considered
themselves the exclusive chosen people of God.

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