Isaiah chapter 61 - 2nd Peter

It is the passage of Old Testament scripture from which Jesus quoted in Luke 4:17-19. It was then and is now a passage that was familiar to listeners.

“The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn; To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he might be glorified.” (Isaiah 61:1-3)

By reading this passage from Isaiah, Jesus presented himself as a new rabbi to his home-town synagogue crowd, and detailed for them the assignment He had from the Father. It was not an introduction that was well received. He laid out the direction and focus of His ministry and the ministries of those He would call to continue His work after He was gone.

Jesus didn’t read the entire first three verses of Isaiah chapter sixty-one that day in the synagogue; He stopped after reading aloud the first phrase of verse two; “To preach the acceptable year of the LORD” (Luke 2:19). It is interesting that when Jesus read from scripture, the word was ‘preach’ rather that ‘proclaim’ as it is found in Isaiah 61:2.

Of course, He may have been reading from the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament, from which the word is translated into English as ‘declare’. He stopped after that statement and sat down. He had just brought forward into the New Testament record and times, a passage of Old Testament scripture that validated Him and His ministry; words that He said were speaking of Him.

Jesus was not saying anything here about His offering for sin, His work of the cross nor His resurrection. This passage speaks of preaching, proclaiming, comforting and raising the spirits of mankind. Nor does Jesus even mention the gospel of God’s grace that would come later and be taken to the Gentiles by Paul. Although there were to be eleven men (plus Paul) under whom this assignment would continue after the departure of Jesus, first among those eleven would be Peter.

It was Peter’s (as well as the others’) calling to preach and proclaim, and to thereby bring hope to mankind. This passage from the text of Isaiah chapter sixty-one then, does not uniquely connect that chapter to Second Peter, but it does connect that chapter to the New Testament. It also defines the application of the rest of the chapter to the New Testament. Continuing in Isaiah chapter sixty-one:

“But ye shall be named the Priests of the LORD: men shall call you the Ministers of our God” (Isaiah 61:6a-6b)

We have another link in this verse. Within Israel were to be found the “Priests of the LORD”, and the priests of the New Testament are the believers, and the first of those were the apostles. The apostles who wrote the pages of our New Testament referred to them selves as ‘servants’ of the LORD, and ‘servants’ is the meaning of the word that is translated as “Ministers” in Isaiah 61:6b.

Still, this does not uniquely specify Peter, because Paul also referred to himself as the ‘servant’ of the LORD. One more verse to connect Isaiah chapter sixty-one to the New Testament apostles, and then we’ll take a look to see why it connects specifically to 2nd Peter.

“And their seed shall be known among the Gentiles, and their offspring among the people: all that see them shall acknowledge them, that they are the seed which the LORD hath blessed.” (Isaiah 61:9)

“Their seed”; whose seed? What kind of seed of any Israelite could be known among the Gentiles? “Their offspring”, the biological offspring of the Israelites would be Israelites, and it says that their offspring would be among known among “the people”. That would necessarily be the “people” of Israel, but what is “their seed” spoken of?

What we find in the New Testament is that those who led someone to faith in Jesus as the promised Messiah often referred to the new Christian as their son or their daughter, and they were also known to call themselves the ‘father’ or ‘mother’ of that new Christian. The “seed” of the apostles, especially the “seed” of Peter and Paul was where? It was among the Gentiles.

So, where is the connection to 2nd Peter that uniquely connects that book to the sixty-first chapter of Isaiah? Let’s return to the first three verses of Isaiah’s chapter sixty-one. When Jesus read this passage, He stopped with the words; “To preach the acceptable year of the LORD” (Luke 2:19). The following line applies to the book of 2nd Peter more than to any other book of the Bible. What does it say?

“and the day of vengeance of our God” (Isaiah 61:2b)

The men we have identified herein, specifically the men who took the gospel to the Gentiles, Peter and Paul, (remember that John’s gospel, his letters and the book of Revelation were written primarily for Israel, and James opened his letter with a greeting; “to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad”) were to proclaim/declare “the day of vengeance of our God”. Paul didn’t do that, but Peter did. 2nd Peter chapter three is exactly that, and the picture that Peter paints is vivid.

“But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat?” (2nd Peter 3:10-12)

This is chapter sixty-one of Isaiah, and 2nd Peter is the sixty-first book of the Bible.