Isaiah Chapters 12 & 13 page 1 of 7 M.K. Scanlan Isaiah Chapter 12 • Isaiah is describing the Millennial kingdom where God is gathering His people back to Israel from the four corners of the world, and the fact that Israel will once again dominate her previous adversaries.
• Continuing in that description:
V: 1 “In that day,” describing the Millennium, the Millennial kingdom.
• There will be great rejoicing, praising the Lord, thanking the Lord – great thankfulness for the mercy, grace, and forgiveness, that He has extended to the nation.
• Israel has gone through a long time of being set aside by God, because of their rejection of Him, because they rejected the Messiah, Jesus.
• Remember the prophet Azariah counseled king Asa and the nation of Israel:
2 Chronicles 15:2 “… the Lord is with you while you are with Him. If you seek Him, He will be found by you; but if you forsake Him, He will forsake you.”
• God will once again be dealing with Israel. During the time of “Jacob’s trouble” - during the great tribulation the Anti-Christ will be persecuting them and their hearts will be turned back to God. They will realize their mistake in rejecting Jesus and will begin to pray “Oh Jesus come!”
Zechariah 13:6 “And one shall say unto Him, what are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.”
Zechariah 12:10 “And I will pour on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Sprit of grace and supplication; then they will look on Me whom they have pierced. Yes, they will mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son, and grieve for Him as one grieves for a firstborn.”
Jesus said to them: Matthew 23:39 “For I say to you, you shall see Me no more till you say, “blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.’”
• They will be praying for His return – specifically Jesus, they will continue praising Him on into the Millennium.
V: 2 God is my salvation: Jesus! “Yeshuah” - “Joshua” - “Jesus.”
• Yah / Yahweh the LORD / Jehovah (YHWH) is my strength and song.
Ref.Isaiah.12-13 Isaiah Chapters 12 & 13 page 2 of 7 M.K. Scanlan
“I will trust and not be afraid.”
• Trusting the Lord, activating our faith, walking in it.
Faith defined: Hebrews 11:1 “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
Hebrews 11:6 “But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.”
• Faith and fear are generally mutually exclusive terms, having faith in God and being fearful about things seem to be opposite states of mind.
2 Timothy 1:7 “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”
1 John 4:18 “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. but he who fears has not been made perfect in love.”
• So he’s making this statement, this declaration of faith if you will:
“I will trust and not be afraid.”
• Why? Because:
“Yah, the LORD, is my strength and song; He also has become my salvation.”
• Isaiah is quoting directly from Psalm 118:14 pretty much word for word.
Psalm 18:2 “The LORD is my Rock and my Fortress and my Deliverer; my God, my Strength, in whom I will trust; my Shield and the Horn of my Salvation, my Stronghold.”
V: 3 Drawing water from the well of salvation. Dipping our hearts in the stream of life… being refreshed in Him.
Peter’s sermon: Acts 3:19 “ Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.”
Ref.Isaiah.12-13 Isaiah Chapters 12 & 13 page 3 of 7 M.K. Scanlan
John 7:37-38 “37Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. 38He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’”
Jeremiah 2:13 “For My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters…”
Revelation 22:17 “And the Spirit and the bride say, come! And let him who hears say, come! And let him who thirsts come. Whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely.”
V: 4a “In that day…” - Every day! (For us anyway..)
• The Jews don’t call on His name, the name of Jesus for salvation - but in that day they will.
Acts 4:12 “ Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”
V: 4b-6 Having been given the sweet taste of salvation they / we are simply led to praise Him, just as the prophet does here.
• Praise, declare, make mention, sing, cry out - all in the imperative sense.
• The Psalms are filled with praise for God, and particularly the last 5 psalms are expressly so.
Psalm 145:3, 10-11 “ 3Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; and His greatness is unsearchable.” - “10All your works shall praise You, O LORD, and Your saints shall bless You. 11They shall speak of the glory of Your kingdom, and talk of Your power.”
V: 6 Right back to where things should be all the time, things made right – the Lord in our midst!
Exodus 29:45 “I will dwell among the children of Israel and will be their God.”
Zephaniah 3:17 “The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; He will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; He will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing.”
Isaiah Chapter 13
• Nations judged: Assyria (10), Babylon (13-14), Moab (15-16), Damascus (17), Egypt & Ethiopia (19-20), Edom & Arabia (21) and Tyre (23).
Ref.Isaiah.12-13 Isaiah Chapters 12 & 13 page 4 of 7 M.K. Scanlan
• Isaiah the prophet records many different prophecies, and many of them have a dual application or fulfillment. Many have an immediate or short-term fulfillment, and then there is also a secondary or later term fulfillment.
2 Peter 1:20-21 “20Knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, 21for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.”
• Often times the prophets bunched these prophecies together, not understanding even themselves how they were to make sense. They simply wrote as the Holy Spirit inspired them and allowed that God would some day make sense of it or reveal it in His time.
• Like the Assyrians before them, the Babylonians will be dealt with as well. V: 1 The “burden” - this heavy word, heavy prophecy, hard to bear.
• Isaiah is writing this particular prophecy at the death of King Ahaz, which puts the timing of it at about 726 BC.
• Babylon is not a world power yet. They exist, but not as a dominating power. The world dominating power at that time was Assyria and they are in the process of taking the Northern kingdom captive.
• It is some 100+ years later that Babylon would become the world dominating power, they conquer Assyria and take Judah captive, then 150 years later, from the time this was written, they themselves are conquered.
• So we have these layers of prophecy: the near term fulfillment of this prophecy concerning Babylon is 150 years later.
• As we read in the book of Revelation, we see that there is a long term, or distant fulfillment of this prophecy that is yet to take place.
V: 2-4 Raise up the banner - something that used to happen before the charge was sounded, raise your voice - the battle cry, wave your hand, sending them forth to battle.
Isaiah 42:13 “The LORD shall go forth like a mighty man; He shall stir up His zeal like a man of war. He shall cry out, yes, shout aloud; He shall prevail against His enemies.”
“… that they may enter the gates of the nobles.”
• That is exactly how the Babylonians were defeated: the Medes built dams across the Euphrates and it’s tributaries upstream from Babylon, when the water level
Ref.Isaiah.12-13 Isaiah Chapters 12 & 13 page 5 of 7 M.K. Scanlan
dropped enough the army entered the city under the river gates and took the great fortress city without a real battle, all while Belshazzar was holding a party for all his nobles.
V: 5 “They come from a far country” – This part couldn’t speak of the Medes or the Persians since they were pretty much next door in a geographical sense.
• This speaks of a future fulfillment which, those of us who are old enough, got to actually see fulfilled.
• When the Iraqi army led by Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait back in the 90’s, a coalition of forces led by the USA & UK, and others responded bringing over 200,000 troops and support military equipment to Saudi Arabia, then they counter-attacked and invaded the ancient land of Babylon conquering the Babylonians. This invading army came from a far country, the end of Heaven by that day’s standards.
• But wait, thats not all!
In the book of Revelation we read: Revelation 18:2 “… Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and has become a dwelling place of demons, a prison for every foul spirit, and a cage for every unclean and hated bird!”
• Revelation describes the fact that Babylon will once again be destroyed in another futuristic fulfillment, another layer of prophecy described in the passage before us.
V: 6 “The day of the Lord” – speaking of the time that God’s wrath is poured out upon the earth, the day of His vengeance, the great tribulation.
Daniel 12:1 “There shall be a time of trouble, such as the world has never seen before.”
Jesus declared: Matthew 24:21 “It will be a time of great tribulation. Greater than the earth has ever seen at any time, or will ever see again.”
Revelation chapters 6-18: contain a lot of information and details of what will take place during that 7 year time period. 3 ½ years of relative peace, peaceful world wide domination, and 3 ½ years of all Heaven breaking loose on earth.
• All the while God will be dealing with the nation of Israel once again.
Ref.Isaiah.12-13 Isaiah Chapters 12 & 13 page 6 of 7 M.K. Scanlan
• Two key events related this time period:
1. Rapture of the church. 2. Abomination of desolation, AC enters the temple, profanes it and demands to be worshipped as God.
V: 7-8 There will be great fear. There will be a kind of terror and fear that many who have been so proud and arrogant have never experienced.
Psalm 73:19 “Oh, how they are brought to desolation, as in a moment! They are utterly consumed with terrors.”
Hebrews 10:31 “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”
V: 9-11 Jacob’s trouble, that great and terrible day of the Lord.
Joel 2:31 “The sun will be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the coming of the great and terrible day of the LORD.”
• We also have a listing of the reasons why the church will not be here to see these things:
• Cruel, wrath, fierce anger, desolate, to destroy it’s sinners. To punish the world for it’s evil, and the wicked for their iniquity:
1 Thessalonians 5:9 “For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ,”
• Our sins were atoned for, paid for on the cross of Jesus Christ. He received the wrath that we so richly deserved.
Isaiah 53:5 “But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.”
V: 12 In Revelation ch.’s 6-18 we see first the 4 horsemen, which kill ¼ of the earth’s population. (Haggai 2:6-7, Hebrews 12:25-29, Zechariah 14:4-5) 7.58 billion 5.68 billion • Then in the plagues that follow, 1/3 of the remaining people are killed.
• In the first two portions of this outpouring of God’s wrath over ½ of the earths population is wiped out. 3.79 billion Jesus said: Matthew 24:22 “And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake (Jews) those days shall be shortened.”
Ref.Isaiah.12-13 Isaiah Chapters 12 & 13 page 7 of 7 M.K. Scanlan
V: 13 The book of Revelation describes great earthquakes.
• Scientists believe that there have been “polar axis shifts” which occur about every 5-6,000 years.
V: 14-16 Describing the debauchery and cruelty of man in times of war. So glad to miss all that.
V: 17 The Medes were only a small tribal group, the Babylonians were not a world power – none of this made sense at the time it was written.
• Isaiah is so accurate from a prophetic – historical perspective that critics argue that there were two Isaiah’s; one who wrote originally, and one who wrote hundreds of years after Isaiah died. The claim is that the latter wrote things that had passed as though they were yet to happen. Specifically in reference to this particular prophecy.
Isaiah 46:9 “Remember the former things of old, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure”
• God declares that He alone is able to declare what the future holds. God says that He will prove who He is by telling us what is going to happen before it happens.
• The Bible is the only Holy book that dares to fore tell the future, no other religious writing is able to or willing to declare the future. Yet fully 1/3 of the Bible is prophetic in nature, 1/3 of the Bible talks about the future as a done deal, no other book does that .
V: 18-22 This did not happen with the Mede’s. They didn’t destroy the city at all, it more like a change of government.
• The future destruction of Babylon will bring these things to pass.
V: 21 Owels / Ostritches – satyrs - dwell - dance.
V: 22 Hyenas / dragons / lizards - serpents.
• All this to say it will a place of desolation, and no one is going to want to hang out there.
Ref.Isaiah.12-13