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Isaiah Chapter 28 {Continued} {Verses 22-23: Deliverance through the Word} 22`` Now therefore be you not mockers   {do not mock the power of the Word of God}, lest your bands {of slavery} be made strong. For I have heard from Adonay/'the Lord' Jehovah/God of the armies/hosts a consumption/end . . . even determined upon the whole land Palestine {both the northern and the southern kingdoms}. 23``Give your ear {give the Word a hearing - be present at the teaching of the Word}, and hear my voice {pay attention}; hearken   {means concentrate on the content of the Word being taught}; and hear my speech   {take in the entire message taught by the teacher of Doctrine}. {Note: The only way to be prepared for disaster when it comes is threefold: a. Personally accept Jesus Christ as savior - regeneration; b. Learn Bible doctrine and store it in the frontal lobe; c. Operation faith-rest technique, the means of applying doctrine in your frontal lobe to disaster. When you can apply doctrine to disaster the result is stability and orientation to the plan of God. Even when the plan of God for a nation is judgement, your personal impact and testimony will have eternal results. So even when a nation is going down in time you can have a marvelous ministry which will last forever.} {Note: Isaiah ends this chapter with a good illustration to us today about the importance of isagogics in the study of the Word. In the day the bible was written, this was an agricultural society. This illustration was second nature to his audience, but not so much to the city dwellers we have today. So, here we have three things: first verse 24 - the plowing - analogous to regeneration; next, verse 25-26 planting; thirdly, verses 27-28 harvest.} {Conclusion of Chapter with an Agricultural Illustration in an Agricultural Society} 24`` Does the plowman {farmer type} plow all day to sow? {yes he does} Does he open and break the clods of his ground? {again, yes he does} {Note: Plowing is equivalent to regeneration, trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ - and to the spread of the gospel/good news of Jesus Christ.} 25`` When he has leveled and broken the ground does he not sow the fitches {poppy seed used for animal forage}, and scatter the cummin {an aromatic seed and used for medicine for taking care of the weak}, and cast in the principal wheat and the appointed barley and rye {basic staple food for man} in their place? {Note: This is the analogy for after salvation, the next need is for the 'basic doctrines'. In another analogy, Paul calls it giving milk to the baby believers.} 26`` For his God does instruct him to orientation/farming. {Note: Farmers originally got all their information about farming from God. When Adam had to earn his living by the sweat of his brow, by the cultivation of fields, then he received information from God, which has been passed down in the human race.} 27`` For the fitches {animal food} are not threshed with a threshing sledge. Neither a cart wheel turned about upon the cummin. But the fitches are beaten out with a staff {thin stick}, and the cummin with a rod {strong stick}. {Note: A threshing sledge was a cart pulled by animals, which was a kind of antique harvester. The wheels of the threshing sledge actually chopped and collected a little bit and so on. The point is: if you tried to harvest fitches with a threshing sledge you would destroy them. So when it comes to fitches you can't use a threshing sledge. Next, you can't harvest medicine-type things with a cart. A cart had wide wheels and crushed. How do you get the seed/production out? You get growth by hard work/study and being consistent in your work/study. This is a picture of the believer growing from baby-hood through adolescent to maturity. There will be 'hard knocks' along the way, but by the end of the process, the production will be useful to God.} 28`` Bread corn {wheat} is bruised. He will not ever thresh it, nor break it with the wheel of his cart, nor bruise it with horsemen. 29`` This also cometh forth from Jehovah/God of the armies/hosts, Who is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working. {Note: Wheat has to be handled in a certain way because the horses can trample it and ruin it and so on. Bread corn/wheat is threshed. Notice that you don't use a stick on wheat. This is a picture of the mature believer who is ready to permit God to 'produce divine good production' though him.} {Note: Just as God has conveyed in centuries past information whereby man can live on the face of the earth and derive a living from the earth, so God has provided in great detail how and why a believer should operate to the glory of the Lord - and this is revealed through doctrine. The emphasis then is, you must know doctrine - what the Word teaches. This is what Isaiah would say to the northern kingdom: You get into the Word and there will be no discipline. But they failed to do so and in 721 BC, Isaiah's message to them was fulfilled.}