Hebrews in Light of Grace (Part 6): Covenant Failure, Written Prophecy, and the Witness of the Law
The Covenant Blueprint and the Five Courses of Punishment
To properly understand the unfolding of God’s plan across the pages of Scripture, a reader must have a solid foundation in the historical framework of the Old Testament. The national story of Israel does not begin in a vacuum; it takes shape back in the twelfth chapter of Genesis with the calling out of Abraham. That historical line runs steadily through the books of the law, through the historical narratives, and all the way up to the book of Esther before resuming in the four Gospels. Along this path, God established a conditional covenant with the nation he brought out of Egyptian bondage. The terms were laid out with complete clarity: if the people would obey the voice of the Lord, they would be a peculiar treasure unto him, a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation.
Yet when one turns to the very first prophetic book in the Bible, the prophet Isaiah does not address a holy nation. Instead, he opens his vision by declaring them to be a sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, and a seed of evildoers. How does a nation called out by God to demonstrate his righteousness on the earth end up in such a degraded condition? The answer is found by looking back into the law of Moses, specifically at the solemn warnings recorded in Leviticus 26. God did not leave his people in the dark regarding the consequences of covenant unfaithfulness. He laid out five distinct courses of punishment; a sequence of corrective chastisements designed to bring a rebellious people back to their knees.
If Israel would walk in his statutes, the rain would fall in due season, the land would yield her increase, and peace would reign within their borders. But if they refused to hearken and chose instead to despise his statutes, God promised to bring upon them terror, consumption, and the burning ague. Should they continue in their rebellion, God declared that he would punish them seven times more for their sins. The historical books from Joshua through Second Kings record the tragic realization of these warnings. Over a period of roughly one thousand years, God exercised immense patience and long-suffering toward Israel. He brought the first course of punishment, yet they revolted. He brought the second, third, and fourth courses, yet they hardened their hearts.
The holiness, righteousness, and justice of God require that sin be dealt with according to the terms of his word. In Deuteronomy, God revealed a terrifying aspect of his nature regarding covenant disobedience: just as he rejoiced over them to do them good and to multiply them, so the Lord would rejoice over them to destroy them and to bring them to nought. God’s righteous nature takes delight in the execution of true judgment against evil. When a nation becomes thoroughly corrupt, God’s holy justice shines through the pouring out of his wrath. Israel’s persistent refusal to turn back from their idols eventually exhausted the earlier stages of chastisement, driving them directly into the fifth and final course of punishment: total expulsion from the promised land and captivity under Gentile dominion.
Oral Prophets vs. Preserved Prophetic Scripture
Throughout this long historical trajectory of rebellion, God did not leave himself without witnesses. He sent messengers to plead with his people long before the hammer of judgment fell. As the prophet Jeremiah recorded, the Lord rose up early and sent his servants the prophets, warning Israel to turn every man from his evil way and to refrain from going after other gods. Yet a crucial distinction must be recognized when reading the Old Testament Scriptures. God raised up many mighty prophets whose spoken words were never recorded in dedicated books bearing their names.
Consider men like Elijah and Elisha. Their ministries were filled with signs, wonders, and direct confrontations with wicked kings, yet God did not preserve a written book of Elijah or a book of Elisha. The same is true of John the Baptist in the New Testament; though the Lord declared that among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist, there is no preserved Book of John the Baptist. When a prophet’s ministry consists solely of oral proclamation without a preserved written text, it signifies that his message was localized and specific to that immediate generation. He was sent with a targeted word for a targeted time to address the people living right before him.
However, around the time of the fourth course of punishment—beginning notably during the reign of King Uzziah in Judah—God began to do something different. He raised up prophets like Isaiah, Hosea, Amos, and Micah, and for the first time, he commanded that their prophesies be preserved in writing. When God records and preserves a prophetic message in a written text, it is because that message carries weight far beyond the generation that first heard it spoken. It carries continuous authority and doctrinal relevance from that day forward, stretching across centuries and pointing all the way out to the end times.
These written prophets were given a dynamic vision that encompassed the entirety of the fifth course of punishment. They foresaw the immediate destruction of Samaria by the Assyrians and the eventual captivity of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. But their vision did not stop at the ancient horizon. They looked down the corridor of time and wrote about the coming of John the Baptist crying in the wilderness (Isa.40:3; Mal.3:1), the virgin birth of the Messiah (Isa.7:14), his precise birthplace in Bethlehem (Mic.5:2), his lowly entrance into Jerusalem upon an ass (Zech.9:9), and his substitutionary death upon the cross for the sins of the people (Isa.53:5-6). Because their message spans from the initial captivities all the way to the second coming of Jesus Christ and the establishment of his kingdom, God preserved their words in the canon of Holy Scripture for all generations to read and believe.
The Song of Moses and Isaiah’s Charge
To understand why the prophetic books begin where they do, one must go back to the words of Moses delivered on the plains of Moab. In Deuteronomy 31, the Lord revealed to Moses that after his death, the people would rise up, play the harlot after the gods of the strangers of the land, and forsake the covenant. God warned that his anger would be kindled against them, that he would hide his face, and that many evils and troubles would befall them.
Knowing what lay ahead, God instructed Moses to write a specific song and teach it to the children of Israel. This was not written to be a lighthearted tune or a general song of encouragement. It was placed in their mouths to act as a formal witness against them when the evil came upon them in the latter days (Deut.31:19-21). Moses gathered the elders and officers of the tribes and declared that he knew after his death they would utterly corrupt themselves and turn aside from the way he had commanded them.
The Song of Moses, recorded in Deuteronomy 32, opens with a formal invocation: give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth (Deut.32:1). Moses called heaven and earth to record against the nation because those created realms would stand as silent, enduring witnesses to the truth of God’s words when judgment was eventually executed.
A thousand years after Moses spoke those solemn words, the prophet Isaiah stepped onto the stage of history. Israel’s long track record of rebellion had fully materialized just as Moses foretold. When opening his written prophecy, Isaiah does not invent a new message; he deliberately picks up the legal torch where Moses laid it down. Isaiah opens with the exact formal courtroom invocation established in the law: hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the Lord hath spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me (Isa.1:2).
Notice the vital distinction embedded in the tense of the verbs—a shift that reveals the exact moment judgment takes effect
Jerusalem's Transformation: From Harlot to City of Righteousness
Having established the historical indictment against Israel under the law, the prophetic books focus heavily on the capital city of Jerusalem. God did not choose Jerusalem to be just another regional hub. He placed his name there, established his holy temple within its borders, and ordained that city to be the center of judgment and righteousness for the entire earth. It was designed to be the light of the world; a city set on a hill that could not be hid.
Yet by the time Isaiah opens his vision, the city had completely departed from its holy mandate. The prophet laments, how is the faithful city become an harlot! it was full of judgment; righteousness lodged in it; but now murderers (Isa.1:21). The place where God’s holy standard was meant to shine had turned into a den of corruption, where rulers sold judgment for money and ignored the cause of the fatherless and the widow.
In Isaiah 5, God illustrates this failure through the story of a vineyard. He fenced it, gathered out the stones, planted it with the choicest vine, built a tower in the midst of it, and made a winepress therein. He looked that it should bring forth grapes, but it brought forth wild grapes. God identified the men of Judah as his pleasant plant (Isa.5:7). It was their duty to bring forth judgment and righteousness, but when God looked, he saw oppression and heard the cry of the afflicted.
Because the city established to bring light had become darkness, God laid out a detailed blueprint for its purging and subsequent restoration. God declared, I will turn my hand upon thee, and purely purge away thy dross, and take away all thy tin: and I will restore thy judges as at the first, and thy counsellors as at the beginning: afterward thou shalt be called, The city of righteousness, the faithful city (Isa.1:25-26). Notice that the purging precedes the restoration. God’s plan requires the absolute judgment and removal of corrupt leaders before Jerusalem can be clothed in fine linen—which is the righteousness of saints—and established as the praise of the whole earth. Zion shall be redeemed with judgment, and her converts with righteousness (Isa.1:27).
Judah, the True Vine, and the Order of Kingdom Gathering
The heavy focus on Jerusalem and Judah in the opening chapters of Isaiah is not an arbitrary choice. In the unfolding of God’s covenant promises, there is no hope for the nation of Israel apart from the tribe of Judah. When Jacob gathered his sons on his deathbed to reveal what would befall them in the last days, he declared of Judah: Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise: thy hand shall be in the neck of thine enemies; thy father's children shall bow down before thee (Gen.49:8). Jacob continued with a crucial messianic line: the sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be (Gen.49:10).
The scepter of royal authority was tied exclusively to Judah. Israel went into captivity under the Assyrians in 2 Kings 17, while Judah went into captivity later in chapter 25. Yet God’s plan to regather all twelve tribes of Israel is designed to run through the royal line of Judah. When the Lord Jesus Christ walked the earth, he looked back at the parable of the vineyard in Isaiah 5 and declared to his disciples, I am the true vine (Jn.15:1). He is the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the true seed of David, who will fulfil what the earthly men of Judah failed to accomplish.
This explains the precise prophetic order established throughout the Scriptures. When Christ instructed his twelve apostles regarding their kingdom witness, he laid out an exact geographic and dispensational sequence: ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth (Acts 1:8). Salvation is of the Jews (Jn.4:22). The light of God’s kingdom must first be purified and established in Jerusalem, spread throughout Judea, reach out to Samaria, and finally convert the Gentile nations of the earth. As Isaiah foresaw, out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, and all nations shall flow unto it (Isa.2:2-3).
Daniel’s 70 Weeks and the Present Dispensation of Grace
The written prophets detailed not only the spiritual condition of Israel, but also the precise timeline of their fifth course of punishment. Through the prophet Jeremiah, God revealed that the captivity in Babylon would last seventy years (Jer.29:10). Toward the end of those seventy years, while the prophet Daniel was praying and confessing the sin of his people, the angel Gabriel was sent to deliver a major prophetic revelation.
Gabriel informed Daniel that an additional seventy weeks—meaning seventy weeks of years, or 490 years—were determined upon his people and upon his holy city Jerusalem (Dan.9:24). When combined with the initial seventy years of captivity in Babylon, God laid out a total timeline of 560 years (70 years (Babylonian captivity) + 490 years (70 weeks of Daniel)) determined upon Israel to finish the transgression, to make an end of sins, to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness.
However, simple arithmetic reveals a profound Bible study truth. The 490 years began with the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem (Dan.9:25). Sixty-nine of those weeks—483 years—ran consecutively up to the cutting off of the Messiah upon the cross. Over two thousand years have passed since Christ died at Calvary, yet the final, seventieth week of Daniel has not yet been fulfilled on earth.
Why did the prophetic clock stop after the 69th week? Because the Old Testament prophets were not shown the present period of time. They foresaw the suffering of Christ and the glory that should follow, but they did not see the vast gap of time between those two events. When Israel rejected her King and crucified the Messiah, God temporarily set aside his prophetic dealing with Jerusalem and opened up a mystery that was hid in God from the foundation of the world (Eph.3:9).
Through the apostle Paul, God revealed the dispensation of the grace of God (Eph.3:2). In this present age, God is not purging Jerusalem, nor is he dealing nationally with Israel under the terms of the law. Instead, he is calling out individuals—both Jew and Gentile—reconciling them unto God in one body by the cross (Eph.2:16). Believers today are made members of the body of Christ, seated in heavenly places, and blessed with all spiritual blessings. Once this present dispensation of grace is completed and the body of Christ is taken out, God will resume his prophetic timeline with Israel. He will fulfill the final seventieth week of Daniel, purge Jerusalem through the fire of the great tribulation, send Jesus Christ back as the King of kings, and establish his righteous kingdom upon the earth.
An adapted lesson from Paul Lucas here.
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