Through the Bible with Les Feldick
LESSON 2 * PART 4 * BOOK 62
ISAIAH 61:1 – 10 – Part 2
Okay, for those of you joining us on television, we’re just an informal Bible study. We like to teach verse by verse, most of the time comparing Scripture with Scripture. We appreciate so much that you let us know how much you’re learning. My, I’ve said it before and I guess I can say it again, the average letters say, “I’ve learned more in the last six months than in the previous forty years.” So, it is encouraging to us that the Lord is opening a lot of eyes to these things that have been hidden, for many, for a long time now.
All right, we’re going to pick up where we left off in Isaiah 61. We’re down to verse 6. This is an interesting situation now, where the prophet writes:
Isaiah, 61:6a
“But ye shall be named (shall be – Now, they aren’t yet, but they will be.) the Priests of the LORD:…” (or of Jehovah.) Priests. All right, where do you first get that? Well, come all the way back with me to Exodus chapter 19.
This is the beauty of Scripture. It all fits! Exodus 19 and just for sake of time lets go all the way back to verse 3. Now remember the setting. Israel has just come out of Egypt. They’ve come through the Red Sea, and they’re gathered at Mount Sinai. Moses has now gone up unto God.
Exodus 19:3-4
“And Moses went up unto God, and the LORD called unto him out of the mountain, saying, Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, thus shall you tell the children of Israel; (Now, here it comes.) 4. Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, (That is, drowned them in the Red Sea.) and how I bare you (the Nation of Israel) on eagles’ wings, and brought you to myself.” That is, out here into the Sinai desert.
Exodus 19:5
“Now therefore, (here comes the opportunity) if (and it’s positional, it depends on what Israel does) ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, (This covenant of Law that will be coming in the next chapter. If Israel will be obedient to that.) then ye shall be a peculiar treasure (something of intrinsic value) unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine:” God is Sovereign. If He wants to make one nation superseding all the others, that’s His prerogative, and that’s what He’s done. He has made Israel, now, above all the other people of the world. Now verse 6:
Exodus 19:6a
“And ye (the Nation of Israel) shall be unto me a kingdom of priests,…” Now, those are the two key words. Israel is to be looking forward to a Kingdom in which every Jew would be a priest, or a go-between, between their God and the non-Jewish world.
Now, most people miss that, but that was Israel’s prospect. That’s why, of course, when you start immediately back there in the four gospel accounts, what does John the Baptist institute? Well, the water baptism. It has nothing to do with the church whatsoever. It’s a Jewish phenomenon. But what was the reason? To prepare every priestly Jew for his role as priest. How did every priest begin? Wash! Wash! So, it was an indication they were now a prepared priesthood of people. Not just Levi, but the whole nation was to become a kingdom of priests and a holy or set apart nation, just like Levi was in the nation of Israel. Every Jew was to become like a Levite to the nations of the world.
All right, now, if we can come back to Isaiah 61 verse 6 again. This is what the prophet is referring to, that the day will come when every Jew would become a priest of Jehovah. Reading on in verse 6.
Isaiah 61:6b
“…men shall call you the (what?) Ministers of our God: (That’s the role of every Jew when they come into this glorious Kingdom.) ye shall eat the riches of the Gentiles, and in their glory ye shall boast yourselves.” Now, has Israel ever been able to do that? Never! Never! My, they were the downtrodden. Their kids were kidnapped and sold for little or nothing. They’ve always been the hated and the despised people. But, oh, that’s going to turn when they finally have their Messiah ruling and reigning, “and in their glory (of the Gentiles) ye shall boast yourselves.”
Now, I guess I’ve been remiss. All afternoon we’ve had two timelines on the board, and I haven’t been referring to the second timeline, so good ol’ Jerry. You know, Jerry is the one that keeps me in line. He’s done that for the last fourteen years, I guess. Every once in a while he’ll come up and say, “Well, Les, you haven’t given the Gospel lately.” So after last program, he said, “Well now Les, you can’t let them hang on that second line without telling them what it’s for.” All right, good idea.
So, now, this is the prospect given to Israel, that they’re going to bring beauty out of the ashes of the destruction of the Tribulation, that they’re going to be priests of Jehovah when they are the favored nation and enjoying all of the promises. But, as we’ve been seeing all afternoon, we know from history this top timeline got interrupted. It didn’t keep going. The Tribulation followed by the Kingdom Age didn’t come in.
That’s what we’ve been showing by splitting these portions of Scripture, that everything is fulfilled up to a point in His first advent, and then the rest is pushed out into the future. Now, that’s the whole purpose of the bottom timeline. This bottom timeline is how the top timeline actually unfolded. After Christ ascended, instead of the Tribulation breaking out, God does just the opposite, He turns to the whole human race without Israel and opens up the windows of Heaven’s grace, for salvation, to the whole human family, as we’ll see a little later in this lesson.
All right, let’s go up into the New Testament and show how that came about. You see, all the way through the four gospels, as we’ve been showing all afternoon, God is dealing only with the nation of Israel. There is no hint of going to the Gentiles. But, Israel is rejecting and rejecting and rejecting, until finally we get to Acts chapter 7, about seven years after Pentecost. A nation-changing event takes place. The Jew, Stephen, who was part of that original group of believing Jews comprising the Jerusalem church and who now has his day in the sun proclaiming to the nation of Israel, especially the religious leaders, this whole sermon of chapter 7.
He does like the Apostle Paul did on occasion, he goes clear back into Israel’s history and revamps it and again reminds them of how God has been with the nation and how they have been constantly guilty of rejecting everything. All right, Acts, chapter 7 verse 51. I’m just recapping now to show how we funnel into this bottom timeline, and we have to let the top line go for the time being. Stephen is addressing the religious leaders of Israel.
Acts 7:51-52a
“You stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you do always resist the Holy Spirit: (which they’d done down through their history) as your fathers did, so you do. 52. Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them who showed (or prophesied) the coming of the Just One;” Which is another reference how they killed the prophets over and over. They didn’t like the message, you know.
Acts 7:52b-54
“…of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers: (by crucifying their Messiah) 53. Who have received the law by the disposition of angels, (In other words, it was a supernatural revelation of God’s mind for the nation.) and have not kept it. 54. When they heard these things, they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed (turned) on him with their teeth.”
Acts 7:58
“And cast him (Stephen) out of the city, and stoned him: and the witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man’s feet, whose name was Saul.” Now, that’s the first inkling you have of this next major player on the stage of Biblical history. Saul of Tarsus, who hated everything pertaining to Jesus of Nazareth. All right, now chapter 8 verse 1.
Acts 8:1
“And Saul was consenting unto his (Stephen’s) death. (In fact, he was leading the persecution.) And at that time there was a great persecution against the church (Jewish assembly) which was at Jerusalem; and they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judaea and Samaria, except the apostles.” All right, now you have to understand the Jewish mentality concerning the Gentiles.
They detested them. They were filthy morally. They couldn’t stand their diet compared to the kosher food of Israel. So, they detested Gentiles. They didn’t want a thing to do with them. Well, of course, that’s what God had taught them all the way up through the centuries. They were to have nothing to do with those unclean Gentiles, so that was their mindset.
Now, as a result of Israel rejecting and rejecting and rejecting everything connected to these Old Testament promises, God’s going to do something totally, totally different. It was never hinted at in the Old Testament. Jesus never hinted at it in His earthly ministry, but, here, out of the blue, God saves this tormentor of the followers of Jesus of Nazareth. The best way to point to the very core of the thing is in Acts chapter 9 verse 15, and this is what I call the “fork in the road.” Israel is going to go down into her dispersion in about 70 AD, and her timeline is going to be stopped and pushed out into the future. On the other end of the fork in the road is God turning to the Gentile world without Israel. Israel is not going to be a go-between. Israel is not going to have the role of Priests of Jehovah to bring in the Gentiles. But God’s plan for the Gentiles will be accomplished through the teaching of one man, the Apostle Paul.
Acts 9:15
“But the Lord said unto him, (That is Ananias, this believing Jew in Damascus.) Go thy way: for he (Saul) is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the (what?) Gentiles,…” Unheard of! A Jew going to Gentiles?
The only other instance was Jonah, and you all know how much Jonah wanted to go to Ninevah. He’d rather drown any day as go to those pagans, the Gentiles. Now, this is the first time, again, that God has ever said something like that – “I want to send you far hence to the Gentiles.” That’s what you have to understand. After the nation of Israel kept rejecting, God turned to the Gentiles with Paul, and as a result has now pushed the seven years of Tribulation and the 1000-year kingdom out into the future by nearly 2000 years.
So, that’s how this second timeline has been opened up to the Gospel of the Grace of God for the whole human race, calling out men, women, boys, and girls, who become members, then, of the body of Christ, which is the true Church. Not the church on the corner, necessarily, but the true believer who is a member of the body of Christ. How do you become a true member of the body of Christ? We find those glorious instructions to heaven through the teachings of the Apostle Paul in I Corinthians 15:1-4, where he tells us to, “believe in our heart that Jesus died for our sins, was buried, and rose again.” PLUS NOTHING ELSE!! In fact, Paul tells us in the book of Galatians, chapter 5, that if you try to add anything else, “Christ shall profit you nothing.”
All right, now we’ve come almost 2000 years and we maintain that before God can pick up where He left off in all the prophecies and bring in the Tribulation and 1000-year Kingdom Age, the Body of Christ has to be taken out. It will not mix with Israel. It’s an impossibility. Anybody that tries to teach the Church in the Tribulation will not look at the aspect that Paul never implies that the Body of Christ has anything to do with Israel’s prophetic program. We’re insulated from it. So, this is the whole idea, now, that when the body of Christ is complete and taken out, the prophetic program will kick back into gear. Then the world will go into the Tribulation, Christ will return, and the prophetic program will conclude.
All right, that should be sufficient for now at least. Let’s go back to Isaiah 61 and try to move ahead and hopefully, in the next four programs, we can finish the book of Isaiah and move on to something new. Okay, Isaiah 61 where we just left off that Israel is to be a nation of priests in verse 6, and they’re going to enjoy all of the good things of the Gentile world, now verse 7.
Isaiah 61:7-8a
“For your shame (In other words, for all of the time of their past unbelief and their disobedience.) ye shall have double; (In other words, the glory of the Kingdom is going to more than compensate for all that Israel has suffered in their unbelief.) and for confusion they shall rejoice in their portion: therefore in their land they shall possess the double: everlasting joy shall be unto them. (That is the nation of Israel.) 8. For I the LORD love judgment,…” Now, you remember, I explained that word a couple of programs or tapings back, that it means a benevolent government, something that is strictly for the good of the people. That’s what the Lord loves, He loves that kind of government.
Isaiah 61:8b
“…I hate robbery for burnt-offering; and I will direct their work in truth, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them.”
All right, now let’s look and see what that covenant is going to imply. Jump ahead now to Jeremiah, another portion we’ve looked at over and over, through the years, but let’s look at it again. Jeremiah 31:31. Again, as you read this, remind yourself that this has never happened before. This has never happened to Israel, but it’s going to. It’s coming. Now you see, a lot of theologians try to put us under this covenant. No way! This covenant is not for the Church Age. It is for Israel, and it will come to its fruition when the Kingdom becomes reality.
Jeremiah 31:31a
“Behold, the days come,…” Now, what does that mean? You can believe it! God has said it. It’s going to happen. Now, when you look at Israel tonight, you’d say this will never, never happen. They are so secular. They are so mixed up in their theology. Even their religious leaders. My, when you read some of the stuff they write, it just doesn’t make sense. They’ve been blinded to all these things, but it’s not always going to be that way. The day is coming when they’re going to enjoy the outpouring of God’s blessings, spiritual as well as material.
Jeremiah 31:31a
“Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel,…” Now, here’s where these ‘replacement theologians’ have to throw all these things out and say that everything has been given to the Church. So, then they try to put the Church under the covenant promises. Listen, has the Church today come to this place spiritually? Have every one of you and I here in this room; have we come to this place? Well, if you have you’re a lot better than I am because I haven’t. But it’ll come one day, for Israel. So, we’re not under this covenant. Now, we enjoy all the things that God has done to make this covenant possible, of course, but we’re not a covenant people.
Jeremiah 31:31b-32a
“…that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: 32. Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake,…” In other words, it’s not going to be a covenant of Law and sacrifices and feast days and so forth. It’s going to be something far beyond that.
Jeremiah 31:33a
“But this…” This is what’s coming in Israel’s future, spiritually. Now, we’ve already seen what’s coming materially and physically – the glorious earth, the glorious production, the glorious peace and prosperity – all these things in the physical and in the material. But here’s the spiritual. This will just put the whole thing together.
Jeremiah 31:33
“But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward part, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.” My, what a relationship Israel is finally going to have with their Creator God.
Jeremiah 31:34a
“And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor,…” Why? Everybody will know all there is to know. They won’t have to teach people how to keep the Law. They won’t have to memorize and be able to understand that certain things are wrong. No, it’ll be written in their hearts. They will have a relationship with their Maker like they have never enjoyed before.
Jeremiah 31:34b
“…and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me,…” There won’t have to be any evangelism. They won’t have to be out trying to win the lost. They will all have that same relationship with their God.
Jeremiah 31:34c
“…for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, (Remember, Israel has been guilty of a lot of it.) and I will remember their sin no more.” That’s what God said. Israel is finally going to come to the place where God will not have one iota of fault against them. They will be as perfect as a human race can be perfect. All right, now then, verse 35. If these people think that God is all through with Israel, then, you see, they have to throw these verses away. They have to just totally reject them, because here it is.
Jeremiah 31:35
“Thus saith the LORD, (the Creator God) who giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; the LORD of Hosts is his name:” Now, here’s the promise!
Jeremiah 31:36
“If (conditional) those ordinances depart from before me, (In other words, if the sun falls out of its place, and if the moon would fall out of its orbit, the stars would simply start coming together in a conflagration. If that would happen…) saith the Lord, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me for ever.”
These people try to tell us that the Jew disappeared shortly after 70 AD. But the sun still shines. The moon is still in its orbit. Everything is according to His divine plan. Nothing catastrophic has happened. Well, that being the case, then Israel is still a valid entity. Don’t you ever be taken in by this stuff, because that’s all it is. Listen, they’re coming in like a flood. I’m reading more and more how people are falling for this whole idea that God is through with the Jew, and that there is no such thing as a Rapture. There’s no Tribulation coming. There are no great catastrophic events, because, after all, God is all through with Israel. But, my Bible says – No Way!
All right, let’s go back where we were in Isaiah 61.
Isaiah 61:9a
“And their seed…” That is their children, their coming generations. They will be having children. Now, you want to remember when I talk about the Kingdom, that this is going to be a Kingdom of mortal human beings. Men and women having children, having families. But, Israel will be the apple of God’s eye. They will be the recipients of all of these promises given to them as a nation of people. So, yes, they will be having children and families.
Isaiah 61:9
“And their seed (and their children) shall be known among the Gentiles, and their off- spring among the people: all that see them shall acknowledge them, that they are the seed which the LORD hath blessed.” They’re going to be so uniquely blessed that all the Gentile nations present in the Kingdom will recognize them for who they are. All right, now verse 10, this is a verse that I’ve used in various ways, where Isaiah now writes:
Isaiah 61:10
“I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for He (God) hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, and (as a result of those garments of salvation) he hath covered me with a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels.” Now, what’s Isaiah doing? Isaiah is giving a picture of his own spiritual relationship with his Creator God, which every Jew in the Kingdom economy will enjoy. His personal testimony is a picture of Israel’s future.
Now, I think I’ve got time. Come back with me quickly to Genesis chapter 3. Here we have Adam and Eve. They’ve sinned. They’ve been separated in their fellowship with God. But God takes the step, now, to restore them back to fellowship and, of course, extend their salvation to them. All right, now remember, they’re naked, and they’ve been wearing nothing but fig leaves, which God had nothing to do with. So, He’s going to clothe them in His own way.
Genesis 3:21a
“Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins,…” Now, where would He get the skins from animals? Did He skin them alive? No. They became sacrificial animals. So, here we have the blood sacrifice introduced already with Adam and Eve with that which was provided by God. All right, so the coats of skins clothed their physical nakedness, but here’s the key. Along with that, having seen their faith, the blood has now been shed, what does God do with them
Genesis 3:21b
“…and clothed them.” That’s not talking about the animal skins, it’s talking about His righteousness. So, for Adam and Eve, by virtue of their faith and the blood sacrifice, God clothed them with righteousness.
But you know what? He’s doing the same thing with us today. Romans 3 says that the moment we believe The Gospel of Salvation found in I Corinthians 15:1-4, what does God do?God clothes us with His righteousness!