Bible Reading Challenge Blog

We see some references to very familiar imagery as Isaiah states that God is the first and the last (vs.12).  We see that Jesus is described as the alpha and the Omega which are the first and the last letters of the Greek alphabet.  But, of course, we wouldn’t see that in Isaiah because it is written in Hebrew.  But the sense is that before the beginning of time, God was.  Once time is over and this world has come to an end, God will be.  God laid the foundations of the earth and spread out the heavens.  

As a result of this declaration then is it too much for God to choose to liberate the people of Israel as He sees fit?  In vs.6 we read that God will reveal new things.  These new things will include in vs.20ff the redemption of Israel as was seen when God led them out of Egypt and through the desert  by splitting open rocks to provide water.  

Not sure what this last verse represents.  It is a bit of a harbinger of things to come as we read something similar in Isaiah 57:21.  There is no peace for the wicked.  Oh, if that were true then we would see a whole lot of people having a hard time sleeping at night, but I’m afraid that even the wicked sleep peacefully while the righteous are a bit fitful because they recognize what is at stake.

We get a not very dignified image of a woman who has been stripped and her nakedness has been uncovered.  It is the image of God stripping Israel because of her unfaithfulness to the Lord.  He says in vs.6 that he was angry with his people because they had become a mistress to foreign gods.  He had just in the previous chapter told the people of Israel not to sell themselves out to foreign gods, but they had.  I mean, everyone else is doing it, so it is so very tempting to fall into the trap of what other nations and people around them are doing.

He is a little more specific in vs.8 when he speaks not about idolatry but about them pursuing pleasure as an idol.  Okay, now Isaiah is speaking to the 21st century church.  People are so secure in who they are and in their own abilities that they never believe that anything negative will befall them.  You see this reflected in vs.8-9 where people say I will never be a widow or see the death of my children.  Tell that to people who live in areas where gun violence is an epidemic.  There are more widows and losses of children than we would like to admit.  It happens today.

God says that those who are so secure in things other than in the Creator can stay just like they are.  But they are like stubble and in a flash can go up in flame.  We know that about life.  It can change within an instant.  This quote is foreboding: “They all wander about in their own paths; there is no one to save you.”  This chapter is very, very sobering.

Isaiah consistently speaks out against the idols which other nations worship and the fact that they are created by our hands and then worshiped.  How is that possible?  How are we capable to create something which we then turn around and worship?  He goes on in vs.7 to speak about the inanimate nature of these gods that you place them in one place and they are immobile, they cannot come rushing to the rescue like our God does.  Our God is not created or formed but creates and forms, is not placed but places, is not carried from place to place but carries us from one place to another.

If you notice in vs.12 and following you see that it is God himself who brings deliverance.  The salvation of the Lord will not wait around for someone to come to Him and ask for it.  God is the one who is proactive and who moves to save those in need.  What a God we serve.  I seem to be on a roll for songs that bring joy to my heart.  Here is another one.

“Only in the Lord…are righteousness and strength.”  The prophet Isaiah continues the theme of reminding us who made us and that we are the clay and God is the potter.  You see him take up that theme in vs.9 and the reminder that God has made all things on heaven and on earth.  We are not to question, we are to live out the life that God wants us to live.  This life, we are reminded in vs.18 is one that is to be lived not in chaos, but in freedom and order and established in God’s timing and purposes.

For some reason this song came to my mind as I was reading this Scripture.  I think because of vs.8 which speaks about God showering from heaven His presence which is powerful and life changing.

I wonder if you ever thought that the actual physical Bible, the book itself, could be seen as an idol?  How do you feel if someone throws a Bible away?  Isn’t there a sense that goes well beyond waste, a sense that there is something morally wrong in that?  Isaiah warns us in this chapter about making idols.  He goes into deep detail about the wood that is used by the craftsman to heat himself, to bake bread, to cook meat over its coals, and then the rest of it he fashions it into an idol which he worships.  He calls that in vs.20 a fraud.  How can anything inanimate provide security and safety?  It simply cannot.

I love the beginning of this chapter where we read in vs.2: “…the Lord who made you, who formed you in the womb and will help you.”  What a great image of God who creates us literally in the womb will never forget nor forsake us.  In this chapter the prophet categorically declares the glory of the Lord forever over any idol or human made object.  There is no other god like the God of Israel, he is the only rock.  Once again in vs.24 we find repeated that it was the Lord, the redeemer, who formed us in the womb.  I don’t know about you but I get great consolation in knowing that the God that I worship created me and formed me just  like Genesis 2 tells us He did.  

One random thought that I had while I was reading this chapter is found in vs.12 where Isaiah has the Lord say to us: “You are my witnesses.”  So, Stacy and I served for 4 years within the Waldensian Church in Italy.  A very well known Italian author wrote about this church in a book entitled: “You are my witnesses.”  I am not encouraging you to buy it, but just showing it here to prove that it is a real thing: https://www.amazon.com/You-Are-My-Witnesses-Waldensians/dp/8870160890.

The story of the Waldensians is uplifting.  A small pre-Reformation group that formed 300 years before the Reformation and believed that the Bible should be readable to all and that all people had a right to interpret the Bible. They were persecuted and fled from Southern France to the Northern Alps in Italy.  As Waldensian Pastors in Italy, keep in mind these churches ministered to Italians and were in Italian and not to English language folks, we were daily aware that we were in the minority and that as Protestant in Italy you  were constantly subjected to misunderstandings and assumptions which were at times very hurtful.  

But there was also a sense of pride that this small minority was a significant minority as it established hospitals and schools and churches across the country.  My two oldest daughters were born in a Waldensian hospital in Southern Italy.  So when I read Isaiah tell us that we are the witnesses that the Lord has to use, I think, right you are.

Other verses in this chapter that are significant are found in vs.18-19 where we find that the Lord is doing a new thing.  He describes this new thing as making a way in the wilderness (we have seen this John the Baptist thing already a number of times) and making rivers in the desert.   These two examples are picked up today as examples of ways in which God is doing new things among us which often times conflict and contradict what has been church orthodoxy for a number of years.  I’m not really on board with that, although I do believe that God has done and will do new things, but they will not conflict and contradict His Word.  Just sayin…

Once again a very significant chapter in Isaiah.  This is the Scripture that Jesus read while he was in his home synagogue in Nazareth.  There is talk about liberating the poor and the oppressed in this chapter.   There is talk in this chapter that would automatically label the person saying it as a bleeding heart whose only concern is pie in the sky.  But it is Scripture and it is powerful and it leads us to reconsider, I hope, the priorities that we have set as a culture.

This is also considered a suffering servant Scripture.  There are number of them in Isaiah that describe a suffering servant that is supposed to be predictive of who Jesus came to be.  I find it fascinating the way in which the Messiah, Jesus, was portrayed.  He was seen in vs.1-4 as someone who has the Spirit of the Lord upon him.  Now notice this progression of thought.  He is seen as someone who brings justice to the nations, so by default our mind goes to someone who is strong and governs with strength.  But then it is followed up with he will not cry or lift up his voice.  It states that a bruised reed he does not break.  He will not even quench a dimly burning wick.  His meekness is exemplary, and yet in vs.3 it concludes that thought by saying that he will faithfully bring forth justice.

How does someone who doesn’t speak loudly, someone who is not boastful, someone who doesn’t toot their own horn, someone who doesn’t make other people look bad, someone who doesn’t insist on their own way govern effectively?  Don’t you have to be pompous and strong, and braggadocios in order to get something done?  Don’t you have to insist on your own way if you want to get anything accomplished?  Apparently the Christly example that we have which actually works says all of those things are self defeating.   We could potentially be seeing it played out right now in our historical moment in which we find ourselves.  

Servant leadership is seen as the way to lead in all avenues of life.  What a thought.

God is once again declaring His place as the Creator and what that means in respect to who we are as the creature.  If you look at vs.4 you can see the author state: “I, the Lord, am first, and will be the last.”  That should sound a lot like what we read in Revelation 22:13 where Jesus says: I am the Alpha and the Omega, I am the the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”  That is certainly who God is, and certainly who we are not.

But in the midst of clarifying roles and positions, God still advocates for us and says that he will put all of our enemies to shame.  That’s nice.  On the one hand he tells Jacob not to fear, but on the other hand he calls Jacob a worm.  On the one hand he tells Israel that he will help them and on the other hand he calls them an insect.  He also states that he does not forsake those who are poor and needy.  

This is a chapter that requires extensive time to get the whole import of it.  It is hugely powerful, hugely.  Let’s start from the back and work our way forward.  First, look at vss.27-31, these are verses that I read at every celebration of resurrection that we have.  I love this one line: “Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk  and not faint.”  It is simply powerful,  and encouraging, and leads you to a place where you really do believe that you can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.

But then if you go back to the beginning of the chapter you find classic Lenten Scriptures that ask God to comfort His people because they have already paid their price for their sins.  The author states that Jerusalem has served her term and that her penalty is paid.  She will get back double of what was taken from her.  In the Jewish law you received double back from someone who stole from you.  So the assumption is that she was robbed.  But then we get the words of John the Baptist who cried out in the wilderness just like the Gospels say that he does.  This is a Scripture that is used often and completely to depict a time (Advent or Lent) when we are waiting for the coming of the King of Kings.  

But notice that the time of waiting is not just waiting, it is a time of preparation for the way of the Lord.  We have to be at work to prepare ourselves and to prepare the world for the coming of the King.  There is so much in this chapter that as I look over each verse after I’ve read it I want to say more.  There is an emphasis that our lives are but grass which the Lord can blow over at any moment.  What a sobering, true statement.  Dwell in this Scripture this week.  Soak it in and allow it to shape and mold you.

The only thing I can say is that I really don’t like Hezekiah all that much.  What we read in this chapter is that the prophecy for Hezekiah is that his children will be carried away to Babylon along with the entire population and his sons will be castrated and forced into prostitution and slavery.  Hezekiah does the math and realizes that while this may very well happen, it will not happen until after he is long dead.  His reaction?  At least there will be peace and security in my reign, too bad for my kids.  Yeah, not a great example of a father figure.

The problem is that Hezekiah received some visitors who came to wish him well after his miraculous recover and he basically gave them the 50 cent tour of his kingdom.  As a result they saw value in it.  These visitors were from Babylon and they liked what they saw.  I guess I can also say that not only do I dislike him, but he really isn’t the brightest bulb in the box.  The Scripture says that he specifically showed them all of his treasures, which were massive, and all of his defenses, which apparently were lacking.