Book: Isaiah 42 Reconsidered

0:02 Looking at our world from a theological perspective. This is the Theology Central podcast, making Theology Central Good evening everyone. It is Thursday, April seventeenth, twenty twenty five. It is currently nine oh four pm Central Time, and I'm coming to you live from the Theology Central studio located right here in Abilene, Texas. Well. In a sense, this all started with frustration. In fact, not just in a sense. It really did start with frustration, right. I was frustrated with the way churches and the way pastors and Sunday school teachers and Bible teachers handle Isaiah chapter forty through Isaiah chapter fifty five. I was frustrated by it, irritated by it. And the more sermons I listened to on Isaiah forty through fifty five, the more frustrated, the more irritated, more bothered I become. Because for some weird reason, no one can open up their Bibles and say, turn to Isaiah forty forty one to forty two, anywhere between Isaiah forty and fifty five, open the Bible and teach what is actually there. Teach what it's actually about. A section designed to bring comfort to those in Babylonian captivity. It was, it was designed to bring comfort to them Judah Babylon, real captivity, real history, real people. But for some weird reason,

1:33 pastors immediately move out the original recipients. Move you and I in. Make it about you, Make it about me, make it about our problems, make it about us being delivered from our bad day. I don't know whatever they do with it, it's insanity. So it started with my frustration, and I'm like, Okay, we're going to work on it. So we have been working on Isaiah forty through fifty five since October of twenty twenty four. Here we are in April of twenty and we are well, we're in Isaiah chapter forty two, and all the work that we have done to challenge the wrong ideas, to try to give people a correct hermeneutical framework to handle Isaiah forty and forty one, I think we've done a pretty good job.

2:19 I'm somewhat I mean, you know, I don't want to say I'm proud, but I'm happy with all the work that has been done because I think if someone will really go through all of the episodes and all of the work and all of the teaching, they will have a better understanding of Isaiah forty through fifty five as a whole, Isaiah chapter forty and Isaiah chapter forty one, then probably they will have ever had in their life. And I'll say we've done more than probably any church has ever done on Isaiah forty through fifty five. And I know that's a bold statement, but so far, I think we have to be at least in the top five, if not maybe even the top three. And the work that we have done so I think we've done a very good job. But then we came to Isaiah chapter forty two and Isaiah forty two begin begin to present us some challenges. Okay, we got this servant introduced in Isaiah chapter forty two, verse one. Isaiah chapter forty two, Verse one. Let me read it to you, Isaiah chapter forty two, Verse one, behold my servant. And then if we jump down to verse nineteen, who is blind but my servant? Now almost everyone acknowledges the servant in Isaiah chapter forty two, verse one is different than the servant in Isaiah forty two nineteen. The way most pastors handle this, the servant in Isaiah forty two one is Jesus, the servant in Isaiah forty two, nineteen is Israel, two different servants,

3:50 and almost everyone just they just kind of present that in almost a dogmatic way. Everyone in the congregation says Amen. And I started having problems and struggle with this as we were trying to work through our observational outline, and it was in the midst of that observational outline that well, everything changed. And from that point forward we have been putting forth a new interpretation of Isaiah forty two that it's one servant, it's not two different servants, one servant described in two very very different ways for a very specific reason. We beg we named the servant, and we begin to try to defend this new interpretation not only based off history, based off the text, based off some other important things like, well, something that was discovered, something that was all broken in pieces embedded, and dirt that they found, oh and well then a historical Jewish historian. Yeah, we put it all together, and we have been putting forth this new interpretation. Well after doing all of the work that we have been doing, and we still got a lot of work to do in Isaiah forty two, we're not even anywhere near done. I started slowly but surely, trying to say, could I put this all together in some way that I can maybe turn it into some type of a book. So I have been working little

5:26 by little by little, right, just little, just nothing serious, and I didn't want to say anything together to think am I ever going to get anywhere? Because I was going to do the same thing with turning into a book and our AI and its opinion on Lordship's salvation. And I still may go back and work on that, but I was just like, put it together type some things, okay. Back and forth I worked with Ai. I would tell AI, this is kind of what I want, all right, and then AI would give me something, Well, no, can we change this? Can we add this? Can we do this? Well? What about this? Now? I don't like this? How about this? And on and on and on and on and on and on and on, and then today I'm like, okay, I'm going to be very busy this weekend. All right, it's been you know, I need to do some I need to do some sermon prep for Sunday. I got to do a lot of sermon prep. So I need to get back into the Isaiah forty two mindset. I know what I'll do to kind of get me back into the Isaiah forty two mindset. I'll kind of work on this kind of secret book project. I'll just continue working on it. So I kept working and working and working and working and working and working and working, and then all of a sudden, I'm like, you know what, I think I got enough here, so let me let me try to put it all together. So then I was like, okay, Ai, here's everything we've done. Do your magic, turn it into a book. Right, it's all organized, it's all there, let's go. And so AI started trying to

6:58 put it into a book format. I was kind of like, Wow, this is pretty good. I'm pretty impressed. I think I think I've done really good. I think people will be I hope that maybe someone will. I was going to say, I think people will really appreciate this, but the reality is most people won't care or probably even look at it. But I'm like, you know what, I still think whether anyone ever looks at it or appreciates it or cares, it's still it's a tangible piece of evidence of all the work we have done, not just in Isaiah forty through fifty five by the time we're done. But at least on Isaiah forty two, where we challenged what everyone else says and we didn't just pretend to talk about Herma nudicts. We actually did Herman nuticsse I'm like, okay, it's something tangible. So I looked at it. I'm like great, and then all the problems began. The formatting was all off.

7:47 It had the formatting for the way it gave chapter headings for one, two, three, four, five was different than the chapter headings for seven, eight, nine, ten, and the rest, and then chapter six kind of merging in with chapter five. It was all that they was all messed up, some weird numbering issues, and AI could not help me get it fixed, and I couldn't get it formatted, and so I was about to give up. Finally, aughter back and forth and back and forth with AI A, I was like, look, here's the deal this thread and our ongoing discussions with about Isaiah forty to fifty five. I don't remember the exact number it gave me, but it was some startling number like we've had, like I don't know, it was like twenty five thousand interactions. We've got everything here from working on observational outlines, to exegetical studies, to study questions, to fact checking sermons, fact checking claims made about Isaiah forty through fifty five. We've got sermon reviews, transcript reviews. Like, there's so much in this thread that it's causing everything basically to kind of employ in and on itself. Right, It's it's causing major When I'm when I'm getting ready to pull something or try to fix something, I'm pulling from all of this information and it's getting all confusing.

9:09 So A I was like, what you're going to have to do. You're gonna have to pull the book idea out of this thread. You're gonna have to go to the project tab, create new project, give it the name Isaiah forty two book. Then I can start helping you. So I did that, and lo and behold, the formatting started fixing a little bit. It's still not perfect because it's not giving me actual page breaks between the chapters and the page it's it's still not right, and the numbering is still a little weird, but it's as good as I can get it as of right now, after all the time. So this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to attach to this message. If you look on the Church one app. Now, you can download the Church one app by going to the Apple App Store, the Google Play Store Church O n E Church O n E. You'll download the Church one app. Look for this series Isaiah forty through fifty five. Look for this message on book Isaiah forty two. Reconsidered something along that line, and look underneath it. You'll see the attached file PDF file.

10:15 It should open up and you will see the book that has produced. It's only I don't know if we can call it. It's not rough draft one. It's not rough draft two. I don't know, maybe rough draft number five, rough draft number six. I don't know if it's ever going to get any better than a rough draft. But it's still there and there's a lot more to do with it. If you are if you're looking at the what's the app called now, it's not the Sermons two point oh app. It's not the Sermers three point oh app. It's not the Sermons three point one app. It's the Sermons by Sermon Audio app. If you're using that app and you look up this broadcast Theology Central, look for our series on Isaiah forty through fifty five. Look for this message on book Isaiah forty two reconsidered. You should be able to find the ADF file that way as well.

11:02 I believe you should be able to find it, all right, So we're going to attach the PDF file and then you can look at it, and it will give you a pretty good idea of what we have been trying to do with Isaiah forty two, the new interpretation, And well, it'll kind of go back over some of the story I just told, but in greater detail, and it will really drive home, well, who we think the servant is, and why we think the servant is that way, and how that's going to impact the interpretation moving forward. All right. In fact, now our entire way of interpreting Isaiah forty two is now completely different. When we're doing the observational outline, we were trying not to say who the servant was because that's interpretation, not observation, but we couldn't stop ourselves.

11:49 So in the middle of our observational outline, we were like, while someone made the idea that Isaiah forty two this is about Cyrus, and then boom, we were off to the races. You'll hear the whole story in the book, all right, So I wanted to tell everyone about it. It's free, we're not charging, we're not putting it behind a paywall. It's absolutely free. And people are gonna be like, well, this is wrong or this isn't correct. There's probably a million mistakes in it. It's a rough draft, okay, it's not perfect, okay, and you're not paying for it, okay, all right. Now, if I got it perfect, I still wouldn't want to give it away because if the new interpretation of Isaiah forty I still wouldn't want to charge for it. I still would want to give it away because if the new interpretation of Isaiah forty two is important, then you wouldn't be charging people to get a new interpretation of Isaiah forty two. And I don't even think it should be considered a new interpretation. I think it's the interpretation of the text demands. I don't even think it should be considered it's only new because the majority of Christianity is like, hey, hermautics, we don't go to church to do hermonutics. We go to church to get sermons, and sermons are the enemy of hermautics. Sermons is the enemy of the tech. If you want to be blinded by the text, just listen to sermons, because they do everything in their power to keep you from the actual text.

13:08 Nobody wants to actually deal with the text. Okay, So it's there. It'll be there as soon as I upload this. Now, for those listening on all the other podcasting apps, you're not going to see the pdf file because I have no way to attach it, all right. I think some of the platforms are now allowing it to do that, but i'd have to go under each separate one. So if you want the pdf file, download the Church one app Churchne look for Theology Central, okay, because then it basically turns the Church one app into the Theology Central app. Look for our series on Isaiah forty through fifty five. Look for this message Boom you'll find it. Or if you're using the sermons by Sermonadio Sermonadio app, whatever we're calling it in twenty twenty five, do a search for Theology Central find us find this message, and there you can you can download the pdf file. All right. I hope that works. I hope it does, and I hope it'll be beneficial. But hey, all this work, I gotta do something with this work, right, I mean, I could just keep it here going, look at that I did all of this work and it means absolutely nothing. It still made mean absolutely nothing. But you know, there we go, So please check it out, and yeah, we'll be we'll be talking more about Isaiah forty two Sunday. I don't know if I'll be broadcasting any I don't know if I'll be broadcasting anymore between now and Sunday, But on Sunday, I'll be uploading at least two hours of teaching, and

14:41 we'll be working on Isaiah forty two. So we're gonna slowly but surely make our way all the way through Isaiah forty two. Then we'll go to forty three, forty four, and we know know what's going to happen when we get to each chapter. But I know this, we're worried about what the tech says. I don't care what anybody else in Christianity has to say about it. All right, So there we go. Go. Get the book. It's yours, it's free, it's not perfect, it's a rough draft, right, but you can see what all the work I've been doing since this idea was put forth. I don't remember it was March. I think it was March the tenth. I don't remember the date, March the tenth. So it's been over a month that I've been working on this, and it's been slow and steady and well, you can see what I've come up with. So I hope it's beneficial.

15:26 If you disagree with it, hey didn't cost you anything. Okay, right, If you agree with it, didn't cost you anything. So thanks for listening, everyone, have a wonderful night. Please look at it. I hope it's beneficial. God bless