What Happened to Israel after Isaiah Preached to Them about Repentance?

"If they didn't repent, Jeremiah 25:7 I think it is, says that they're going to go away into captivity for 70 years, and away they went. Some were destroyed. The armies came in and destroyed them. A remnant went away. They were told to blossom in Babylon, not to be impatient. It was going to be a period of time, a period of judgment, a period of cleansing. They hung up their harps in the willow trees. They didn't sing the songs of Israel. They were under captivity.

Then they came back under Ezra and Nehemiah. They did some back, but the promises of a return were even more potent and vivid than the events of the return under Nehemiah possibly could fulfill. So, even the whole captivity motif and the return of the remnant, God's people, and the blessings that would be poured down upon them, even that pointed forward to the New Covenant because God says that this second thing I am going to do, he says, ‘Forget the former things. I'm going to do a new thing.’ They went into captivity with this promise, that God was going to do this new thing.

He said, ‘Forget the former things.’ Right before that, he had talked about the Exodus from Egypt, and all its attendant miracles. That was the centerpiece of the demonstration of God's power in the Old Testament. He says, ‘I'm going to do something that's going to make Egypt look like child's play.’ That didn't happen on the return from Babylon. So, if you know the whole story, you realize, yes, they did come back from Babylon, and they set up the temple again, but it wasn't a fraction of the glory of the former one. So, what was all this greatness that was supposed to come?

It's all the New Covenant. It's all the Messianic era. All through Isaiah, you get this continue, ‘in that day ... , in that day ... , in that day ... ,’ and this anticipation's built for something fantastic. When was that day?

It's the Era of Messiah, when Christ came. That's when the fantastic stuff that makes us think Egypt was child's play because it was just a physical deliverance. Now, we're talking about a new deliverance, a new deliverance from spiritual Egypt. So, the New Covenant is the fulfillment of all the greatness that is anticipated all through the Prophets."