Isaiah [Part 14] - A Message for the Faithful

Read the transcript below, or watch a video of the teaching by Joseph Shulam.

Shalom! We have arrived to chapter 51 of Isaiah. I'm just going to say a thing about the previous lessons in the book of Isaiah. There is a switch that starts in chapter 40 and continues on toward the end of Isaiah to chapter 66, but the second switch after chapter 40, there is a switch from chapter 49 on to the rest of Isaiah. And this is the most important switch because until chapter 40 and from chapter 40 to chapter 49, the servant of the Lord is the nation of Israel, Jacob, and Israel, the two parallel names for Jacob.

Jacob before his—I will use a Christian term here—before his conversion in the battle with the angel of the Lord, crossing the river Jabok and the Jordan's side, before crossing the river Jordan toward the land that God promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he met at night an angel. He was alone, he had a wrestling match with the angel, and then he got his name changed from Jacob to Israel. So in Isaiah, you find the two names parallel. Essentially, if I go to the rabbinical interpretation, Jacob is the old Jacob—Jacob the liar, Jacob the user—and Israel is the new Jacob, the converted Jacob. The angel gave him that name, the righteous Jacob.

So I was wrestling with the interpretation of chapter 51, verse 1, because Hebrews says:

That's from verse 1 to 3 of Isaiah 51.I already said it earlier that there is a switch in chapter 49. The servant of the Lord becomes an individual, not the whole nation, but a representative of the whole nation as an individual. Now in chapter 51, the prophet turns again to the nation, not all the nation, but those in the nation of Israel who seek righteousness, who want to follow righteousness, who seek the Lord. This term within itself is a very powerful term because to seek is an active activity. It's something that you choose to do, it's something that you desire to do, and you have to get involved in it. You can't be somebody who goes to church or to synagogue and just sits on the pew. You have to be a seeker. You have to look for it, you have to research it, you have to investigate it, you have to dig for it. So the prophet says, "You who seek the Lord", I'm addressing you. Not the Jew, or the Christians, sitting on the synagogue or the church pew and being satisfied just to sit on the church pew every Shabbat or every Sunday or every Wednesday or whenever you go to your place of worship.

No, I'm addressing, the prophet says, "You who seek the Lord", the people who are active, who are involved, who are interested, who are hungry to know more of God, to know more of his word, to have a better relationship with the Almighty Creator of the world. So the prophet is addressing those people in Israel, and he says, "Okay, you, you seek the Lord, then look for the rock from which you were hewn." Now, the term "rock" in the Bible is a complex term, and it appears in very interesting texts. Paul, the Apostle Paul, in First Corinthians chapter 10, says, The rock from which the children of Israel drank water in the wilderness followed them in the wilderness, and that rock is the Messiah, is Yeshua. That rock is the historical Jesus.

Why do I say the historical Jesus? Because the traditional Jesus is still on the cross in most churches. He's still on the cross. He hasn't come off the cross yet. They like it when Jesus is on the cross. Yes, we appreciate the sacrifice that God gave us of his son as the Gospel of John 3:16 and 17 reveals to us, but Jesus hung on the cross just a few hours—six hours at the maximum. He came off the cross. He was buried in the cave, but before the third day, he wasn't in the grave anymore. Hallelujah! He's alive, and he is the rock from which we are cut. We're hewn, we're shaped. Yeah, he is the source of our existence, not only of the believers but of humanity. How do we know? Because John in the Revelation says that the Lamb of God, who was sacrificed before the creation of the world, this is a Jewish doctrine. It appears in the prayer books, in the rabbinical pharisaic literature. Yeah, the original Adam with which God communicated in the Garden of Eden said:

So yes, and then from the para-natural, from the prehistorical revelation that Isaiah shares with us, he turns to the obvious revelation, the source of the nation of Israel, Abraham.

Okay, this is a very important text also because it refers to Genesis chapter 12, verse 4, in which the text of the Book of Genesis tells us who accompanied Abraham out of Haran, northern Syria, to come to the land of Canaan. So we know about Lot and his family. We know about Sarah, but we don't know exactly what are the souls which he made in Haran. To make souls is to evangelize, to convert people from idolatry, from paganism to the knowledge of the Almighty God. When the Orthodox Jews accuse the missionaries in Israel for evangelism, they say the same phrase that is in Genesis chapter 12, verse 4: they make souls or they acquire souls.

Yeah, this phrase appears again in Genesis chapter 48, verse 16, in which Jacob is on his deathbed, and he's telling his children and a couple of his grandchildren, Joseph's children, about Abraham and Isaac. Jacob is dying, and he's sharing with his children and grandchildren, the children of Joseph, Ephraim, and Manasseh are there, and he says, "My fathers, Abraham and Isaac, fished for men." He's referring to that text that says that they made souls in Haran. How many souls did they have? At least 318 men between the age of 20 to 50. Those are the people that joined Abraham from his camp to chase after the five kings from the north that kidnapped Lot and his family and took, you know, the wealth of Sodom and the wealth of Lot, and Abraham chased them to save Lot in spite of the fact that Lot took advantage of Abraham's charity and goodness.

So verse 3 of chapter 51:

You know what? I was one year old when my parents came to Jerusalem in 1947, before the state was established, and I grew up in Jerusalem, in one of the finest neighborhoods in Jerusalem, south side of Jerusalem. And on the 5th of May, 1948, with the armistice, with the victory of Israel, of the Israeli military and paramilitary organizations over the Jordanians and the Arabs, they removed the barbed wire and the ruins on the road going south, and we walked. I remember that walk was one of the first things I remember in my life. We walked to the south side of the city, to the best part of Jerusalem, and we chose a house. We didn't buy it; it was empty. No people lived in it. The people that lived in it ran away to Jordan, and we entered into it, and we lived there for 23 years, paying minimal rent to the authorities, the Israeli authorities.

But it was the best neighborhood in Jerusalem at that time. But it was essentially a wilderness. There would be one house, and a hundred yards, 200 yards, 300 yards away, there would be another house, and then another space, fields, fields with snakes, with grass growing wild. Yeah, and around Jerusalem, it definitely was a wilderness. Now you come to Jerusalem, it's a garden. Highways, modern buildings, shopping centers, beautiful, and continuing to become more and more beautiful, and more and more construction in Jerusalem, around Jerusalem, in the middle of Jerusalem, all over Jerusalem, construction is taking place. The old houses that came from the '40s and '50s are torn down, and high-rise buildings, modern, are coming up. Yes, whatever the prophets prophesied is coming to reality in more than one way.

Verse 4:

That's the calling, the mission, the purpose of Israel's election, to be a blessing to the whole world. And Isaiah, twice, in chapter 42 and chapter 49, in this similar language, says to be a light to the peoples, to the nations. What is God planning with this? What does he want from this?

Again, he's addressing Jacob.

Okay, you've got here a capsule from verse 1 to verse 6 of Isaiah 51, a capsule that encompasses all the history of Israel and the history of the relationship of Israel with the nations, with the Gentiles. In six verses, the prophet manages to capsule the history of God's relationship with this nation, with his people, with Israel, and the last days, the eschaton, the end of the world. The heavens will vanish away like smoke, but the redeemed of the Lord shall come forth to Zion, which comes in the continuation of this chapter. And again, verse 7, the prophet repeats what he said in the first verse:

I like that verse. I like that verse because I've been a believer now for 60-plus years, and I've been reproached and persecuted and beaten, spit upon, and they attempted to kill me. Yes, so the prophets knew what was going to be with those who follow Jesus. And Jesus himself, Yeshua himself, predicted, and Paul repeated, that those who follow him will be persecuted, will be rejected like he was rejected when he was walking the hills of Judea and Samaria and Galilee. Jesus didn't promise that if you preach the gospel, you're going to have a private jet and three or four houses. Jesus promised that if you preach the gospel, people will hate you, people will despise you, you will be persecuted.

I'm not condemning the rich brothers and sisters. No, we need them, we need them, we need to pray for them, and they need to obey the commands of the Lord and of the apostles, especially toward Jerusalem, if you read Romans chapter 15 from verse 24 to 27. Yes, but the promise is that people are not going to like you, they're not going to appreciate you.

Yes, brothers and sisters, we're not afraid of them, and we're not ashamed of the Lord or the good news. And we got used to their reproach. In fact, just a couple of weeks ago, we had guests—I wasn't in the office, but Yuda and Daniel and the others were in the office. We had guests that came to visit us, two of the directors of the Yad L'achim organization. They had a nice visit. The building was open to them. They had a nice conversation. They asked us, Yehuda and Daniel what kind of prayer book we use. We have kosher Torah scrolls. They were shown our Torah scrolls. They were shown our synagogue. They were explained what we believe and what we do, including feeding nearly a thousand people every week, good food, the best food that you can buy, and better than what you can buy in the supermarkets in Jerusalem, fresher for sure. Yes, this is chapter 51 of the prophet Isaiah. I am not going to jump over the rest of this chapter because it has some very, very important things. In the next lesson, I will start from verse 9 of chapter 51.

God bless you all.