Isaiah chapter 48 - Galatians

The forty-eighth chapter of Isaiah is a powerful statement by God to the house of Jacob/house of Israel/Israel/the Jews. They were (and are even today) his chosen people. They have been the recipients of his special blessings and will be again in the near future. Even during the centuries between A.D. 70 and our present time, God has held them together as a people and has preserved their culture and language.

They knew fully well that they had a special standing before the one true God, but God demanded (and did not get) absolute adherence to the Law of Moses in order for them to retain that extraordinary relationship. Every Jew knew the demands of the Law, whether or not he abided in them.

When God, through Paul, brought forth the gospel of Jesus Christ, salvation by God’s grace alone, through faith alone in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ alone, it was something new and very different. Such a thing had never been heard of before that time in history.

For the Jew, who had lived under the rigorous demands of the Law of Moses, it was inconceivable. Yet, there were many Jews who believed Paul’s message and became Christians, and in doing so, totally abandoned the demands of the Law. Those who did were initially small in number when compared with those Jews who rejected the gospel.

In Jerusalem, the heart of Judaism, converts to Christianity typically embraced the gospel of Jesus Christ but held on to their visits to the synagogue, their prayer times and some may even have continued in the temple worship, including the animal sacrifice part of it. We don’t have a lot of information on this subject in the pages of the Bible, but we do find a book of the New Testament where these Jewish Christians in Jerusalem and Judea came into direct conflict with the gentile believers who had never been a part of the Jews’ religion, and who had no part in any of the practices demanded by the Law of Moses.

Paul’s letter to the believers in Galatia is that book, and it is there that we read about the conflict between Paul and the gentile church on one side, and Peter and the Jerusalem church on the other. It is in Galatians that we find the believers from the house of Jacob stiffly resisting the totally new idea that God was bringing forth among the Gentiles.

The Jews had never known in advance that the gentiles would be invited into special relationship with the God that the Jews had known for almost two millennia. This gentile church was a mystery, something kept secret from the world (including God’s chosen people) since the beginning of time. And now, we read Isaiah’s words as the Holy Spirit speaks to the House of Jacob.

“Thou hast heard, see all this; and will not ye declare it? I have shewed thee new things from this time, even hidden things, and thou didst not know them. 7) They are created now, and not from the beginning; even before the day when thou heardest them not; lest thou shouldest say, Behold, I knew them.” (Isaiah 48:6-7)

This is chapter forty-eight of Isaiah, and the book of Acts is the forty-eighth book in the Bible. They are connected.