A Call To Action Series

A CALL TO ACTION – SEEK AND READ! (vv. 16-17)

Isaiah wraps up this chapter with another call to action. Isaiah commanded his audience to seek and read from the book of the Lord. At a minimum, this means that Isaiah understood that the message in this chapter was indeed the Word of God. As he points out in the second part of verse 16 it is certain that this message is straight from the mouth of God. There is little doubt that this intended to connect this verse back to the command to hear in verse 1.

But there is also certainly a broader call here for the people to seek out God and return to Him and that the main vehicle by which they could do that was through His Word. Now, taken at face value, I could certainly take these verses and merely use them as an encouragement for us to read the Bible. And certainly there would be nothing wrong with that.

But there is something even deeper that we can take from this passage and I’m grateful to pastor Dana for helping me to see this particular aspect of this verse. Let’s think about how the people of Isaiah’s time read from God’s Word. It wasn’t like today when they could just go into their bookshelf at home and choose one of the many translations of the Bible on the shelf and begin to read.

The only way the people could be exposed to God’s Word was when they gathered together in community and someone would read from one of the few available scrolls, which had been copied by hand. We see this practice demonstrated in the ministry of Jesus:

And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written…

Luke 4:16, 17 (ESV)

This was the typical way that the people were able to experience the Word of God in both Isaiah’s day and in Jesus’ day and it provides us with our second and final application this morning:

• APPLICATION #2 – We experience the fullest depth of God’s Word in community with other believers

There is obviously nothing wrong with reading and studying God’s Word on our own. In fact, we should do that. But if that is the extent of our exposure to the Bible, we will miss out on the fullness that God wants us to experience.

That’s why I don’t prepare my sermons in a vacuum each week. I spend time with a group of godly men on Tuesday morning discussing the passage. Then Pastor Dana and I often discuss the passage and various aspects of the message. When I’m pretty well finished with the message I send it to Pastor Dana to review. After that, I send out an outline to the teaching team so they can use that information to help prepare their lessons for the “Connections” classes. And then I have the privilege of joining together with many of you in the adult “Connections” class where I can answer your questions and then join you in exploring some further aspects of the passage and discuss how we can apply it to our lives. And it’s only after that entire process is complete that I feel like I’m even beginning to experience the fullness of that passage.