📘 Course Introduction

✨ Brief

This course is a study of the Book of Isaiah, the great prophet of Judah who spoke of the coming Messiah more than seven hundred years before Christ.

Through 24 structured lessons, students will first learn who the prophets were, how they lived, and how to read their writings, and then walk through Isaiah’s message chapter by chapter, from judgment on Judah to the glory of the coming Messiah.

The course shows how Isaiah contrasts the greatness of God with the emptiness of idols, and how his prophecies of the Suffering Servant find their fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

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📖 Full Course Summary

Much of Isaiah is written in symbolic, prophetic language, and many readers find it hard to understand. This course gives students the tools to read the book with confidence: the prophet’s world, his call, the structure of his book, and the way the New Testament writers used his words.

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🔹 Understanding the Prophets

The course begins with the foundation for all prophetic study:

• What kind of men the prophets were
• Their mission: calling a sinful nation back to God
• The prophet’s call and inaugural vision
• The historical world of Judah, Israel, Assyria, and Babylon

👉 We cannot understand the prophet’s book until we understand the prophet and his world

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🔹 Approaching the Book of Isaiah

Students learn how to read Isaiah well:

• The difficulty of symbolic language
• The question of one author or many, and the case for Isaiah himself
• How the New Testament writers read and used the prophets

👉 Read the prophets the way Jesus and the apostles read them

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🔹 Judgment on Judah and the Nations (Chapters 1–35)

Isaiah confronts the sins of God’s people and the nations:

• Judah’s religious and social corruption (chapters 1–5)
• Isaiah’s call in chapter 6
• Immanuel and the promise of the Messiah during the Assyrian crisis
• Oracles against the world powers, the “apocalypse” of chapters 24–27, and the six woes

Through all the judgment, God promises to save a faithful remnant.

👉 Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people

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🔹 Hezekiah and the Historical Section (Chapters 36–39)

The book turns to real events in Isaiah’s day:

• God’s deliverance of Jerusalem from Sennacherib and the Assyrian army
• Hezekiah’s illness and prayer
• His pride before the envoys of Babylon and the prophecy of captivity

👉 God answers prayer, but pride opens the door to judgment

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🔹 Comfort and the Servant of the Lord (Chapters 40–55)

“Comfort, comfort my people”: Isaiah looks beyond the exile:

• The majesty of God and the helplessness of Babylon’s idols
• Cyrus, named in advance as the deliverer of God’s people
• The Servant Songs and salvation through God’s Servant
• The Suffering Servant of Isaiah 52:13–53:12, fulfilled in Christ

👉 The Messiah conquers not as a warrior but as a sufferer, on the cross

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🔹 The Glory of Zion (Chapters 56–66)

The book closes with hope for the people of God:

• Sin as the wall of separation between God and His people
• True and false worship
• The coming glory of Zion, the city of God
• The prayer of the righteous and the new heavens and new earth

👉 Arise, shine, for your light has come

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🔹 Key Principle of the Course

👉 God alone is great, and God alone saves

Judgment → for sin
Comfort → for the remnant
Salvation → through the Servant, Jesus Christ

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🔹 What You Will Learn

By the end of this course, students will:

• Understand who the prophets were and how to read them
• Know the historical background of Isaiah’s ministry
• Follow the structure and message of the Book of Isaiah
• Recognize Isaiah’s great Messianic prophecies and their fulfillment in Jesus
• See the greatness of God in contrast to every idol

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🔹 Course Outcome

This course is designed to move students from:

Confusion → understanding of prophecy
Symbols → clear meaning
Judgment → hope
Idols → trust in the living God

It equips believers to:

• Read and teach the Book of Isaiah
• Use Isaiah to point others to Christ
• Learn from Judah’s sins and God’s mercy
• Worship the God who keeps His promises