Isaiah [Part 16] - Jerusalem & the Coming King

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

Shalom from Jerusalem. We are now in Isaiah 52. But let me do a little bit of a review of the last part of Isaiah 51 before I enter into Isaiah 52. I have already stated several times in previous lessons that we are entering into the Messianic texts from chapter 40 to the end of the book of Isaiah, chapter 66. We are dealing with Messianic texts and examining the framework of time that the prophet is addressing, which is in the future. It talks about the Messiah, His kingdom, His function, His sources, His responsibilities, and the responsibility of the nation of Israel and the other nations in relationship to the age of redemption that starts in chapter 40.

So now, last week we talked about Isaiah 51, and I want to go back to Isaiah 51 to connect it to what is happening in Isaiah 52 because Isaiah 52, Isaiah 53, and Isaiah 54 are all very, very important Messianic texts. If you don't understand them, you're not going to understand Yeshua (Jesus). You're not going to understand His function, His role, and His commission when God sent Him to the world to be our Savior.

So in Isaiah 51, verse 17, we read in English:

This is Isaiah 51, and the important thing is the beginning: “Awake, awake, O Jerusalem.” When we come to Isaiah 52, which is the chapter we are going to discuss today, it starts with exactly the same words:

This is exactly the opposite of Isaiah 51, verse 17.

In Isaiah 51, verse 17, he is talking about the sorry state of Jerusalem—abandoned, with nobody to give her a hand, nobody to help her. She is alone, standing in her desolation and emptiness. Isaiah 52, with the same start, “Awake, awake now, O Zion! Put on your wedding dresses; put on your beautiful garments, O Jerusalem,” now you're a holy city. You are not the desolation, the abandoned, like a widow with nobody to help her. No, now you are the holy city,

—that means the chains that were on your neck as a captive by the Assyrians and Babylonians in captivity. No, now take it off; take your chains off now,

Ah, very interesting text. You have sold yourself for nothing. Hosea the prophet in chapter 2, Ezekiel who wrote during the diaspora in Babylon in chapters 20, 21, 22, and 23—Israel prostituted from God and was sent into exile in Babylon for 70 years to cool down. To find herself again. And Isaiah 52 is describing that state of Israel awakening from the diaspora, returning to Zion, reestablishing a relationship with the Almighty as the daughter, the Bride of the Almighty. Christians, when they think about the bride of Christ, they think it’s the church. But when you read the Old Testament over and over again, in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Ezekiel, Amos—the bride of God and the Bride of the Messiah is Israel. Israel is the bride. Jeremiah, chapter 2, verses 1, 2, and 3 make it very clear that Israel is the bride, and Israel is the first fruits of God's love. The bride who followed Him in the wilderness for 40 years, and He fed her manna every day and they drank water from the rock.

So Isaiah is returning to that same scenery with different words—maybe a different picture, but the same scenery: restoration of Israel to Jerusalem and to Zion, release of Israel as a captive of other nations in the diaspora, and the promise of redemption is for free. God is going to pay the bill. That's what verse 3 of chapter 52 says:

Here is the exile picture: the time of suffering, captivity in exile in Assyria and Babylon, and God reclaiming Israel out of the diaspora, reintroducing Himself to Israel as a Savior—not as an angry God who is upset about their sin and their departure from His ways and from the law that He gave them at Mount Sinai. No longer is He going to do it in verse 6 of chapter 52. He says:

That means they’ll have a personal relationship, name to name.

Then, in verse 7, the Holy Spirit hits Isaiah and looks at Israel in his day, long before the time of the fulfillment of these prophecies. The prophet says:

In other words, from the sorry state of chapter 51, there is a reversal now. God is reversing the picture. His anger is now turning into grace. His sorrow for Israel is turning into glory, into the beautiful mountains of the Lord in Zion. And the ones who will proclaim that news—the gospel, the good news—how beautiful are the feet of him who brings the good news, who proclaims peace, who brings glad tidings of good things, who proclaims salvation, who says to Zion: "Now your God is the King; your God reigns!"

It’s a very powerful text that echoes, if I had more time to analyze it in greater depth, you would see how many times there are allusions in the New Testament to these texts in Isaiah. Then the prophet turns in verse 8 to the prophets, to the leaders, and to the spiritual guides in Israel: "Your watchmen", those who stand on the wall and watch for the enemy to come, who have the responsibility of warning of the enemy that is approaching your walls, your city—

Again, these prophecies in Isaiah from the 8th century BC are talking about things that we are in the process of experiencing now again. With the restoration of Israel, the restoration of Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel and the capital of the Jewish people worldwide, and should be the capital of the Christians as well. It is only in the 4th century that the church in Europe and Asia Minor abandoned Jerusalem and moved the city of God to be Rome. The man who is called Saint Augustine was one of the main, not the only one, but one of the main characters who worked hard and wrote a book, "The City of God," referring it to Rome.

It’s time, dear brothers and sisters in Korea, in Asia, and around the world, to refocus your geographical theology back to Jerusalem, back to Zion. Because Jesus is not coming to Rome, nor to Moscow, nor to New York, São Paulo, Mexico City, Beijing, or Hong Kong. No, He is coming back to this city, this small, relatively small city torn between the Jewish and the Arab populations, fighting for its survival, fighting for its existence. We’re the only country in the world that is surrounded on three sides by enemies who are willing to do anything and everything they can to erase us from the face of the Earth as a people and as a country. But no, we will be here. We will be here when Damascus is no longer there, when Baghdad is no longer there, when other capitals of the Arab countries around us are not going to be there as settled, prosperous cities for God's people.

Jerusalem will be the city of the great King. That’s what the psalmist says.Verse 10 of chapter 52:

Yes, verse 10 describes what was and what’s going to be. And all the world is seeing right now the blessing and the salvation of God's hand over Jerusalem and over the Jewish nation. Jerusalem is being built and built and built, with new buildings and new buildings in every neighborhood. Small, one-story houses are torn down, and ten-story apartment buildings are being raised on every corner in this city. That’s what the prophet predicted 2,800 years ago.

The prophet called the people and said, Get out of the uncleanness that you see now. Go now to the purified, to the holy city of God, Jerusalem.

What a picture! Israel's progress is returning back to the status of God's chosen people in action, in active existence, and not just as a historical memory. It’s going to happen, folks, dear brothers. It’s going to happen. And those who are on the side of Israel, on the side of Jerusalem, will be the winners. The ones who curse Israel, who curse Jerusalem, who want to see Jerusalem and Israel deleted from the face of God's world, like Iran, they’re going to cry. Because God is returning to Zion. The prophet Isaiah says it, the Book of Revelation says it, Matthew 24 says it. The texts are plentiful, but Isaiah is the source with the oldest source of these ideas that repeat themselves in the New Testament.

You will not have to run away from Jerusalem again, for the Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rear guard. And it has happened. Look, there is no nation that has absorbed so many immigrants in such a short time as the State of Israel. When the State of Israel was declared by the UN in May 1948, do you know how many Jews there were in the whole land of Israel? Only 600,000. Only 600,000. Now we’re talking to you, brothers and sisters, about more than six million. More than six million. And the number of those Jews who believe that Yeshua is the Messiah, the Redeemer of Israel and of the world, has increased exponentially because the prophet promised it. And God will be our leader in the front and our guard in the back. That’s what this text says.

Now, to the most important text of chapter 52, verses 13-15:

We talked about the servant in chapters 49, 50, and 51. We talk about the servant of the Lord, which moved from a collective national servant to one individual representing the collective national servant.

In other words, He was wounded, He was made ugly, He suffered more than any man.

This is the beginning of the most important Messianic prophecies in the whole Bible that Yeshua fulfilled every single one of them—33 prophecies in 15-16 verses. Very important. And the next chapter, chapter 53, is one of the most important Messianic texts in the whole Bible. But let me summarize again chapter 52. The prophet ends the prophecies about Jerusalem, the positive prophecies about Jerusalem, with His servant. The servant that is proclaimed in chapter 49. Before chapter 49, the servant was the whole nation. But behold, the nation failed God. He chose one member of that nation, one Jew—His name is Yeshua (Jesus)—to be the representative and the fulfiller of God's purpose.

He is the representative of the whole nation of Israel. And He says here: "My servant shall be high and lifted up." Even though His visage, the way He looked, is pretty bad—He suffered. And we’ll see how much He suffered in the next chapter. But He will cleanse the nations in the world, sprinkle them with fresh water. He shall be King, and the people who recognize Him as King—for what had been told to them—they will see the promises that I made to them, God says. They will actually see and experience them, so that they can consider the reality, consider the truth. The things that they heard that were so fantastic—they will see them now happening physically, historically, and without any reason to doubt that Yeshua, the servant of God, is the Savior of the world, not only of Israel.

So God bless you all, and we’ll continue with the next chapter, which is one of the most important chapters in all the prophets, definitely in Isaiah. Read chapter 53 and 54 of Isaiah, and be ready for our next teaching. In Yeshua’s name, God bless you.