I’m going to conclude by looking at these verses from Isaiah chapter 51:
“Listen to Me, you who follow after righteousness,
You who seek the Lord:
Look to the rock from which you were hewn,
And to the hole of the pit from which you were dug.
2 Look to Abraham your father,
And to Sarah who bore you;
For I called him alone,
And blessed him and increased him.”3 For the Lord will comfort Zion,
Isaiah 51.1-3
He will comfort all her waste places;
He will make her wilderness like Eden,
And her desert like the garden of the Lord;
Joy and gladness will be found in it,
Thanksgiving and the voice of melody.
Isaiah was writing before he time of Jesus so, he’s saying
Look to the rock from which you were hewn,
Isaiah 51.1-3
What is the Rock from which Jewish people were hewn or carved. It is Abraham. Abraham the patriarch, and Sarah. Abraham the father of the faithful, the patriarch of Israel, Abraham who led the people into the worship of one God not many gods, who responded to God when he was justified by faith, when Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness.
5 Then He brought him outside and said, “Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them.” And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.”
6 And he believed in the Lord, and He accounted it to him for righteousness.
7 Then He said to him, “I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to inherit it.”
Genesis 15:5-7
Abraham, who even saw Jesus’ Day. Jesus says in John 8
Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad.”
John 8.56
Abraham’s life was a life which was prophetic, and particularly with the event which concerns Isaac, it represents something that has to do with Jesus.
The Binding of Isaac in Genesis chapter 22 is prophetic in what regards Jesus.
Notice how it is expressed here:
Look to the rock from which you were hewn,
Genesis 15:5-7
And to the hole of the pit from which you were dug.
2 Look to Abraham your father,
And to Sarah who bore you;
For I called him alone,
And blessed him and increased him.”
Speaking of Sarah perhaps, it could be speaking of Sarah’s womb out of which came Isaac, and remember that the birth of Isaac was a supernatural birth: from an old man and an old woman who were well past the age of childbearing.
15 Then God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. 16 And I will bless her and also give you a son by her; then I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of peoples shall be from her.”
17 Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said in his heart, “Shall a child be born to a man who is one hundred years old? And shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?” 18 And Abraham said to God, “Oh, that Ishmael might live before You!”
19 Then God said: “No, Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac; I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his descendants after him.
Genesis 17.15-19
It was a miracle in which God intervened to bring forth the child of promise, the one other supernatural birth which you know of and is the supernatural birth of Yeshua the Messiah to Miriam when she was still a virgin and the Holy Spirit came upon her and she gave birth to Yeshua.
13 Then he said, “Hear now, O house of David! Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will you weary my God also? 14 Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel. 15 Curds and honey He shall eat, that He may know to refuse the evil and choose the good. 16 For before the Child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land that you dread will be forsaken by both her kings.
Isaiah 7.13-16
So, there is a connection between these two. But what about Isaac? He was offered by Abraham as a sacrifice at the command of God. Genesis chapter 22 The Binding of Isaac:
As Abraham took Isaac up the mountain (The-Lord-Will-Provide), he took wood on his shoulder and he went to the place where the sacrifice was to take place. Abraham took out the knife to plunge it into Isaac and to kill his only son, the son of the promise. And the Angel of the Lord said ‘Do not do it‘, and brought him back from death, and God gave Isaac back to him as a type of the Resurrection.
Now it came to pass after these things that God tested Abraham, and said to him, “Abraham!”
And he said, “Here I am.”
2 Then He said, “Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”
3 So Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son; and he split the wood for the burnt offering, and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. 4 Then on the third day Abraham lifted his eyes and saw the place afar off. 5 And Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; the lad and I will go yonder and worship, and we will come back to you.”
6 So Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife, and the two of them went together. 7 But Isaac spoke to Abraham his father and said, “My father!”
And he said, “Here I am, my son.”
Then he said, “Look, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?”
8 And Abraham said, “My son, God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering.” So the two of them went together.
9 Then they came to the place of which God had told him. And Abraham built an altar there and placed the wood in order; and he bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, upon the wood. 10 And Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.
11 But the Angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!”
So he said, “Here I am.”
12 And He said, “Do not lay your hand on the lad, or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.”
13 Then Abraham lifted his eyes and looked, and there behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by its horns. So Abraham went and took the ram, and offered it up for a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 And Abraham called the name of the place, The-Lord-Will-Provide; as it is said to this day, “In the Mount of the Lord it shall be provided.”
Genesis 22.1-14
And, in that story which is very hard for us to understand (how God could ask Abraham to do such a thing?), we see the type of the death and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah, we see how God would take His only Son, Jesus the Messiah, and would literally allow Him to be put to death and then cause Him to be resurrected, to come back from the dead, to be alive to give eternal life to all who call upon Him.
And so Abraham – Isaiah is talking about Abraham and Isaac – is also pointing beyond that to Yeshua the Messiah and to His sacrifice.
Jesus is the fulfilment of all these things, He is the One we can look to to get right with God. And, if we do that, the result will be verse 3:
3 For the Lord will comfort Zion,
Isaiah 51.1-3
He will comfort all her waste places;
He will make her wilderness like Eden,
And her desert like the garden of the Lord;
Joy and gladness will be found in it,
Thanksgiving and the voice of melody.
We come to faith in Jesus, we are going to have all those things and more; we are going to be in the garden of the Lord, have His Joy, His Peace, and His Presence with us throughout our lives.
15 Then the Angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time out of heaven, 16 and said: “By Myself I have sworn, says the Lord, because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son— 17 blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies. 18 In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.”
Genesis 22.15-18
So we look to Abraham, but we also look to Jesus. And we are living now in a different dispensation, and we can look back to Yeshua Jesus the Messiah who has gone before us and who is the answer to all the questions which I have put before you tonight.
If you have an issue with God, any issue, come to Jesus. He is the One who will sort it out.
Therefore, we are to look to Jesus.
One verse to close with, Hebrews chapter 12 verses 1 and 2:
Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Hebrews 12.1-2
If you have any issues with God, any issues with life, about what it is all about, look to Jesus. He has paid the price, He has made it possible for each one of us to come into a relationship with God.
Jesus is alive today. He is still at the right hand of the Father. Nothing can separate Him from the Father. He is there forever and, if we believe in Him, nothing can separate us from Him because He is with us always, even to the end of the age.
A few thoughts to flesh out this passage from Isaiah:
Isaiah’s going to go on, in the next chapter, and in chapter 53, to give you much more detail about the death of Jesus and we’ll get to that sometime in the future. But, meantime, this passage in Isaiah 51 points us to Jesus as the Messiah. It is one of the 4 servant songs and it tells us that God knew all about what was going to happen with Jesus up to 700 years before it happened.
And, here we are, 2000 years later, and we can look back to it and have faith in it, and know that through faith in Jesus we have hope for the future, a relationship with God, forgiveness of sin, and eternal life.
An offer, hopefully, you cannot resist. Because the other side is terrible. So, we do not want anyone to go to Hell. We want everyone to come to faith In Jesus, and have eternal life in Him.
He is the only One who can get us there, but you, alike everyone, need to come to God through Jesus the Messiah, amen.
Okay, let us just have a word of prayer. And we will pray that God can help us to know Him, to know His Peace, and know what He has done for us.
We thank You for this passage of scripture. We thank You that it speaks to us about the Messiah. We thank You You fulfilled the words of Isaiah in the person of Jesus Yeshua the Messiah. We thank You that You are alive today, that You died and rose from the dead. We thank You that we can call on Your Name and know that we are Your children and have eternal life through faith in Jesus.
So bless us and keep us, cause Your face to shine upon us, and grant us Your Peace, Shalom Hashem Yeshua hamashiach, in the name of Jesus the Messiah, amen.