Isaiah Week 10 ... Isaiah 49 - 52:12 The Servant of the LORD

Make sure you read Bo Lim's commentary this week.  It answers a lot of questions about the "Servant Songs of Isaiah."  These songs are some of the more important features of the book of Isaiah, so the more you know...

As you read Isaiah this week, here are some suggestions for "Must Read" verses:

Isaiah 49:8-18
God will not forget you.  Spend some time thinking about verses 14-16: Do you ever feel like God has forgotten you?  If so, you have some idea of what God's people were feeling during the exile in Babylon.  Consider God's love for you and others as you read God's response in verse 15: "Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show not compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you."  If you come away from reading Isaiah knowing that God has not forgotten you even when you feel like He has, you will have learned one big-time life lesson.

Isaiah 49:1-6
Isaiah 50:4-11
The Servant of the Lord.  These are the 2nd and 3rd of the "Servant Songs" in Isaiah.  We'll get to the fourth next week.  These words have had a powerful impact on the church through the centuries, and they are important to understanding God's work of salvation.  One of the most obvious take-away messages is that God calls servants to play an important part in his work in the world.  Who do you recognize as God's servants?  What would it mean to consider yourself a servant of the Lord?

Pay particular attention to 50:5-7.  These verses talk about being persecuted for being God's servant.  How do these verses connect with Jesus' suffering on the way to the cross?  Have you ever been insulted or persecuted because of your Christian faith?  Say a prayer for those who are being persecuted as Christians even today.

Isaiah 52:7-10
The Beautiful Good News.  I can't read the words of verse 7 without singing along with Handel's Messiah: "How beautiful are the feet of them who preach the gospel of peace."  Take a few minutes to meditate on these electric words: messenger/preacher, gospel/good news (they mean the same thing), salvation, God reigns.  Amazing to consider the power of the promise that "all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God" (verse 10).  What does that have to say about God's work in the world and your part in it?

Peace!

ISAIAH week 9: Chapters 40-48 ... The Return of the King

Finally...some "Good News"

When he gets to the end of chapter 39, before moving on to Isaiah 40:1, Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann writes:

• "And then there is a pause -- a long pause.  The reader of the book of Isaiah must endure a very long pause before taking up chapter 40, for the space between 39:8 and 40:1 signifies the defining interruption in the life and faith of Israel as it is construed in the book of Isaiah.  Chapter 39 is ostensibly enacted some time after 700 BC, and chapter 40 is voiced about 540 BC.  The gap is 160 years, a long pause indeed."  (Westminster Bible Companion, 1998)

I think the most important thing to know as you start reading chapter 40 is that God's promised judgment/punishment of His people has now taken place.  The holy city of Jerusalem is in ruins and people have been deported to Babylon (see Psalm 137:1).  [Historical note: Babylon defeated Assyria, attacked Judah in 598, then destroyed Jerusalem and the temple in 587]

The words of this prophecy are now heard by God's people in exile, dwelling in a foreign land.  All the prophecies of judgement and destruction have come true.  The punishment has been severe. God's people have been displaced and sent into exile.  God's temple - His dwelling place on earth - is now rubble.  Is this going to be the end of the story?

Start reading chapter 40 and you'll find out very quickly that the story of God and his people is NOT over.  Good news is announced that God will return his people to Zion!  One of the people God uses to do this is a foreign leader named Cyrus (of the Persian empire...modern-day Iran).  Cyrus defeats the Babylonian empire and is instrumental in returning exiled peoples to their homeland.  This pagan military leader is actually mentioned in the Bible in chapters 44-45 as God's anointed servant.  Be sure to read about it!

Try reading all 8 chapters this week...it will be worth it!  This is where the whole idea of "gospel" and "good news" comes from!  And be sure to mark up your Bible.  These chapters are full of words that God gives us to inspire our hope, words that remind us of God's comfort even in the most difficult times of our lives.

Here are some key verses - don't just read them...memorize them!

Isaiah 40
1-5 (popular Advent verses...also the starting point for Handel's Messiah)
8 (the word of God endures forever)
11 (he tends his flock like a shepherd)
27-31 (soar on wings like eagles!)

Isaiah 41
8-10 (do not fear, for God is with you!)

Isaiah 43
1-7 (do not fear, for I have redeemed you)
18-19 (God is doing a new thing)

Isaiah 44:28-45:8 -- Read about Cyrus

Isaiah 45
22-25 (turn to me and be saved)

Isaiah 48
17-21 (if only you had paid attention to my commands)

ISAIAH Week 8: Chapters 34-39 - Zion's Final Destiny

This week's chapters are the last in the first major section of Isaiah.  If you're like me, your energy for reading Isaiah might be getting a little low right about now.  I've got good news for you - things are going to change for the better next week!  That's because we get into Isaiah 40 and beyond, the part of Isaiah that is more familiar to most of us and more easy to read.  And let's face it, there's something special about Isaiah 40 (if you haven't read it yet, you'll just have to take my word for it this week). 

It would be easy to sit this one out.  But if we did that, we would miss one of the great Advent chapters of the Bible, Isaiah 35.  Do you like hope and joy?  This chapter will inspire you!  If you only read one chapter this week, make sure it's this one.

And we wouldn't want to miss out on the inspiring story of a praying man...who just happened to be a king named Hezekiah.  He prayed a couple of prayers with great faith, and his song of thanksgiving to God expresses his joy when God answered those prayers.  Reading chapters 37-39 is an opportunity to grow in prayer.

Breaking it down to four readings

1. Isaiah 34-35 *Must Read Isaiah 35 (And the ransomed of the Lord will return...with everlasting joy)
2. Isaiah 36
3. Isaiah 37 *Must Read Isaiah 37:14-20 (Hezekiah's prayer for salvation)
4. Isaiah 38-39 *Must Read Isaiah 38 (Hezekiah's prayer for healing from a deadly sickness, and his song of thanksgiving)

Bo Lim's Commentary
Be sure to read Bo's teaching on Chapters 34-35: "A Nightmare and a Dream"

Isaiah Week 7 - Chapters 28-33. HOPE for a Righteous King

I always love it when the Lectio reading connects with what the pastor preaches about on Sunday.  We don't coordinate this intentionally, but they've connected many times before.  This week it happened in a big way!  We read Isaiah 25:6  "On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear."  And then on Sunday Hallack preached from Jesus’ parable of the great banquet in Luke 14.  Remember what Bo Lim said about the connections between Isaiah and Jesus...well, this is one for the list!

Here's the "must read" section of this week's reading:

Isaiah 30:1-26

"O rebellious children, says the Lord, who carry out a plan, but not mine."

One of the big themes of Isaiah is God's judgment on his people and on their enemies.  With all the words of judgment, it's hard to keep track of who is being punished!  Sometimes God punishes his people, sometimes God punishes their enemies, and (to make things even more confusing) sometimes he uses the bullying of their enemies to teach his people a lesson.  How do we make sense of all this?

One way is to follow the lead of Isaiah 30 and think of God as a parent and God's people as his children.  Think of God as a parent who is really concerned that the kids in the neighborhood play fair with each other and are kind to one another.  You're the child of this parent.  If someone from the neighborhood bullies you, the parent will bring judgment upon the bully.  But heaven help you if it's you who's doing the bullying! The parent is going to be swift to punish you because the matter is so important to them.  That's a way of thinking about how God can judge Israel's enemies and judge Israel - both for disobedience.

But what about when we read that God is using the bullies as instruments of punishing his children?  No simple answer to this one, but one way to look at it is to think of God as the parent who is willing to allow his children to experience the consequences of their poor choices and sinful actions.  In a way, God is allowing the destruction brought by foreign military powers to be the natural consequence of Israel's faithlessness.  When parents allow consequences to hit us with full force, it's natural for children to wonder "Does my parent love me?"  Do you think God's people in Isaiah's day wondered if God still loved them?  What assurances does God give his people through the prophet Isaiah?

 

 

Extra Notes:

Party's Over.  Isaiah 28 describes drunkenness in a way that reminds me of the dark side of the "party scene."  What starts out as pretty picture of people "just having fun" eventually gives way to an ugly scene.  What is often left over after a wild party is what is described in verse 8 "all tables are covered with filthy vomit; no place is clean." (It's been known to happen)  One thing God does through prophets like Isaiah is to help us see the real story behind the pretty picture.  It's hard to stay in denial when someone like Isaiah is exposing the truth.

Political Elections and the Kingdom of God.  Hope for a Righteous King is an interesting topic for the week in which we elected a President and a Governor, don't you think?  A good reminder that the highest level of authority is God, and we look to His kingdom as our ultimate authority.  This provides some wisdom for political winners and losers, regardless of party platform.  When we win, recognizing God as the higher power leads us to humility, to look to God to guide us in the right use of human power, to remember that political office is a sacred trust.  When we lose, recognizing God as a higher power opens us to encouragement.  All is not lost - the Lord is still on the throne.  God doesn't stop caring about the world he loves just because of a particular election outcome.