Page 116 - Isaiah Student Worktext

Instead of thorns and briers, there will be cypress and myrtle trees. In other words, instead of bad
things, there will be good.

All of this will stand as a testimony, an everlasting sign.

Chapter 56 and 57 - Main Idea: The people of the world are mixed like
wheat and weeds; the humble ‘wheat’ will be gathered to live with God
eternally; the idolatrous ‘weeds’ will be blown away.

These next two chapters have a parallel in the NT parable of the wheat and the
tares, or weeds. (Matthew 13: 24-30) In that parable, the wheat and the weeds lived close to each
other, but in the end they are eternally separated.

In Chapter 56, we begin with the ‘wheat’, the good.

V. 1-2 God speaks to His people, and tells them to keep justice and righteousness, because His salvation
is approaching. Remember that the birth of Jesus is still 100s of year in the future. This helps to give us
some perspective about the Second Coming.

Then, Isaiah takes another leap here: this salvation that is coming is not just for the Jews.

V. 3 Salvation is also being offered to the son of the foreigner, the Gentile. Also to the eunuch, who
would have been prohibited from even being in the temple because they were ‘blemished’. Rarely
would one have been a eunuch by their own choice.

V. 4-5 this establishes that it’s not our physical or even former spiritual lives that matter…it is
obedience. Whether a eunuch or a foreigner, those who ‘hold fast’ to His covenant, they will receive
greater things than even the ‘sons and daughters’, which would refer to the Jews.

Also, the last part of V. 5 says that they shall not be ‘cut off’ which a term often used for one who would
have no descendants. For the eunuch, this carried special meaning.

V. 6-8 It is laid out here what the requirements are: to love the name of the Lord and to keep the
Sabbath. That doesn’t mean that this alone is what is required for salvation now, but for those who
were outside the circle, it is what God required.

For those who do these things, they are welcome in God’s house, which is called here ‘My house of
prayer. Jesus quoted this when He drove out the money changers in Mark 11: 17. For all nations…no
one would be excluded.

Now back to the weeds.

V. 9-12 these verses speak to the greedy, those who are out for nothing other than their own gain. This
is reminiscent of Paul’s writing in Philippians 3: 19. Their god is their stomach.

These people are never satisfied, and from V. 12, assume that life will go on tomorrow just like today,
only maybe with even more.

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