The God child
The Gospel according to Isaiah 2.0
Isaiah 9:1-7
by Eric Stillman
November 18th, 2007

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Now, that may not be a fascinating line to you, but what I find incredible about it is that the more  you read the Old Testament, the more you see how true that verse is, that Jesus is all over the Old Testament.  Even though his name is never mentioned, story after story points to him and to the gospel.  I don’t think there is one book where this is more true than Isaiah.  This is why I’ve called this series the Gospel according to Isaiah, because Jesus is all over these pages, even if his name is never mentioned.

Let me give a quick recap of the groundwork that was laid last week, so that we can get the most out of this fascinating book.  To properly read Isaiah, you need to understand three things.  First, you need to have some grasp of salvation history.  Briefly, Israel in the time of Isaiah is a people operating under something we call the Old Covenant, set up with Moses and the Israelites at Mt. Sinai after the exodus from Egypt.  The Old Covenant or Mosaic Covenant is a pact set up by God, the king, with his servants, the Israelites, where He promises to be their God and protect them, and lays out blessings and curses depending on whether or not they remain faithful to Him. 

This is important to understand because the second thing you need to know in order to properly read Isaiah is what the function of the Biblical prophet was.  The Biblical prophet was the mouthpiece of God, speaking the words God gave him to speak, and was a covenant mediator.  This essentially means that whenever God’s people were breaking the stipulations of the covenant and in danger of bringing the curses on themselves, God would raise up a prophet to call them to repentance and would warn them of the potential curses that were ahead if they would not turn back to obeying the covenant.  So, in many ways, Isaiah is pointing back to the Old Covenant, reminding the Israelites what it means to follow God, while at the same time in his prophecies he is pointing ahead to a new covenant, to a Messiah who will come and inaugurate a new agreement between God and His people. 

The third thing you need to understand is what was happening during Isaiah’s lifetime.  Israel was actually divided into two parts at this time – the ten tribes of Israel in the north, and the two tribes of Judah in the south.  During Isaiah’s life, the safety of Israel was being threatened by Assyria, who was attempting to conquer all the surrounding countries and build an empire.  And as Israel was being invaded, the king of Judah, King Ahaz, was faced with a decision – make a treaty with Assyria and hope they will be nice and not destroy Judah, or trust in God for protection and hope for the best.  As you may remember from last week, Isaiah prophesies in chapter 7 to Judah that even though these armies are threatening, they will not destroy Judah.